All the more baffling then that I, forever utterly rational, am able to remember right back to birth.
I recall my arrival in the world as if it was yesterday, tumbling from the womb on to the delivery table, plucking my umbilical cord to a perfect middle C, thus predicating the musical career that was to come.
At this stage in life, I had but two desires, to smoke a Cuban cigar and to eat an Export Cherry.
How the nurse at Queen Mary and I argued that day!
''Do you know nothing about the harmful effects of tobacco?'' she screamed at me.
''Pshaw, uniformed shrew,'' I replied.
''Bring me your finest Cuban now, and learn!''
It was not until I was 7 years old, working in Russia, when my uncle, a worthless fellow called Platanov, a bear of a man, sold me my first Cuban cigar, black market and probably counterfeit.
And yes, the cigar was harmful.
But surprisingly only last week did I finally taste an Export Cherry.
I was idling in Diesoline when a young neighbour, let's call her Vanya, one of three sisters, glowing from university scholarship exam successes, two, Logan Park again astoundingly successful, 17, came over to my table keen to tell me of her summer in a Central Otago cherry orchard.
I was very quick to inquire of the renowned Export Cherry, which can sell for two dollars apiece in Taiwan, a breed of cherry so magnificent and exclusive that nobody I knew in this country had ever tasted one.
''They are divine,'' she said.
''And what's more, I've an offer for you - I can let you have four!''
I fell to the ground weeping. Who would have thought that in the dimming twilight of my life I would receive such a gift!
She talked to me of the Export Cherry and the check of the cherry's qualities on the sorting table, the required perfection of the skin - no marks, bruises or bird pecks - and the importance of the stem to be intact, keeping bacteria and the tiniest of insects from entering the inner sanctum of the cherry.
And the required size and weight balance.
An Export Cherry was the perfection of a fine marriage proposal, and its sorter was a wedding celebration of a tiger's eyes and a brain surgeon's hands.
I almost expired from excitement for the rest of the day.
Would she arrive that evening with four Export Cherries as promised?
Or was I in fact fast asleep and dreaming, a sadly common occurrence in the middle of the day, usually in a fat armchair, for those in the dimming twilight of their lives.
But shortly after 9, just when I was sharpening my garden fork, as only an irrational demon would when confronted by thwart, she arrived.
With four Export Cherries.
I surveyed them.
I walked around them, clockwise and anti-clockwise, I opened the plastic bag and checked the adherence of the stems and the glistening surfaces of the dark blood-red quartet.
It seemed crass to actually eat one of them, let alone all four, but it was important that while my taste buds are still functioning at least moderately, that I experience the wonder of this massively overpriced and almost unobtainable New Zealand delicacy.
The texture came before the taste.
As the teeth moved towards the stone - proof that there is a God comes in the very existence of the stone, an impediment to 30 of these things being eaten in one medically dangerous gulp, the stone handbrake inside every cherry ensuring slow and careful digestion and therefore saving millions of lives - there was no soft, no slush, the texture was as tight as a you-know-what.
It was like biting into one of the region's finest apricots.
And the taste?
There are no words for the taste, so I will give none.
Suffice to say the quintessential New Zealander, fleeing the country like a wild-eyed seagull, a tragedian in spite of himself, is not seeking better job opportunities, he just wants to eat an Export Cherry.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
