Tauranga is not so terrifying after all

FIRST IMPRESSIONS - Column
Have you ever run into an old schoolyard bully and found they were no longer the terrifying monster you remembered them to be?
Or have you rented an old horror movie which scared the wits out of you but later turned out to be about as blood-curdling as The Lion King?
Fronting up to Tauranga has been a bit like that.
Just over a month ago, I was offered a job here at The Bay of Plenty Times.
A career-booster, sure, but could I move to a city that had been my own boyhood bogeyman?
Flash back to our first encounter, in the summer of 1991, when I was on holiday with my family at Mount Maunganui beach.
Being just a pup, I was prohibited from going near the water and had to sit there in the sand between my parents, louring and grousing at my big brothers splashing around in the surf.
When Dad popped away to fetch ice creams and Mum's attention turned to another bather, I made a break for it.
My brothers seemed to be only swimming between a pair of funny flags and miles away from where the real cool swells were.
Losers, I thought, as I galloped Hasselhoff-style towards the biggest brute of a wave I could find - and one that just happened to be a particularly malicious dumper.
It sucked me straight under, cart-wheeled me across the sea floor for 20 metres, bounced me between three rocks like a tiny pinball and discharged me unceremoniously back on to the shore in a pathetic tangle of seaweed slime and shredded speedos.
The bully wave may as well have extended a foamy fist and motioned mono-digitally that a curly-haired little Taranaki snottie like me wasn't welcome in the fine waters of Mount Maunganui.
The experience shook me so much that when we returned to Tauranga five summers later, I feared it would get me again if I so dared step foot on the beach.
Eventually, Dad had to place a bag of 20 cent pieces into my trembling hands so I could play Super Pacman within the safe confines of a spacies parlour.
This worked okay until two teenagers pushed me, called me an egg and made me hand over my coins - just as I was about to crack the high score on Congo Bongo. Dad retrieved what money they hadn't spent, but the damage had already been done - Tauranga was out to get me.
I attempted to overcome my phobia another five years later when I took up a mate's offer to spend New Year's Eve here.
He'd assured bands, booze and a favourable girl-to-guy ratio; what I got was an atrocious Beatles tribute show, an empty beer bottle someone hurled at me from a high-rise balcony and an old homeless lady who I sought refuge with over a beach camp fire.
She listened to my Tauranga horror stories as she boiled a can of baked beans and, being superstitious herself, urged me to stay until daylight arrived.
I ignored the old woman's advice and set off home, making it a couple of blocks before a pair of dodgy-looking drunk guys called out "Oi, egg!" from across the street. Could these have been the same fiends from the spacies parlour or, perhaps more probable, another sinister materialisation of this cursed city?
Whoever they were, they exchanged my can of baked beans for a fat lip.
For the past decade, I've managed to dodge Tauranga but now, being a new Tauranga resident, I'm struggling to see what I've been so afraid of all these years.
My first impression is that the city is vibrant, its beaches are beautiful, its people are friendly and so far no one's called me an egg.
Have I spoken too soon? I'll tell you next week.
Jamie Morton will be writing a weekly column during Richard Moore's absence from the paper.