Desperately Seeking Y

Desperately Seeking The Show

2005-12-10T00:41:00.000-08:00

This story needed to be told, and I thought since it was a re-opening, I’d put the IPOD on and pick out a song title – and luckily, Girls Alouds “The Show” came on – so, here’s a story about The Show, bless…a good old Show, Aussie style…

Desperately Seeking The Show

Australian communities are founded on many things – disrespect of tall poppies, a basic suspicion of minority groups, a love of the local football team, and of course, the local show. The local show has caused more relationships to come to an end in the 15-18 year old age group than anything else in the world. Basically, the local show will feature farm animals, displays, games, a crappy ride that in probably being “tested” as we speak (by giving free trial turns to primary Catholic school children), and most of all, miles and miles of showbags. It’s around the showbag tent you see them, crying girls discussing their break up because their boyfriend had turned up with a sour look on his face and they had a fight and my god he said he loved me that bastard and so on. Those girls will later in life block your path to the toilet in nightclubs, crying in a similar way.

It’s a well known fact that most Australian children will instinctively flock to the local show, regardless of quality, but only up until a certain point in their life. It’s like one of the last bastions of cynicism that you have to face as a child – it’s just after you lose faith in Santa Claus – and you know you’ve hit adulthood, or at least adolescence, when the thought of wandering past grazing cows and sheep, or a clown trying to whip up interest in a badly held together balloon animal suddenly loses it’s appeal. Worse than that, is the first day you look out the window, hoping the black clouds will turn into rain so you don’t have to leave the house and traipse around the show trying to make the best of it. I still remember the exact day I had my first pangs of show loathing.

Around the time I was 14, there was a local old school Victorian show on that we had made plans to go to as a group, seemingly from January to November. It was mostly Megs Bs idea, one she sold with a great deal of enthusiasm. When I woke up on the day though, I was so flat, I could barely get out of bed. I checked out of my bedroom window to see what the weather was doing – bright, perfect sunshine when I was hoping for bucketing rain. It gnawed at me to find anything, ANYTHING, to get out of going, and I really had no idea where the feeling had come from. All that morning, I checked the TV schedule endlessly, hoping that I could find something I could legitimately claim I wanted to watch instead of going out and looking at the cattle, but alas, there was nothing – just Sevens Sizzling Summer of Golf. All day. And seemingly, not just on Channel Seven but on all the channels at once. I couldn’t even find a reason to sit in and play the Sega Mega Drive. My Mum was particularly keen for me to get out of the house in that perculiar Mum way. I really didn’t understand why Mums were always so keen to get their kids out of the house, since most of the time I would aimlessly wander around shopping malls or waste money on cassingles. Once, I walked to the next suburb and ended up sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant talking AFL to a migrant waiter for five hours, and Mum didn’t even miss me. It surely didn’t take that long to make beads did it Demi?

Claire had a faraway look in her eye for most of the car journey we made to the show in Megs Bs Mums yellow Banana box cramped Nissan. When Megs Bs Mum made a comment about her own driving ability, Claire stared out the window and muttered something about the G force rattling her fillings. It was her only comment of the entire journey. She fiddled in an edgy fashion with the car door lock. To be honest, our friendship had been stretched since she had come back anyway, since she still had her head in swinging Kilwinning. As for me, one of my quirks is that I hate riding in the back of cars, so tightly strapped in to the yellow Nissan, my arms pinned to my sides by an ancient rope seatbelt, I tried not to panic. I tried to focus on the radio but it was too soft for me to hear, and Claire was off in la la land. I tried to talk to Megs B, but she was too busy talking herself up to her Mum, and waving to boys out of the window. I was freaking out, silently, gritting my teeth and sweating, reciting Girlfriend lyrics in my head until I was eventually freed. Although I was only in the car for about 9 minutes, already the day seemed about 9 years long.

I remember what happened next really clearly. When I got out of the car, I ran, pretty oblivious to any other cars in the car park, just about getting myself clipped by a passing Van. I know it seemed ridiculous to be so panicked by a simple car ride that didn’t take that long, but I really remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I ran all the way to the entrance of the show, sat down with my back to the chain fence, and an Irish dancer in a pink skirt asked me if I was OK. I barely nodded in her direction, as I sucked in deep, pained breaths. Meanwhile, Claire and Megs B strolled up, oblivious, barely talking to each other, barely noticing me, as all of sudden, it started to rain, a big drop of rain falling right on my head and trickling down my eye. Claire tipped her Joe Bloggs hat, shook her head, and offered me a Push Pop. Naturally, I declined, but I was glad for the support. Megs B had already seen a boy she liked, paid her dollar, and was off on the chase, round the back of the shooting gallery.

By the time I’d got inside the gate, the rain was spitting furiously down on my face, making my sloppily applied make up run down my jumper. We walked slowly for about ten minutes until we found Megs B again. I was trying to make the best of it, and was chomping on an undercooked battered sav, when Megs B spied the helium balloon tent, next to a parade of donkeys or some fat girls who had made jewellery or something. She eagerly grabbed a helium balloon and held it up for everyone to see.

“Helium balloons,” she declared, “are fucking hilarious!”. To prove it she sucked on one, drawing deeply on it, until her voice was suitably helium affected. “See, I told you!” she squeaked, in a helium affected voice, and lauging in a helium affected voice. I had to admit, it was pretty funny, but I was splashing in a puddle of water, and shivering from the cold, and I was trying not to make eye contact with one of the fat girls, and so my laugh was tepid. Claire meanwhile, simply shook her head, wet blonde hair flaying in all directions.

“Not hilarious,” said Claire, hands on hips, eyeing off some cheap jam.

“Why did you two fucking come!” said Megs B, angrily, in a helium affected voice, her swear word in particular making her sound like Donald Duck. Claire simply shrugged, and stared again into the middle distance, as if transfixed by some distant stall of showbags. I wiped the rain from my eyes and tried to draw on all my experience as a bridge between the social classes, smiled weakly, and shrugged just as apologetically as Claire.

“We wanted to come because you did!” I said, throwing my battered sav into a muddy puddle until it made a loud splosh. “You sounded so enthusiastic!”

“I did!” said Megs B, scratching her head. “Yeah I did, because you always love going to shows! I thought I was being enthusiastic for you!”

We looked at each other, cold, miles from home, stuck in a muddy field surrounded by crap jewellery, uncooked food, meandering Irish dancers, rides that promised thrills and spills but delivered only mild whiplash, and fat blokes in AC/DC T-shirts growing out their mullets pushing past us, dropping chips on the ground. We looked at each other, like two survivors of some ghastly accident, and as Megs B looked across the field, towards where Mike Whitney was signing autographs, the look of horror on her face grew and grew, until it looked like she couldn’t go on.

At which point Claire, holding a pot of home made jam, came back, calmly re-adjusted her hat, and still staring right through us, brushed her chin against her expensive top, and said in a cold, clipped voice “Shows are fucked” before wandering off idly into the distance. We followed, trudging into the car park to sit and wait for Mrs Megs B to come back and rescue us some two hours later.

I’ve thought about this particular day a lot – it’s hard to know what I think of it, because at the time, I really thought everything was changing in my life. I thought I’d need new friends, and new interests. I really thought that as we sat silently in the car on the way home, that I’d barely see these people ever again. To be honest, nothing has ever felt more like a clear example of growing up in my life – even more than marriage and childbirth in many strange ways.

Of course, I look across the room now, at them playing Monopoly, and Claire still has that expression on her face – one of disdain that she finds herself doing something so trivial – and Megs B has the same expression on her face – one that suggests life is best lived stoically, without whinging, and everyone should just get on with it. I know that’s just how they are. I didn’t have anything to worry about – we stayed friends, we’re still kinda the same, and we’re pretty sure that we won’t grow up, not fully, for the rest of our lives.

Or maybe it was just we all realised, as a group, shows are fucked.

Alyson (who actually still loves shows)

Desperately Seeking Speed Dating (with a Jam Motif)

2005-06-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

Ages and ages ago, on the Life Itself Board, the lovely Mr Bestworst wanted me to write about, ahem, "speed dating with a jam motif" - righto, let's see what we got...

Desperately Seeking Speed Dating (with a Jam Motif)

As I detailed before, I’m not the world’s best dater. I’ve only once got on the right side of the great “benny/sultry” divide, and that resulted in marriage and children, so I guess I only needed to get it right once. My first kiss (by kiss, I mean pash of course, not catch and kiss) was when I was 14, with a boy called Cameron, who was a sensational committed kisser. Like most Australians, this happened when I was on a fort in the middle of a park, and the mood was ruined by a 7 year old on a pink bike who said “ooooh, lovers” in that classic kid way. Still fair play to Cameron who kept going through the potential embarrassment and kissed with great authority right until the end.

Feeling quite womanly after being pashed (even though Cameron and I were never truly meant to be together, as I liked Girlfriend and he liked Nirvana) I felt the need to try and set my other friends up with boyfriends. This was my gift back to the community that I was part of, and I got quite scientific about it. This was, keep in mind ,1992, long before anyone had coined the phrase “speed dating”, that most difficult of social situations where you get 15 minutes with each person in the room before someone blows a whistle and you move on. My friend Jacx went to a speed dating evening once and the person she liked the best was the one she had the best argument with. I offered her five dollars for each time she could get the conversation onto aardvarks, and she pocketed a good thirty bucks. However, I digress.

I’ve said before I had a clearly defined role at my school, to be a bridge between the social classes, and it was in that role that I noticed that Katrina, the girl that sat behind me, a definite A class girl who hung around at the bitchy table, had the hots for cute but dumb social grade C boy Benjamin, who liked throwing Push Pops at kids, and who had interesting theories on the influence of interstate teams in the Australian Rules Football league. It was clear to me that they were meant to be together, and could possibly, one day, if things went well, pash on the top of the fort in the same way that Cameron and I did. Luckily, I had the perfect solution, the fortune telling game.

In Grade 8, nothing swept through our school like the fortune telling game. Not even the brief 80s Adidas tracksuit revival caught on like the fortune telling game. It involved 6 categories, including 6 people you knew (3 good, 3 bad) and numbers. Through a secret code (that I won’t divulge here) an item in each category was crossed off until, say, one person was left on your “boys” list and that was who you would marry, the numbers column was how many kids you would have etc. It got to the point you couldn’t move for hearing someone yelling “I’m not marrying HIM!” as if your fate was set in stone. I can’t remember who was the first person to engage us with this game, but they should have patented it, as 5 or 6 people began to claim it as their invention. I did realise that the more we played this game, the more likely it was we could find an easy way to ensure that Katrina and Benjamin could be together, without either of them losing their social standings.

“Benjamin did that game today,” I said one day in Science, quite idly.

“Really?” said Katrina, fiddling idly with a bunsen burner.

“Yeah, he’s going to marry YOU apparently,” I said, fixing a pair of Biggles-esque safety goggles to my head.

She smiled, then nearly set herself on fire leaning to close to the bunsen burner. I took the opportunity to sidle up to Benjamin, who in my mind had a pencil up his nose, but that was probably Mark Leaman, our school benny.

“Katrina did that test you know,” I said, for the boys called it “the test” and the girls called it “the game”, as we began to grow apart, and our differences became more pronounced.

“Sweet” he said. “Who’d she marry?”

“You!” I said, poking him in the chest.

I walked back to Katrina, and nodded. I paused crucially, and then kept the repartee going.

“Benjamin got Nirvana as his favourite band” I said, squeezing an eye dropper full of some green thing into a vat of blue things (science was not my thing).

“NO WAY” she said, betraying her A grade status with a flash of over excitement.

As you can imagine, and I won’t keep going, I did this for the best part of an hour, until both parties were convinced that they were soulmates and would live forever. It was speed dating with someone in the middle, with lies and spin and a little bit of ego stroking in between. I don’t know why I was so worried, but I really felt it my duty to set these two up. And I had things going totally my way, until the very last minute of Science class, when Amber Bennett stuck her big mitts into the situation.

“I hear you like BEN” said Amber, rolling her eyes.

“What would you know idiot? I hear there’s a chocolate frog in the bin for you to eat” I said (the full story of Amber Bennett’s social decline should really be told one day).

“BEN likes JAM SANDWICHES and he eats them like a pig!” I rolled my eyes in horror, for I had forgotten all about his poor personal eating habits, not just with Jam sandwiches, but milkshakes, pies and chips. Jam sandwiches were the worst though, as he’d wolf them down hungrily, and have big sticky jam marks all over his face, sometimes for the whole day. There was no way, NO way, an A grade super bitch was going to go out with someone with those eating habits. I sighed, and went back to mixing my toxins, when Katrina put her hands on her hips and looked Amber right in the eye.

“I LIKE JAM SANDWICHES” she said, fiercely. “It said so on THE GAME!”

I made a little “shoo” motion with my fingers in the direction of Amber, and she toddled off crestfallen. I smiled my happiest smile, and sure enough, within an hour, the school had a new super couple, brought together by the surreal combination of jam sandwiches, an imported game, my supreme and speedy matchmaking skills, and mutual “cor, I wouldn’t mind snogging that” flying out of whack hormones. It was a combination that no one, certainly not Amber Bennett, could stop. It had taken on a life of it’s own, and it was a rolling boulder no one could get out of the way of. It was, quite simply, meant to be.

Of course, 1 year later, Katrina got pregnant to Ben, but that, as they say in the classics, was not something I was claiming credit for. I’m all about the innocent…

Desperately Seeking Hats

2005-06-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

My lovely online friend Edward O mentioned a long time ago he wanted a story on hats. Well, better late than never says I. So here it is, as a thankyou for all the lovely free songs!

Desperately Seeking Hats

My friend Tina T is something of a hat guru, having appeared in the opening credits of her finest TV role modelling a hat with a Co-star, but hats never really played a big part in my life, beanies yes, leading to an amusing Natalie Imbruglia anecdote, but I just don’t look good in a hat. It’s a bad thing for someone so in the sun as me, but I just really hate them. I got off lightly compared to my cousin Travis, who had thick horn rimmed glasses, and as such was nicknamed “Jonathan King” in less difficult times for the one time pop svengali, but it has left a scar on him so deep he can never truly wear a baseball cap.

My surfing teacher was an old hippy called Joe, who used to sit me down and spin me the most outrageous tales of how he had taught Dennis Hopper how to surf off the breaks in Malibu, but Dennis and he fell out one day over the best flavoured milk in the land. He was clearly lying, you could tell, by the fact that he clearly was making details up as he went. That was fine though, because as he got to the climax of the story, he would start jumping up and down from one foot to the other, and snarl and start doing voices, and it was very funny. Then, we’d sit and learn a little bit more about surfing, and he was proud of my progress, informing my mother about every detail, while she chewed idly on an Eskimo Pie and shivered in the cold before we all packed into the Torana for the drive home.

Surfing is a big part of my life, and my Mum was keen to fund my progress through the learning progress, but she would do so sometimes by buying the most ridiculous surf knock offs known to mankind from the local op shop. An op shop, for those who don’t know, is one of those second hand stores people go into from time to time to buy humorous items for retro nights, and it’s full of junk. My Mum, again with her hippy ethics, used to go in and buy me horrendous things like lime wetsuits, or big board shorts once worn by Big Bertha of Ballarat, that were 13 sizes too big. I would thank her for her trouble, then fold them into the back of the drawer, until she had a clean out, and gave them to my cousin James, for whom the cycle would start again. Once, she bought me a black tracksuit with a green stripe that joined up from top to pants. Suffice to say it was very neatly folded away.

One day, I was mulling over the two star review the new Collette album had received, when my Mum came bounding in from the op shop. She was chewing idly, and threw her bag on the couch. I looked up casually in time to see my beloved Mother sitting in a top hat, a black top hat with orange trim, and a big pink ribbon tied around it. It didn’t go well with her late 80s sparkly top and spangle pants, but she was smiling so serenely, I figured she perhaps didn’t realise she had it on. She picked up a copy of the Woman’s Weekly, and flicked through it, while I sat transfixed.

“Y, can you get your dear old Mum a Tim Tam?” she said, pondering the latest Charles and Di story. I thought I might have been hallucinating, through eating too much Milo out of a tin. She had a lovely turn of phrase my Mum, often saying “why keep a dog and bark yourself?” whenever I complained about fetching something for her. She serenely smiled as she munched thoughtfully on her chocolate biscuit treat. Joe, meanwhile, had entered the room, sat down on a beanbag, and turned on Countdown revolution, barely glancing in my mother’s direction. I began to ponder my options, switching between wondering why my Mother had decided to embrace the world of top hat magic, and my ongoing concern at anti Collette sentiment. In the end, I had to, as they would say, “go there”.

“Where’s the rabbit hiding?” I said, in my best stroppy voice.

“What rabbit?” said my Mum, taking a giant bite and devouring the Tim Tam in one.

“The rabbit inside your TOP HAT!” I said, tilting my head to the side and pouting.

“Top hat? I’m not wearing a top hat dear,” said Mum, throwing her magazine down and looking at me strangely. “Are you sure you are feeling OK Y?”

“Joe, what’s going on?” I said, for if someone could set my mother straight, it would be salt of the earth, honest as the day is long Joe.

“She’s not wearing a top hat” he said, transfixed as he flipped over to Home and Away, to see what Bobby was up to.

I got up, lifted the top hat from my Mums head, and held it in front of her.

“THIS TOP HAT!” I said, moving it back and forth in front of her eyeline.

“You’ve lost me, have you got a fever?” said my Mum, idly. “Maybe we shouldn’t go surf…hey, Frank, you bastard!” said Joe, suddenly going through his angry gears.

I put the top hat on my head and then took it off. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!” I screamed, with as much self-righteousness as I could muster. “It’s like when your cousin turned off the imaginary TV Y, there’s nothing there, don’t get so stroppy!” said Mum. And she smiled her best sweet motherly smile of pity, before suddenly cracking up laughing.

“Ha…got you worried!” she said. Joe turned around smiling, and then he too went into hysterics. “Made you think your old Mum had gone mad didn’t we?” he said, and there they were, frozen together in time, sharing an old persons sense of humour that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand. I stood, shaking my head, and then I realised that there was no way out. They were milking a moment for all it was worth, something really awful, a terrible, unfunny joke to be honest, but something they had worked on together, and something about the hope in their eyes, it really got to me. I couldn’t bring myself to strop off, berate them for their stupidity. I copped it on the chin.

“Yeah,” I said, mustering a weak fake laugh, “alright, you got me” I said, rolling my eyes in a “what am I like” kind of fashion, before sitting down and going back to my magazine.

Sometimes, it’s OK to give people their moment. For the next few years, my Mother would regale people at Christmas parties with her hilarious joke, and they would smile and laugh, or they would roll their eyes and shake their head, but it was worth the suffering and the mild mockery, because it’s OK to be the butt of a joke sometimes, no matter who awful it is, if it’s done without malice or cruelty. My Mum was and is incapable of either, and I love her, for all her stupid jokes and dumb ideas. It made her happy, and everyone is entitled to feel happy sometimes, especially if you let them think they are hilarious.

I still hate hats though. And always will. This is for you Travis.

Alyson

Desperately Seeking Lies

2005-05-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Lovely young Michael at this place wanted a story about Lies. I thought about it, and I suck at lying, but hey, something came to mind that I hadn't really thought about before...

Desperately Seeking Lies

Even though we'd all return the proverbial fifty dollars in the wallet, my friends and I at different levels of honesty when it comes to whether we'd tell little white lies. Jacx, my punk friend, and Tina T, my actress friend, would both find a way to soothe and cajole a situation and coat it in sugar if a harsh truth needed to be told. Me, I'm somewhere in between, where I won't blatanly lie, but I'm not adverse to the odd white lie if I think someones feelings need to be spared. Claire meanwhile is likely to be quite brutal with the truth, but is capable of little white lying to her nearest and dearest. Megs B, bless her, is totally incapable of anything but plain, brutal truth. Long before Dr Phil, she was telling it like it is, and I wouldn't have her any other way.

My cousin Lorinda briefly came to our school, when I was in Grade 10 and she was in Grade 11. Lorinda was a born extrovert, who didn't really like people that much, except for a couple of theatrical types. Even as the school bridge between the social groups, there was not much I could do to help Lorinda settle in, and she was gone within four months to become a pilot in the Air Force anyway, but I was confronted by her on a daily basis, usually to ask why I liked so and so, and so and so was a dickhead, and this person should be beaten. Oddly for my family, who I generally love, Lorinda and I have never really gotten on, ever since an incident with Barbie cards. I was so excited to discover that there were Barbie Cards for the collecting, that I raced around to Lorinda's house, only to find out that she about a billion of them, and was really smug about it. Lorinda became especially well known in our school after she hit a pole on her way to school, when she got the accelerator and the brake mixed up. Even so, after that she settled down, and stopped annoying me for a while. Life had returned to normal, until Easter time reared its ugly head.

Being a Catholic school usually meant that at some point, you had to step up to the plate, believer or not, and do something religious. Me, well, in Grade 3 I was Mary in a rendition of the Christmas story for an old folks home, and in Grade 7, I was palm holder number 3 as someone playing Jesus rode through the school on a bike dressed up like a donkey. I used both of these facts to get me out of any religious plays or re-creations after Grade 7, but Lorinda wasn't so lucky. In the same way that I was cheap manual labour once they learned I could paint, so Lorinda found herself in the thick of the action once they found out she was an award winning Rock Eistedffod (more on that later) winner. Sensing acting gold, and the chance to be pretty right on, the bods at Richmond Primary School decided Lorinda was perfectly suited to play the role of...Jesus. "Jesus? He was a bloke wasn't he! With a beard!" I said, when we met up for Cream Eggs that night. "It's interpretative", she said, as if that explained the great historical inaccuracy that was being perpitrated on us. And that was all that was said on the matter, until the big day finally arrived, and we settled in our grey, bolted down cloth chairs in the assembly hall, to watch the Easter story, as an interpretative dance number.

Needless to say, it was awful. Lorinda chose to portray Jesus not as a strong, noble man betrayed, but rather, as a slightly confused idiot boy, much the same way she had portrayed the little chicken hawk in the Grade 5 production of Foghorn Leghorn. Topping this off, Jesus was not only attacked by Romans, but smoke, lights, and a score that sounded like Phillip Glass had been asked to remix the Teen Queens. Judging from this, the Easter story wasn't so much the defining moment of Christianity, but a really bad night out at a crappy disco. I was sure at one point, Lorinda fell on her arse as well. The Romans did have togas on, but also very visible tracky daks, and the point about the devil was lost because the boy who was playing him did have a red top on, but it was a soccer top he had on back to front, so the devil had SHARP apparently on his back. Satire? You make the call. I could tell the more right on teachers were loving it, but the old school nuns, who probably wanted someone to die in order to prove an old school point, were pretty upset. The girls behind me were laughing really hard, and I was trying in my mind to think of something positive to say about it for later. For now though, I was slumped in my seat, not even able to focus on "Priest Bingo", to the point that there was a dispute over whether the priest said "lepers" or "leopards" (trust me, this was important).

We got out of the assembly hall like survivors of some horrible disaster, and huddled in the school playground, unable to speak or move. We had sat through some really bad school plays before, like the Grade 6 take on "drugs in clubs", but this was an all time low. After about an hour of just total silence, Claire nudged me in the ribs and said "Your cousins here". I stood up to see Lorinda, and looked her in the eye. Even though we were not close, she was family, and as such, I had to think of some little white lie, some way of ensuring that Lorinda would pursue her love of acting, when she was really hopeless at it. So, I out and out lied.

"That was really good!" I said, in my best benny cheerful voice. Claire, bless her, held herself back from saying anything, and the other people around me knew what I was doing, and nodded in unison. It seemed as though we had come through a crisis, when a little voice decided to disagree. Megs B sat her Big M down on the table, looked Lorinda in the eye, and said "mate, please, don't ever make me sit through a pile of shit again OK? Fuck me, it was awful."

Megs B took back her Big M, oblivious to everything else. Lorinda eyed her evenly, then broke into the biggest grin I'd ever seen.

"I like you!" she said, extending her hand to Megs B. Megs B shook it, nodded, and went back to her Big M, while all around her sat transfixed.

The thing is, some people can lie. Some people can't. Both of us, in our own way, did the right thing. We were both being ourselves. Lies can get us through the day, they can help us survive, but if we can't lie, we probably shouldn't. As long as we find it in ourselves to be comfortable with who we are, then how we choose to conduct ourselves will become second nature.

I wrote that paragraph for Megs B, just so that she reads it, taps me on the shoulder, and says "enough of the Jerry Springer bullshit Y, just wrap it up" - which she no doubt will very, very soon.

Desperately Seeking Hillbillies

2005-05-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

I told you I was taking requests again, although this one was kinda hard - but still, our number one commenter wanted it, so here it is

Desperately Seeking Hillbillies

Back when I was little, and not quite as refined as I am now, I was often a handful for my parents. Not for any particular reason, I just had a lot of excess energy that could only be burned off by a lot of running around in circles or a lot of bouncing on a trampoline. My dad was always incredibly supportive of me though, and whatever activity I wanted to do, he was the one who found the time to take me and nurture my interest. My mum was the one who prepared my by buying the right equipment and so on, but it was Dad who took me to wherever I needed to go in Choco, our brown bomb Torana with the broken lock and two radio stations, both amazingly enough with football talk on them.

So when I decided that the time was right in my development to take up ice skating, Christmas time saw my Mum produce a pair of pristine ice skates, as endorsed by the Canadian National Hockey team. It was more than I truly deserved to be honest, and I was incredibly touched that my Mum saw fit to do such a thing. My ice skating career was not a promising one, even though I was able, if I chose to, laud it over all the kids at the Richmond Ice Rink (where Indecent Obsession once performed don't you know!) in hired blue skates. I was pretty awful at first, marching in step over the ice while cooler kids, albeit with less cool skates, glided past holding hands and doing triple lutz's. It was a lonely, cold road, and one that lead to tempers fraying, not unreasonably, with my Dad, who was giving up World Of Sport on a Sunday morning to watch his pride and joy skate laboriously around the ice for an hour. It might have been more entertaining for him had I occasionally fallen over, but I wasn't ineptly compellingly bad, nor brilliantly good, I just...marched...poor guy, the skating teachers weren't even cute enough for him to flirt with.

We reached an impasse one Sunday morning, when I was finally getting into my skating stride. It was raining, and Dad clearly didn't want to take me, but bless his heart, he did, he got out of that leather vinyl chair and drove me to the skating rink. It wasn't quite an officially religious miracle, but it was definitely close to one. My Dad didn't even adopt any kind of martyr attitude about having to do it, and I rewarded him with a fantastic display of actual proper skating. Yes, for the first time, I cast aside my normal skates of concrete, and I ice danced, I spun, I weaved, I bobbed and I zagged, and my Dad, he smiled delightedly through it all, clapping at all the right moments. It had truly been worth all the labour pains - his daughter could skate, and I was sure he was on the side of the rink, planning my glorious ascent into Winter Olympics glory.

I was absolutely buzzing with excitement as I clutched an Elle McPherson signature can of coke in my hand on the way home. My Dad and I were bonded, finally rewarded for all our respective efforts. We walked proudly from the ice rink, and were about to get into the car when I suddenly and quite proudly took the empty Elle McPherson signature can of coke, threw it high in the air, and booted it as hard as my little legs would allow. It sailed on an exceptionally graceful arc, and landed with a thud in a patch of grass, next to a bottle of ginger beer, that hopefully contained only ginger beer, and not some other fizzy liquid.

My Dad looked at me bewildered, as if a ghost had descended. He stood in total shock.

"What was THAT!?" he said, his eyes widening.

"What was what," I said, putting my skates in the back of our car.

"You bloody hillbilly! You litterbug! Gonna go and live in hillbilly country, you hick!" he said, pointing to the can. "I get up every day to do the best for you, I give up my Sundays to watch you march around the ice, and still, you are a hillbilly! You have no class! No class at all! Just throwing away your can when there's a perfectly good bin nearby!"

"I don't march around the ice! Did you not see me! I was a skating star! WERE YOU NOT EVEN WATCHING!" I said, pointing at...something...maybe the can, maybe the ground, but something, and whatever I was pointing at, it was done with anger you know.

We had clearly reached an impasse of monumental proportions, my Dad, bristling in this local football jumper, tired of this continuing Sunday debacle. Me, now satisfied I could skate, having my moment of ice magic ruined by the idle throwing away of a coke can, albeit a good and potentially collectable one, and by my Dad adopting a martyr position. We took deep, angry breaths in the cold Sunday Morning air. As we did so, a 1975 Datsun pulled into the carpark, screeching to a halt five feet from the kerb where we stood. The driver was a giant woman, the kind I'd never seen before, in massive overstretched pink leggings, and she unfurled herself from being desperately stuck in the car. She hitched up her leggings, pulled her hair from a bun, and gasped on a packet of Winfield blues she pulled from her seat. Remembering herself, she undid the back door, to let a clearly mardy little brat out of the car, in a Collingwood beanie and faded acid wash denims. He threw his skates on the ground, to the mothers obvious dis-interest.

"Don't wanna fuckin skate" said the kid, pursing his white lips in anger. Amazingly, the kid was going ice skating, but had sun block on.

"You know you need to spend time with your fucking Dad" said the mum, on her second cigarette.

"Fuck Dad!" said the kid. "Just...fucking stop whinging!" said the Mum. It was then I noticed she had roughly seven teeth, and was resting the cigarette between the gap between two of them. And before I had the chance to work out the health risks of this, she gripped the kid by the arm, bent over in her leggings, giving the world a wonderful sight to behold, and spat the cigarette on the ground, with some chewing gum coming out at the same time. My Dad was about to point out they had left the skates behind, but thought better of it. We glanced at the door to see Dad, in an AC/DC T-shirt, a giant handlebar moustache, and tied on neckerchief, begin a rant about certain ethnic minorities.

Dad I stood for a moment, transfixed, until Dad eventually said something that has resonated with me all my life.

"Y" he said, sounding like Yoda. "Y, they got like that because firstly no one told them to put their rubbish in the bin".

I ran over, I put the coke can in the bin, and we never ever spoke about ice skating again. Closure, as they say in the classics, was reached on all sides.

Desperately Seeking Connect 4

2005-05-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Short and sweet, and all about board games...good times!

Desperately Seeeking Connect 4

Desperately Seeking Connect 4

The last day of school is an important day in Australian school history. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in Australia, everyone gets to wear casual clothes, bring in board games, and then you put your desk up on top of another desk with your chair on top, and then run outside to enjoy summer freedom. It was a pretty magical event that never got old, in fact, oddly enough, even as late as the last day of Grade 10, we still observed a pretty similar ritual, even with exam pressure (pressure I never had, I had my art scholarship by then, and so didn't need to do anything except drink Fruitopia and listen to Melissa CDs). Fruitopia, there's something I need to talk about one day - iced tea with fruit flavouring and hippy messages on the bottle. But, I digress. Back in Grade 3, all we had was Coke and Big Ms, and on the last day of school, all Big Ms were free, given out by the lovely folks at the canteen. All, as they say, was well.

The move from Grade 3 to Grade 4 was a big one, not least because it meant that we finally got to play Grade 4 netball. For reasons I'm not quite sure about, this always meant players from the Richmond football club (anyone who knows AFL football would know that Richmond are almost always crap, so this wasn't the treat it was meant to be) would be at your training sessions, passing on tips. Yes, it is bewildering as to why. However, that was far from the best part, Grade 4 netball meant that you actually got to play other teams from outside the Richmond region, in a proper competition. This was incredibly exciting, since Grade 3 Netball tended to just involve playing your mates. We were assured that one particular trip involved a bonfire with boys from the local soccer club, and that it was, quote, "pash central". Given the girls at their netball team were equally loose with the lips, it was no surprise that our boys were equally excited to go on the same trip for football or soccer at a later date, and we chatted about our happy dreams for the coming year.

Except for one particular kid in our class, Richard Bastick. It had been a tough year for Richard Bastick, not least being labelled "Bastick the Spastick" before he even had a chance to get a "Hi" out. Yes, we were incredibly witty in Grade 3. I really liked him though, not least for his dogged determination every time he played Connect 4. No one could stretch out a game like Richard Bastick, as he pondered things from every single angle and mathematical point of view. Then, for reasons I'm not sure about, he wasn't in our class anymore, and it was then I first heard the phrase "home school". I didn't know why anyone (and to be fair, I still don't, but don't write in) would miss out on something as ace and fun as school just to sit at home all day (not a view all my contemporaries shared mind, especially my friend Kim, who was the first person I knew to wag). Apparently the teachers and his mum had a massive argument over this, and eventually, this being 1987, the teachers won, and back came Bastick the Spastick. Fate was not finished with him however, as his lack of social skills (and not, as Claire claimed, that he killed a cat and was going to jail) meant that he had to stay back a year and repeat Grade 3. There was part of me that was quite sad I couldn't do the same, since Grade 3 was all kinds of fun, and very low pressure. However, as I saw him sitting on the floor forlornly watching us as we had a talk to our new teacher about our new year, I knew that Bastick the Spastick was going through a pretty tough time.

It got worse though: between the Grade 3 and Grade 4 class room with a giant sliding door, like a curtain you couldn't see through. It was decided that we would begin the process of moving into our newest classroom a little early, and so we took our textas and our bags into the new class room to get a feel of what a slightly different classroom with big wooden desks felt like, as opposed to a classroom with...well, big wooden tables you sat around in a group. The difference was just massive, well, it wasn't, but it did feel like a seismic shift into adulthood. And when we looked across into our old classroom, all we could see in the middle of an empty room was Richard Bastick, cross legged on the floor, playing Connect 4 by himself, and rubbing the pieces together, maybe to start a fire. It was a forlorn and pretty sad sight. Even some of our nastier, crueller kids, were left genuinely sad that poor Richard was by himself, trying to work out a winning combination of red and yellow chips on his own.

However, such sympathy didn't last long. We began having a lovely chat amongst ourselves about the excitement of the day, when suddenly, there was an insane commotion behind us. We turned around to discover that Richard had decided to start treating us to a lovely dance which involved sticking his fingers up at us. A lot. And saying "bastards". A lot. In between times, he would blow what you might call "raspberries" with his tongue, and a glint of evil lurked in his eyes. I was quite taken by this sudden display of righteous indignation that we were leaving the poor boy behind, and as he wiggled his arse in his stubby shorts, we clapped along with him. For a moment, and then, just as quickly, he was back on the floor, playing Connect 4, and talking to the chips. And just as quickly, we ignored him again, going back to talking about Netball and heading up to the country.

I've thought about that day a lot. It was so surreal, such a blinding flash of magic, that I'm not sure if it truly happened. It's occurred to me writing this, you can keep a boy back from school, you can call him a stupid nickname, you can keep him back a grade, and you can leave him alone to play Connect 4 all by himself, but you can never, ever, deny a boy the right to get even with everyone by wiggling his arse and singing a song of joy about how everyone is a "bastard".

I like to think there's something inspirational about that, deep down. Well, at least he didn't choke on a Connect 4 chip, that was something too.

Desperately Seeking Success

2005-05-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I plan a bit of a story telling blitz in the next few days, so if you are still reading, suggest away! Please! Here's one based on the fact that we're currently enjoying Dannii Minogue Success Month!

Desperately Seeking Success

One of the great things about being a benny is the fact that you don't really have to achieve much. The highfliers at our school, particularly Science bound Fiona, were always greatly constrained by expectations, and had to sit up until 3am just to be that much better than everyone else. For people like me, any actual effort was greatly appreciated. My one gift was in bridging the social classes though, and that was where expectation grew, and I felt genuine pressure to make sure that the day to day running of out school was smooth. So it was that I came to the Grade 9 fete, and what you might call my finest hour.

Science bound Fiona was so labelled because of her obsession with getting into NASA. It was good, Megs B noted, to have goals, but not at the expense of everything else. When I think of science bound Fiona, I always think that somehow she missed out on a lot of wonderful activities that the group participated on, so that she could read books in the library at lunch time. When Amber Bennett and Jane Almond had their famous "scrag fight" over Damian Murray in Grade 10, science bound Fiona was the only person that we didn't see watching, because there was a Behind the News special on the ABC at lunch time. Interestingly, science bound Fiona would later sleep with Damian Murray on a hay bale at the Grade 12 farewell bonfire night, but that, as they say, is another story, and we presume that this one night of noisy passion didn't ultimately distract her from her dreams.

The Grade 9 fete was most notable for the amount of sulking that went on, especially from Claire, Amber Bennett, and the boy who was normally my male equivalent, Darren Richardson. For some reason, the folks in charge of our school decided to hold a series of presentations, in which each of the Grade 9s would run a stall, or a small demonstration. It wasn't much to ask, until they decided that they would pair us up alphabetically, and that's when the trouble started. Megs B ended up with Amber Bennett (a disastrous pairing), Claire ended up with Dean Davidson (an even more disastrous pairing, to the point that Claire has never sworn so much in her life), I ended up with a girl I really can't remember called Jessica Garlick (this was years before a girl of the same name would appear on UK Pop Idol of course, and there is a chance, albeit a faint one, that was her - luckily, I found out in time she was pretty churchy and took offence to any puns about her surname) and worst of all, Science bound Fiona was stuck with our school benny, Mark Leaman. It was obvious what was going to happen: Science bound Fiona would spend 18 hours preparing an elaborate scientific display, and Mark Leaman would drink the chemicals and grunt when asked questions. It was not a pleasant prospect, and one that required urgent action. Especially considering that Science bound Fiona was doing so well at the time, there was a chance she would be put straight into Grade 11 from Grade 9. Someone had to do something, and since my job was to take care of these things, there was nothing else for it, but to have a quiet word with Mr Leaman.

I should differentiate here - I am a very proud benny, but there's a difference between being a cheerful, slightly silly benny with awareness, to being the kind of benny who eats silly string on a dare or breaks their arm on a waterslide because their friends told them you really didn't need a mat. So it was with some trepidation that I confronted Mark outside of Grade 9 art (more on which shortly) and gave him a playful punch on the arm. "How ya goin tiges!" I said, cheerfully. "Pretty fucked eh" he said, returning with a typical benny comeback.

One thing about Mark Leaman was that he was fascinated by Violet Crumbles. I don't think he could ever work out quite where the taste quite came from. I know this because he once did a talk about it, which I think was about the most he ever did any work for something, apart from his Grade 6 talk about thongs. So, I went for the weakness.

"Mark," I said, for that was his name, "listen, you have to a talk with Science bound Fiona, you know that don't you?"

"Fucking mole" he said, scowling, forseeing a future where he was chained to the library working hard, instead of being outside kicking a footy. He shook all over at the very thought of this week of hell.

"Well listen, you don't have to DO anything, Fiona will do all the work for you. But I need you to promise me you won't screw it up for her, I mean, don't be mixing chemicals because you think the colours go together"

"That was just that once!"

Claire was getting angsty because she had something important to tell me and I wasn't giving her my full attention, so I had to act fast. "Listen, you behave, and I'll tell you how a Violet Crumble is made!"

He looked at me with rapt awe. His little benny eyes couldn't quite process this information. He just nodded slowly, and went into art. Fiona was left totally alone to produce her inevitable masterpiece, a flowing display of chemicals and smoke and colour, and Mark kept to himself. The big day arrived, and Science bound Fiona nodded in my direction, unable to work out what I had done to smooth this meeting of minds, but comfortable that I had done something. Meanwhile, all I had to do was work out something to tell Mark, and we were all free.

It was then it happened - Science bound Fiona forgot something, maybe misjudged a mix, and instead of chemicals and smoke, there was just a fizz, and then nothing. Everyone was amazed, Science bound Fiona had screwed up. She tried really hard to fix it, but it was just a debacle. Everyone stood in awe, while Mark Leaman stood to the side, smiling his little benny smile.

I went up to him afterwards, and was about to launch into my prepared Violet Crumble story, when he adjusted his Levis and waved me away.

"You know Y, it doesn't do my rep any good working with fucking amateurs" he said, laughing, and putting himself in his favourite chair. He unwrapped a Violet Crumble, and ate it, content in his own little piece of success.

Desperately Seeking Cats

2005-05-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

Oh why not, another challenge!

Desperately Seeking Cats

When I was much younger than I am now, I had a cat called Cankles the Cat. I called him Cankles the Cat because my mum, in a bid to avoid telling me about the birds and the bees, had said once "you know, when I was giving birth to you, I really had bad cankles" and off she went, to make scones or something, leaving me in a strange state of fascination as to what cankles actually were, and I wanted our cat to have a name that wasn't Tiddles or Milo or whatever. We got Cankles the Cat from an animal shelter, because whenever we walked past him, he would let out a slightly demented purr, and he had white furr with splodgy grey spots, and was cute as a button. I hadn't quite embraced my inner benny yet, but in every way, Cankles was a benny cat. Other cats would hiss and purr and threaten Cankles, and Cankles would inevitably either trip and fall, or run headlong into a wall or trip over a sprinkler. The other cats would be so taken aback by this display of bennyness, that they would back off, and leave Cankles alone.

Cankles finest hour was probably the day of my 8th birthday party, when I got a trampoline and a monster bouncy ball. I was outside playing with the bouncy ball, and waiting for my assortment of relatives to turn up, when my Dad came barrelling out of the house with a worried look on his face.

"Nothings wrong" he said, before dashing off again. He was always running my Dad, I think that's where Megs B got it from that time. He was a typical Aussie Dad my dad, to the point where he was called Kev, he loved to put on a pair of blue stubby shorts, he always "got my nose" and he always tried to fix things with amusing consequences. Best of all, he always seemed to be able to get me an ice-cream, even when we were on a boat miles from a shop, and I always thought that to be quite magical, and not at all because he just was good at planning. Once, a jumping jack firework actually chased him into the garage on firework night. He thought it was hilarious, because he was an Aussie Dad, and Aussie dads don't normally worry. However, the fact that my Dad was worried, not only worried, but actually rushing around, made me worry because if my Aussie Dad Kev was worried, either I was getting a massive surprise, or something had gone wrong.

It transpired that since the morning, no one had seen Cankles the Cat. This was unusual for Cankles, who had his own routine that usually involved a quite public cat display of idiocy in the morning, just to announce he was awake, then it was food, stretch, demented burst of energy, sleep, another demented burst of energy, and finally, more food and sleep. The fact that no one has seen Cankles the Cat and his food was untouched was clearly going to impact on the birthday party, and while I've never been known for my displays of temper or sadness, it would have still have depressed me for a moment between the fairy bread and pass the parcel. So, we formed a very serious kitty search party, that got as far as the lounge room, before the novelty had wore off, and we sat down for some ice cream (you see my point about Dad now I hope).

It hadn't occured to me until I typed this that this was my first brush with mortality, and the finite nature of life. If Cankles the Cat was gone, this would be my first experience of grief, of loss - oh sure, I lost a netball once when I was 5, because Amanda Vanderminsion sucked at catching, and I had to admit that chewing my Barbie meant it had lost it's normal Barbie shape, but this was a real life organic creature, and it was out of my life. Oh, the magnitude of the situation wasn't lost on me, and it was my birthday, and I really, selfishly hoped, that the death of Cankles the Cat wasn't going to overshadow it. I mean, I had no idea of how important each death really was. What about a cat? Would that be requiring a minutes silence, and speeches, while I sat in the corner yelling "OI, I'M OVER HERE! WHERE'S MY PRESENTS!" - that darn cat indeed.

As we pondered the list of kitty consequences that may have befallen Cankles the Cat and his sense of adventure, I sat down on our very 1980s sofa (brown vinyl, yes please) and heard a very faint "purrrr". It was then that my Mum, dressed in her hooped nautically themed sweater, saw a trail of green silly string that lead directly to a newly clawed tiny hole in the back of our brown vinyl sofa, and there, legs sticking out of the tiny hole, was Cankles the Cat, stuck fast. It turns out Cankles the Cat had made a new enemy, a can of green silly string, and spent most of my birthday attacking it with all it's might. Of course, the more he jumped on the nozzle, the more silly string came out, and the more determined Cankles the Cat was to demolish his elusive foe. And somehow, for whatever reason, it seemed he had decided that this foe was far too dangerous to take on, and so had tried hiding from it, by digging and clawing a hole in the couch and cowering and hoping it would go away. When we dug the poor thing out, he was shaking, and had a face covered in silly string. I'm not one for over zealous animal rights (even though I'm vegeterian) but Cankles the Cats poor little face was a picture of absolute benny misery, and I held him out for my Dad to see, hoping he would say something to make it all better, and save the birthday. Kev looked at the cat, looked at me, and looked at the cat again.

"Hey, who wants an ice cream!" he said, proudly.

Desperately Seeking Dentists

2005-05-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Hooray! I'm back! I'm doing some new stories! Now everyone has given up, on this website and stopped reading! Inspired by the fact that Dr Alban is a real doctor (well a dentist!) here's a nice story about dentists! Hooray (again!).

Desperately Seeking Dentists

Claire has been my best friend since I turned around and asked for help in completing a tough level of Granny's Garden on the BBC Micro in 1987. If I had turned to my left, and asked Jennifer Danielle Wiley how to get out of my predicament, my life would have completely different, and on such odd twists and turns does life hang. I can still remember it being quite exciting the first time she stayed at my house, and we stayed up until, oh, at least 10:30, having a nice old chat about things. And one thing I've always, always known about Claire is her lifelong loathing of dentists.

I'm not sure what it's like now, but back in the 1980s, it was very important that all schools had a dental van, and regular visits from a crazy mascot who encouraged you to brush. Our school had both, and our mascot was an early incarnation of the Giddy Goanna look, who would regularly try and get us to a dance movement which ended with "BRUSH BRUSH...SMILE". Naturally, no self respecting 9 year old would be seen dead doing such a thing, so it was usually just the bennys who did it, and I betrayed my inner benny nature with a pout and a shake of the head whenever early Giddy looked in my direction. Our dental van was usually parked to the left hand side of the monkey bars, which meant it cut an imposing figure. One of the girls in our class, the lesser spotted Patricia Ellis (who we never saw, ever, due to long bouts with illness and poorness - oddly, when we did see her, it was usually just to say something quite profound, and then she'd be gone again) told us several kids went in there and came back without teeth. Naturally, we took in this piece of wisdom, and then called Patricia Ellis a massive DUHBRAIN, but Claire, she took it to heart, and spent most of her lunchtime fretting about getting a call up to the caravan of death.

The worst time to get your teeth checked was just after summer. Not only was it annoying to have to give up a potential fun activity that was normally out in the sunshine for ten minutes in the dark of the dental van, but (and certainly in my house) summer was always the time for sweets. It was always time to muck around, have a play, and then run to the shops for some sort of sugary treat. The local store seemed like Willy Wonka's at times, and it was a great shame when one day it vanished, and turned into a juice bar. Not that some nice juice isn't fun, but a generation of kids missed out on eating sweets that had sat in a glass jar for 4 years plus, and that's a great shame, as risk is always a big part of childhood.

She got the call up just before music on a Wednesday, and it meant she missed footy maths and a nap provided everything went smoothly. What happened next is a matter between Claire, Flip the Dentist, and God (and possibly the Giddy Goanna mascot). After about an hour, Claire emerged, and for whatever reason I was by the monkey bars on my own (I think because I was student of the week, and got an extra 20 minutes of lunch, (an idiotic concept since everyone else was inside, so you just loitered around the playground bored on your own).

"How did it go Claire!" I said, expecting a big, best friend kind of response.

"CRAP!" she said, since Claire doesn't swear, and that's as far as she would ever push it. I did the supportive best friend thing and pulled a spaz face, and shook my head.

"It's not THAT BAD you big goose!" I said (in spite of my sugary treat loving, my teeth and gums were perfect, so I barely missed one sum in maths), but she beckoned me closer with one finger and whispered slowly "she HATED me! She didn't give me sunglasses!"

Sunglasses were part of the fun dental experience, the reasoning being that when you were staring into the massive bright light in the roof, it would be hip and trendy if you wore a pair of giant novelty sunglasses. In Claire's version of events, the dentist had to be talked into giving her sunglasses, and would have left her there blinded but for her desperate pleas. Then, she motioned to the stamp on her hand, a cheerful turtle giving a thumbs up.

"What, you don't like turtles?" I said, bemused that anyone could hate the slowest of all species.

"She whacked my hand REALLY HARD when she put it on! I'm telling you Y, she didn't like me at ALL!"

Claire sat on the ground, her faith in the dental profession crumbling like the bark Dull Dave used to throw in the woodchipper. She looked at me slowly and said "could you ask her what I did wrong?" She then stared at my chunky bangles like she wanted to steal them and have them for herself, so I wasn't really sure just how long Claire's sense of moral outrage would last, but I accepted that as a best friend, sometimes I had to do things that I didn't really want to.

I was bemused at the idea of having to go and use my social skills to go and ask Flip the Dentist why she was so mean, but Claire was insistent, and so I knocked gently on the caravan door, and peeked my head inside. It was totally dark and foreboding, and when I think back, perhaps even smoky. Flip the dentist was at the back of the caravan, and I peered through the gloom, I couldn't help noticing she was in some kind of distress.

"Sorry," she said, turning around to notice me, "I don't think I've got any other kids booked today."

"You're right tiges, my mistake, but are you OK?" I said. Flip and I had bonded over our shared love of fancy big chunky bangles, and so I did feel some concern that she seemed so uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

"No, not really, it's always a problem when kids bite you" she said, holding up one finger that was cut and bleeding. I smiled gently and nodded, and left it at that. I knew instictively then as I now know the problems that come with getting Claire to do anything she doesn't want to, never mind putting her in a chair and checking her teeth. I knew that Claire would have wriggled, moaned and stropped her way through the entire thing, and the poor woman never would known what hit her.

"Did you tell her off?" said Claire hopefully, when I got back into class.

"Oh yeah, big time!" I said, smiling broadly.

"Good for you! I hope one day, I can have your confidence to stand up for myself" she said, nodding. And one day, she did. But that, as they say, is a story for another time.

Desperately Seeking Witches

2005-03-16T01:54:00.000-08:00

Young Michael wanted a story about witches, and a story about witches he shall get...even if its a little bit...um...spooky...

Desperately Seeking Witches

It seems bizarre to me that even with as much holiday spirit as I possess, Halloween is and was always one tradition that just never caught on in Richmond. Certainly, all the concepts appealed: I mean, I always adored getting into fancy dress, I certainly had no aversion to public performance, and if the end result of my troubles was some yummy chocolate treat, what was not to love? And yet every year, someone in my class would ask what I had done for Halloween, and I would shrug, having totally forgotten it was even on, and we’d move on to the next conversation, about boys, music, or why that little brat kid across the road had suddenly stopped pulling my hair and was now watching me intently as I walked – I mean, he used to shit me, but he’s getting quite grown up, and I think he might like me…you know, those kind of chats.

When I was 13, my parents began to travel away for the weekend, and I would understand more and more why they were going away. I would smile and nod as they went to a hotel. Still, I began to be given responsibility for the house more and more, and that was pleasing since I could brag about for a while, and not be pressured into hosting a party (yet). It was certainly an exciting time, especially when they left money for pizza and coke, and Megs B or Megs P could come around with a newly rented VHS tape and some gum. It was all good, clean, innocent fun, except for the time we put Jaffa’s in a catapult and fired them at some boys on bikes, and they couldn’t see where they were coming from. That was just…fun.

Lee Hunter and I were close friends in that wonderful pre sexual tension boy and girl way , and we planned a camping trip with some of our other friends, to coincide with another weekend away for my mum and dad. I was happily lying in the bath, trying to eat a pizza at the same time, when there was a fierce rap at the door. “FUCK OFF” I yelled, giggling. I was SO, like, outrageous! I settled back underneath the bubbles, when there was a second, more prolonged knock at the door. I screwed up my face, threw down the New Idea, and wrapped a towel around my soapy self, muttering as darkly as a 13 year old girl covered in soapy Mr Matey bubbles could get. “Lee, this isn’t funny!” I said, as I gripped our antique doorknob and twisted it to the left. Instead of Lee though, was a pair of slightly bemused, bewildered 7 year old girls, dressed as witches, thrusting Tupperware bowls at me. Their mum was visible in the car, reading a book in her turned on headlights. They smiled at me cheerfully, then thrust their bowls closer to me again.

“TRICK OR TREAT” they said together.

“Awww…cute!” I said, for I could never resist the charms of small children who had made an effort. I of course use the phrase made an effort lightly, since they had turned some black t-shirts inside out, but the hats were cute. They were still slightly unsettled my by partial junior nudity, so we stood in an awkward silence. I didn’t know what to do know, since I was unfamiliar with Halloween, and had nothing really prepared. For their part, their fun night out was being ruined by all this silence and standing around, so we took in our situation, before they went for it again.

“TRICK OR TREAT” said the witches, a little more impatiently.

At this point, I began to realise what true adult responsibility I had inherited. My parents would have calmly raided the biscuit tin, or maybe stolen some Maltesers from the charity fundraising tin, but I was panicked. I didn’t want to risk the vengeful wrath of two witch kids after all, so I rushed into the kitchen, threw aside the Samboys and the DMCs, and picked up something I thought they would like, wrapped it up in some kitchen roll, and went back to find one of the witches sitting on the doorstep saying something about “working hard for the candy”.

I thrust my treat into their hands, smiling and nodding. Luckily, there was no hilarity as my towel caught in the door or anything, and off they went, smiling, into the car. I got back in the bath, and curled back up in the bubbles, nervously. Certainly, I didn’t want the witches to come back, and complain about having been given a Weetbix cereal biscuit rather than a yummy piece of candy. I was fretting about it for most of the weekend, expecting the rules of Trick or Treat to wreak vengeance on the house while I was away surfing. I explained my problem to Lee, who was sympathetic.

“I think it’s just junior witches,” he said. “Besides, Weetbix is a treat!”.

I was re-assured by that, but I had a sneaking suspicion all weekend they would get me back. I even did a whole check of the house when Lee and I got back, but there was nothing there, no tricks, no taunting, no nothing – well, except one problem…the next time I had Weetbix, the milk was off, and I got a bit unwell…

Co-incidence? I’m never sure…maybe its best not to know…

Desperately Seeking Card Games

2005-03-08T23:11:00.001-08:00

Ages ago, in this thread, I was challenged to write about Card Games and now, I know what to write about, with apologies to Megs B...

Desperately Seeking Card Games

When I was in Grade 8, our school entered a brief and troubling theatre of cruelty phase. Everywhere we looked, someone seemed to be either being bullied, dishing out some bullying, hanging around the fringes of a bullying motion, or just running from a teacher trying to give out a pink slip for bullying. It got very disconcerting, and in my unofficial role as "hands across the school" girl, the one person who truly covered all our social bases, I was dragged in one day by a passing nun and asked my thoughts on the problem. What problem I said, for my ability to not take sides had been my most valuable asset throughout my entire schooling life, and was a key part of my role. The bullying problem, said the nun, idly drumming her fingers on the desk, desperately thinking of a Jesus related metaphor to wheel into our conversation. She didn't quite overtly, later in the conversation, say that I was the school Jesus because I loved all mankind, but that was the implication, and it was left at that. Clearly, I had to be the bridge between the bullys and the bennys.

My friend Megs B, sipping on a fruit box, as she often did, was no stranger to bullying, after the rumours about her and Shane Rinner in Grade 5. She was a trusted aide, but a cruel piss taker when she needed to be. She wrote "No Y in Jesus" across one of my notebooks after I told her my mission. Still, no one liked a bully, and even if it was just a case of someone saying "your pink pen sucks", such criticisms were hurtful. So Megs B, after pondering all options, decided that the next art class would be a perfect start. We would wait until our art teacher would leave, and then we'd bridge the gap between the classes with a game of cards. Surely everyone loved cards. It would allow everyone to get to know each other, and more importantly, I'd give the credit for any decrease in bullying firmly to Megs B, since it would allow leeway to go and smoke every now and then. Everyone, as they say, was a winner.

I mentioned before in the first story about our woodwork teacher, and our art teacher, Mr McInally, was a borderline alcoholic firebrand, with a passion for colour, movement, and vodka. He had done some fearsome art installations in the 1960s, including one which basically involved him yelling at people for entering the room, yelling and yelling until he or they left. As a dedicated art lover and painter, I was very proud of whenever he liked my paintings. He also told me, in confidence, a particularly libellous story about Cher and half a pound of Dairy Milk which, for the sake of taste, I won't repeat. We bonded, but we also knew these bonds had limits. Sometimes, the class wouldn't want to paint, and it would be up to me to communicate this. "We don't feel inspired" I would say, rolling my eyes. He would be upset, but understanding of the artistic temprament, and leave the room to go to the staff room to berate punk kids, and swill vodka from a mug. When we did want to paint, he would dance around the room like a dervish, but today, no painting, no inspiration, vodka in a mug. I always felt bad doing it, but sometimes, it was important to get some space.

Megs B (and for that matter my other friend Megs Parminter, who’s grandad shot a Mexican who tried to rob his store, or something like that) was clearly the kind of person the casino was built for, and before anyone knew what was happening, we were in some kind of 1930s den of iniquity. I swear someone was smoking a cee-gar. Anyway, Megs B was front and centre, dealing cards, making up games in that ridiculous way people who can deal cards are want to do (“3 in a bed, Jokers Blind, Peruvian draw, all in, no paper clips allowed”). I nudged Megs B in the ribs and pointed to her rapidly accumulating pile of cash.

“Megs B, you know, we’re doing this to try and bond the class, it’s just for fun…” I said gently.

“You in?” was all she said, muttering darkly to herself.

I shook my head, as things began to spiral out of control. Amber Bennett lost her Cherry Ripe money and was fuming. The poor kids were crying. Even the bullies were swept aside, in Megs B’s lust for cash and success. Soon, kids were betting smocks and art supplies to try and take her down, but to no avail. Cash, smocks, lunch boxes, they piled up next to her, and it seemed as though our little bonding exercise was manipulated. It was then that Claire, who had wagged class to go and do something unspecified, swanned in, clutching a baseball cap. Everyone fell silent, as Claire spied Megs B large pile of swag, shook her head, and smiled the kind of smile I'd recognise much later as purest evil.

"Megs B, your wanted at the front desk, your mum has come to visit"

Megs B paused...she eyed Claire cooly, then looked down at her pile of cash, and back at Claire.

"Really?"

Claire nodded solemnly. Megs B put down her cards face down, and yelled snappily at one of the smaller kids to guard them, and sprinted off down the hall. At which point, Claire picked them up, studied them for a moment, and wandered up to Amber Bennett and casually mentioned Megs B had 2 Aces and 2 6s. A quick shuffle through the deck, and suddenly Amber was armed with a royal flush. And when Megs B came back, we casually sat around chatting as Amber wiped out Megs B, took all the prizes back, and distributed them back to those who'd lost them in the first place.

"Bastards!" said Megs B, jabbing a finger in Claire's direction.

"Now now Megs B" I said, darkly. "Remember, Jesus hated gambling..."

Oddly, Megs B wasn't happy, but bullying did stop, for we had bridged the gap between the bennys and the cool kids, since now, everyone had something to talk about - Megs Bs gambling rage became the talk of the school, putting everyone in a quiet frenzy, at least until that whole flashing incident...

And just as I predicted, I gave Megs B the credit, to the point she even gave a talk to the younger kids on bullying at the end of year. There's never any credit for bridging the social gap, just a nod and a smile, and the knowledge that you've survived, one day at a time...one day at a time...

Desperately Seeking Card Games

2005-03-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

Desperately Seeking Treadmills

2005-03-05T23:53:00.000-08:00

It's obvious to me I'm going to do this in big large clumps, and so, it's time to start a new clump! With a touching story of fetery amidst the daily grind of school life...

Desperately Seeking Treadmills

When I was young, there was nothing more exciting than the school fete. Before anyone discovered cynicism, boys, or alcohol, there was nothing more exciting than the moment a B or C grade local celebrity would count from 5 to 1 and then with a mighty push, would spin a chocolate wheel while excited children milled around, tickets in hand, desperately hoping that their number would come up, so they could take home a pair of tights to mum, or a half broken garden hose for dad, since such gifts could be wrapped up for the next appropriate occasion that a present was required, and as such, the kid could save pocket money and spend it on more important things like fizzy pop and posters.

Away from the excitement of the chocolate wheel, there was a long corridor which housed the "ghost tunnel". The ghost tunnel was historically the worst thing about the fete, since the lights wouldn't even be off some times, and it was mostly just a slightly disappointing wander down a hallway while older kids sprayed silly string at you. Under normal circumstances, this would be called bullying, but for the day of the school fete, it was rebadged as some kind of spooky adventure. Even worse, Jennifer Danielle Wiley was granted her own stall once, and her mum had gone to all the trouble of making twenty or thirty types of jam, thus making sure she completely overshadowed every one elses contribution. Mysteriously, some of the jam "fell off" the table. Funny that.

To be honest, our school fete was always tremendous fun. I don’t know if public liability insurance would allow the 2005 equivalent of Dull Dave the janitor to take the kids out on his tractor and call it a “tour”, and I’m not sure if we could even hire little Shetland ponies for the little kids, and watch as they ran amok whenever they saw a banana skin or abandoned piece of chocolate. My lasting school fete memory is Dull Dave ambling past me one day as I ate a Caramello koala. He draw me a suspicious glance, and said “nothing.” I hadn’t expected anything Dull Dave I thought, until I looked up and saw a little kid lying on the grass, and an out of control mini pony rampaging towards the science block. That was part of the charm though, a mixture of variety entertainment, and horrendous, ever present danger were all part of the day.

I digress however. When I was in Grade 3, we were ushered into a room by our PE teacher and told we were in charge of prizes. Apparently, it was always the role of the Grade 3s to look after the prizes, and some kids did better than others. They talk about the class of 78 in very dark tones, since two pairs of tights and a signed Jeff Thomson picture allegedly went missing. It was with awe that the PE teacher took the cover of the chocolate wheel, and give it a slightly worrying grope under the guise of a basic piece of hand modelling. We stood in suitable awe. One kid (I can't remember who, sadly) almost broke protocol, and spun it, and he was ushered out of the room for a telling off. And then, the teacher left, and someone (Claire) was voted in charge. And she looked at the pile of prizes, and sat down in a chair, clapped her hands, and ordered people about. That was Claire's idea of leadership, and it's why she wasn't put in charge of anything, ever again...she picked up a copy of the Herald Sun, and smoked a comedy pipe (not made from the Herald Sun if you were wondering).

In the corner of the room, there was a glistening, brand new treadmill, revolutionary material for 1987. We pushed aside piles of donated Richmond football club merchandise (those guys were crazy for donating) and stared at it for a moment, wondering just who would want this piece of crazy exercise equipment in their house. The fitness and Life Be In It craze was beginning to fade, and slackness was the new black. As we lazed around, hopefully trying to co-erce the choir kids into doing all the work (“we’ll be your friend!) it suddenly occurred to someone who’s name is lost to history that this piece of equipment would need to be tested out. Megs B, seated in a donated sedan chair, shook her head and said it would be OK, whoever won it could take responsibility for it. After all, it was only a treadmill, it wasn’t something cool like a chunky stereo or a big basket of Easter eggs. Claire, barely deigning to raise her eyebrows, muttered something about it looking safe, but I wasn’t so sure, and suddenly, one of those pointless arguments people have from time to time was on, as I stared Claire down.

“It needs to be tested!” I said, hands on hips, puffed up with self importance.

“Why?” said Claire, yawning. “Are you going to test everything? Are you going to try on the tights?” said Megs B, laughing. Laughing at ME! I certainly wasn’t going to take this lying down, now with a bee very much in my bonnet. Looking back, I’m sure they all had a point, I mean, why DID we need a treadmill tested out? It became an obsession though, and for the next hour, I was spewing. I couldn’t get past it, I couldn’t cope with the idea of this treadmill going to a member of the public while it was unsafe. Eventually, after an hour of watching the choir kids checking off their inventory, I had to act. I got off one of the rickety wooden crates I was sitting on, and approached Mark Leaman, the school benny, with two Freddo Frogs in hand.

“There’s a Freddo in it if you get on the treadmill and try it out” I said. Luckily, being the school benny, he didn’t see the unfairness in the arrangement that I’d get a Freddo just for being the ideas person.

Without hesitation, he leapt (and when I say leapt, I mean lept, in big thick clumper boots) onto the treadmill, which someone (oh alright, it was me) had managed to plug in. There was alarm amongst the nay sayers as I backed away from the scene of the crime. Mark, being Mark, began to push random buttons on the treadmill, and in true benny style, didn’t so much run and try and do some funky dancing. Inevitably, things went horribly wrong, and by the time he was trying to do the rhumba at 14 KMHs, he came a cropper, flying off into a pile of donated electrical equipment and landing looking up at the ceiling, giggling his head off, next to a packet of pens and a notepad. Claire drew me a significantly mardy glance.

“Not safe,”I said, shaking my head.

“What did you do that for!” she said. I smiled my sweetest smile, and almost got away with it, until Megs B (still in her running everywhere like a mad thing phase) ran up to join the conversation.

“Mark says where’s his other Freddo!” she said, pouting in an uncharacteristic Megs B way.

Foiled, I was forced to muck in with the choir kids, but it was worth it. I had been proven right, and that, as I mucked around with a large pile of sticker albums, was all that truly mattered…

Desperately Seeking Bread

2005-02-02T02:13:00.000-08:00

Since two people have now requested stories about different types of bread, "eggy" and "fairy", and they know who they are, I've thought, well hey Y, why not post a story about the marvels of bread! And...er...here it is...if anyone is reading...

Desperately Seeking Bread

I was raised as a Catholic, and as I said, I lapsed badly when a nun told me to be quiet, and I gained a fresh perspective on certain aspects of Catholic philosophy. That's not to say I'm not a hypocrite, I still went to some Sunday school outings, when there was free food and best of all, a chocolate wheel. As long as I still nodded every so often when people told me Jesus was brilliant, I could get a free Crunch bar or two. Plus, they always seemed to bring a dunking tank along, which is always fun: everyone should get a chance to dunk a priest, at least once.

Anyway, the point is that at least, mostly because of my love of Crunch bars, I went through most of the ceremonies. I was certainly baptised, I know that match, and while I don't remember much about my communion (bar Claire's family dressed her in an ornate dress while my mum and dad had me in jeans and a halter top, thus signifying our differences in a nut shell), I know I got a big medal and cash, which was exciting. By the time it came for my confirmation, I was so over the whole thing, but I went through with it, despite some badly bruised ribs, so that I could get a surfing weekend as a reward.

One person who didn't go through with from an early age was Holly McKenzie, who was the third cousin of televisions Jim Robinson (the fabulous Alan Dale), and who always seemed to be pouting. She was the original "are we there yet" girl, who once lead a campaign to get our beanbags in our school re-beaned (if that's a term) because they were too harsh. She was a supermodel in all but looks, since she was a pretty big girl, but she was certainly never afraid to complain. At some point in Grade 1, her parents took offence to a strain of Catholic teaching (I guess they didn't like the snake story) and when it came our turn to take communion and get all the lessons, she sat out with Bhapesh Saldanha, and played hopscotch. To say I was jealous is an understatement. I was a gun at hopscotch, and didn't take kindly to anyone getting extra practice and threatening my talents. If they had taken out a hula hoop and practiced that, I would have renounced Catholicism myself, and sprinted to the playground in a Grade 2 mardy strop. Of course, as we watched them play outside, we were subjected to many lessons about "communion bread". "It's not really bread" we'd say, and then, we'd get a 3 hour lecture on why it was bread. And they wonder why no one goes to mass now.

By the time we reached Grade 8, none of us were very interested in mass, and our only contact with the church was being dragged off to school mass. We used to gather outside the assembly hall with our best bored faces and sulky pouts, and tap our feet cos we were like, so bored. I, in my bridging role, tried to keep things light, sometimes by organising priest bingo. Whoever our priest was (his name escapes me), would try and be hip in his sermon, so we'd try and guess what words he'd use, like "cool" or "rad", and thus, priest bingo was born. Many a time a kid would yell something out, and the priest would smile, as if he was leading a Billy Graham/Hillsong style passionate revival with audience participation, when in truth, his use of the word "awesome" had enabled someone to win a Freddo Frog and twenty bucks.

One fateful day, while everyone was shuffling in, Holly came up to me to get her bingo card, and made mention of the fact that she'd never had communion. Offhandedly, I said she was quite lucky, since the whole taste of communion bread was quite "boufing" (some word Claire brought back from Scotland). Holly said that she liked bread, and that she'd sure like to at least stand in the queue with her friends. I said shut up you big doofus, it sticks to your mouth, it's horrible, no one likes it, it's just something we do, and she said I bet you twenty bucks I'll love it. I said, you'll just lie, I'm not betting, and she said, scouts honour, and I said, you aren't a scout, you're a girl guide, and she said, it's a figure of speech, and genuinely, I'm not a liar, and I'm Alan Dale's third cousin, and Claire said, will you shut up about being Alan Dale's third cousin, we know, just take your bingo card and shut up. I said, look, we won't make a bet, but if you want to come up and get some, I'll shield you, just stick close to me, and no one will notice. And then she moved on, bingo card in hand, and that I thought was the end of that.

The church ceremony dragged on for ages, and I think Claire won the bingo when the priest mentioned "you young people" and "Hubba Bubba" (an upset, and one that lead to accusations of cheating against me, unfairly) and then, it was communion time. I was suddenly aware that Holly was sprinting towards me. "Shield me" she said, and so I did my best, hiding her as she joined the line deftly. She quietly, and quickly, shuffled along the line, and when she got to the front, she took my lead, nodded, said Amen, and went back to her seat. Again, I thought no more of it. I sat down on my vinyl chair, and pretended like I was praying, when a voice across from me, unmistakably Holly's, said in a pouting voice, "that's not fucking bread!". She hadn't eaten "the host" and the Catholic symbol of Christ, but was holding it up to the light, as if checking to see if a 5 dollar note wasn't counterfeit. "Alyson said this was fucking bread" she repeated. I slapped my forehead and shook my head. Claire began to giggle uncontrollably. Sure enough, from all directions, teachers came sprinting over to Holly, and dragged her off, one forcably by the arm, and we didn't see her for the rest of the day, her little communion wafer falling on the floor as she flew. That was it for Claire, who had to hold her sides to stop from laughing, and when she got out the door after that little "mass has ended bit", had to lie down on a blue bench for about ten minutes, laughing her little blonde head off.

We never found out what they said to Holly, but she never really spoke about it. We think, from someone who was wandering past, that she was basically thrown out of the Catholic church, and she didn't have the heart to tell them she wasn't in it to begin with, and took the lecture. Either way, whether you're dealing with eggy bread, fairy bread or religious bread, it's important to know one thing: just accept it's bread - it's not, I repeat not, worth the 3 hour lecture it takes to convince you otherwise...

Desperately Seeking Breakfast

2005-01-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

Once again, since the lovely Sju Sju mentioned breakfast in one of the comments, here it is, and I hope the standard isn't broken...

Desperately Seeking Breakfast

By the time we'd got to Grade Eleven, my life had come in an odd circle. I was back to being in much the same position as I was in Grade 5, in a position of organisational importance, especially in terms of school leadership within the social sphere. I didn't quite make it to school captain, but it was close, between me and Jennifer Danielle Wiley, and I had the student numbers, but I think it was rigged, and that was all ahead of us anyway, as on the eve before Grade 11 started, I was "invited" (as in - yer going, pack yer bags) to attend a leadership and development camp for all the Grade 11 brightest and best. I'll be honest, I've never been the brightest or best, but I have always had a cross sectional ability to mingle with all types, plus I think they wanted me to paint them some banners, but anyway, I was on my way to school spirit camp, to be wined and dined, and lectured about my responsibilities as a member of the "elite".

I'd never really thought about my abilities to negotiate across the classes, it just came naturally. I looked across at Jennifer Danielle, who was trying too hard to impress Damien Hunter, with a tale about Harvard or something. I met his eyes with a casual glance, and he smiled the kind of smile people smile when suffering ends. Then, painfully, he drifted back into the conversation, and I went back to my book, or at least, to my surfing magazine. I still didn't know what I was doing there, and I was missing the beach. I rubbed a cramp in my leg, and shut my eyes, where I had a fantastic dream about being on stage, singing Hobart Paving by Saint Etienne to a captivated crowd of hunky surfer types.

The school had booked an expensive conference room, and we filed in dutifully, into a room with the most magnificent breakfast buffet I had ever seen. There was every kind of toast, french, brown bread, white bread, soy bread, twenty seven types of jam, coffee, and not just out of a Nescafe jar, expensive, Colombian coffee, as far as the eye could see, expensive herbal teas, giant rolls, sizzling, frying bacon (not much good for me mind) and best of all, little variety packs of cereal, which I love to this day. The thrill of getting six different types of mini packets of cereal, to treasure and enjoy, was overwhelming, at least to me. They piped in gentle, swaying harp music, as we ate, in an overwhelmingly peaceful atmosphere. "Only the best for our leadership group!" said Mr Morris, patting me on the back. I still felt a slight sense of betrayal of my kind. I am, and was, a benny. Sure, I was a benny who was able to hold it together and not do anything stupid, but the likes of me wasn't supposed to be on Student councils, eating fancy breakfast. I was meant to be sitting up the back of assembly, snorting and saying things like "this is so boring!" - I had stumbled uncomfortably out of my class, and it felt like bluff.

I was going to hold my hand up, say I didn't belong here, and try and steal some Nutri Grain on the way out, when Jennifer Danielle began boring Damian Hunter with tales of her Amnesty International work in the summer. I'd learn later than JDW was really, REALLY keen on Damian Hunter, and all but exposed herself at him at the end of Grade 11, but still, at this stage, it seemed like all business on her part, an attempt to unnerve some of the other students with her school spirit and charity work. Damian, for his part, reached for a big roll, and motioned to me that he wanted to shove it in JDWs mouth. I giggled, and then, oblivious to her own boring story, announced to all and sundry that during the summer, "her Amnesty Group had helped released Mohammed Yoodaman".

"YOUDAMAN!"

Out of nowhere, a girl we had never heard of, a new girl, Sarah Owen, had suddenly just come right out and said it, what we'd all wanted to say, and better than that, she said it again, raising a glass of orange juice.

"YOUDAMAN! WHODAMAN! YOUDAMAN! NO YOUDAMAN!"

She giggled to herself, as tumbleweed drifted across the room. I shifted uneasily in my Docs, unsure of what to do or say. I was obviously fond of intentionally bad comedy, but I hated watching people's jokes absolutely dying. It was clear no one in this room knew the You The Man/Youdaman chant that was on David Letterman at that time, no one except me. Sarah stood there, waiting for peals of laughter that were never coming. I wanted to give her a hug, so awkward was the tension. She bowed her head, gripping her orange juice tightly. I had to do something, it was clear that I had found a fellow benny, floundering out of her depth, and so I paused, took a deep breath, and spoke through a mouthful of Nutri Grain...

"Don't worry, that's too highbrow for them..." I said, nodding at JDW.

"I don't get it," said JDW, scowling.

"It's a joke on a TV show," I said, munching on some oatmeal. "It's funny if you know."

At which point, drinking her apple juice, JDW called Sarah Owen over, and they began chatting, and eventually became friends, who together threw one of our bitchiest, most insane Grade 12 parties that we ever witnessed. As I stood back and sighed, Mr Morris came up to me, munching on some porridge.

"That's what you are here for Y, you smooth troubled waters," he said, smiling.

"Got any pancakes?" I said...after all, bennys out of their station don't like to brag. We just go about our business, from breakfast until dinner, hoping we don't get found out...and somehow, I had survived, and my work was done...

Desperately Seeking Pogo Sticks

2005-01-29T02:12:00.000-08:00

The lovely Jessica, who has a website way cooler and more trendy than this one, asked the Y Bird to study the topic of pogo sticks. Luckily, this one was easy, and wonderfully, wonderfully painful...

Desperately Seeking Pogo Sticks

I can't remember the exact day that I learned there was allegedly no Santa Claus, and that it was allegedly all your parents, but I had a definite period of non belief in the big fella, especially when Claire's grade 4 project mentioned the current Santa was created by Coca-Cola. Of course, now I've rediscovered my belief if Santa, and indeed in Christmas magic, a love rekindled by the 1962 Judy Garland Christmas special, in which she slaughters poor Mel Torme, and sings in one of the most amazingly lit TV sets ever created. My love of Christmas is in contrast to my experiences on the day, which are usually ruined by having to see my once a year relatives who talk about ferreting and their newly found love of Shakira, 2 years after the album came out. Still, I get through it with a smile on my face, and songs about snowmen in my heart.

When I turned 10, I was aware that it might be my parents that performed the miracle of Christmas, and that whether I had naughty or nice really had no bearing on what I wanted, so much as whether Dad had been naughty or nice enough to get a Christmas bonus. All I knew was that whatever it took, I had to get my hands on a pogo stick. "If you think you're ready for some extreme pogo action" proclaimed the Toyworld brochure, next to kids who looked far more radical and extreme than me, in my GO TEAM! t-shirt and board shorts could ever be. I had briefly considered as to whether I could hand extreme pogo action, and whether I was more caught out for extreme Connect 4 action, but my mind was made up when I went out one day for a swim, and on my way to the pool, had what you might call my first experiencing of fancying someone. I had my kickboard (you're never too old for a kickboard) under my arm and my little junior bathers on under an all white Adidas tracksuit, and was strolling down a local Richmond boulevard, when there he was, the coolest boy I had ever seen.

He was holding court on the street corner with his peeps, a vision in blonde, long flowing hair, wearing an AFL football jumper and a pair of bright blue board shorts. More importantly, he was leaning up against the wall of the newsagency, next to a limited edition blue Gravity X-Treme pogo stick, just like the one in the catalogue. I literally couldn't speak, so struck was I by his aura of unspeakable cool. Instead, I just stood for a moment, leaning against the post office wall, until an old woman shoulder charged me in the rush to mail her parcel. We exchanged some cross generational angry glances, and I lost my focus. I was sure when I regained it, he would be gone. But no, he was still there, and he was staring at me, in all my white tracksuited glory. We looked at each other. He was the first boy I'd ever seen with no fear of girl germs. He swept his fringe out of his face, and began talking to his mates again. He looked back at me though, as he talked, and nodded in my direction. I nodded back, too scared to do or say anything. What should I do? Should I go over? Should I make a move? This whole dating thing was hard for me. I reached into my bag and pulled out a diet coke, hoping to look sultry. He smiled. I smiled back. We were making progress now.

He flexed a muscle to impress me. I flashed a smile to impress him. His mates were speaking, but he wasn't looking at them, he was looking at me, and I was looking at him. He pushed the conversation forward. He exchanged a street style, ghetto handshake with his peeps, and audibly said FUCK, just to impress me. Then he said it again - I was very impressed and giggled at his audacity. Clearly, we were getting on fine. Then, he got on his pogo stick, and he dazzled me with a trick, he took the handlebars, and bounced off...at least, that's what happened in my fantasy dream sequence...in reality, he pushed off, and the pogo stick hit a large crack in the pavement as it bounced, and he fell, sprawling awkwardly on the pavement. My heart cracked. I was crushed. I had given and given, for nothing. He was a benny. I bowed my head and ran off, almost in tears, to the swimming pool, swimming with the additional weight that came that my first experience with boys had been a dismal failure - I wondered if it was me, did my smile put him off? Did he do it deliberately to put me off? It was a sad moment, and I've thought about it very often. My first experience with a boy, ruined by a pogo stick? I wrote a pretty furious entry in my diary about it that night, even going to the trouble of writing in red pen. That's just how crushed I was.

I still got my pogo stick for Christmas though, and I practiced furiously. All my life, I thought I better be prepared, just in case the roles were reversed, and my future happiness depended on my ability to bounce carefully on a pogo stick. I never again saw any boys I liked with pogo sticks, but I still had to be prepared, just in case. Luckily, when I met my future husband, he had a surfboard under his arm, and a cute look about him. I didn't have a pogo stick, which was lucky, because I never did master the thing, and it wound up in the garage, next to the ice skates and the hockey stick that symbolised my other sporting "attempts".

That said, I still wonder what might have happened on that fateful day, had the boy of my youthful dreams not stumbled and fell...I guess some people just aren't cut out for extreme pogo action...

Desperately Seeking Foil

2005-01-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

Cupid, Girlfriend once said, was a real good liar. I think for my next 10 entries, I might just skim off Girlfriend song titles, since I'm running low on suggestions. Still, the lovely Callum wanted me to write about foil, and since I don't have any fencing stories, this will have to do...

Desperately Seeking Foil

Back when I was still convinced the world was flat and that if I kept on running I'd fall off the edge, lunch time was the most important time of my whole day. I'd anxiously look at the clock throughout the school day, drumming my fingers on the desk, desperate for the moment when the bell would go, and we could all run to the green lunch order basket and pick out what we'd ordered in the morning. It was a simple beautiful system, we'd tick what we wanted on the bag in the morning, and then at lunch time, it would come back in the same bag. It was a magical system, but not without faults. It was open to plain, human error, and every day, kids would line up and wave the bags in the lunch ladies face, saying "I wanted a CHEESE toasted sandwich! This is ham!" and I would shake my head sadly, wondering if it was such a big deal.

One early day in Grade 2, I was engaged in a group discussion with Lee Devine and Amber Bennett about how green dull Dave had got the grass at our school when the lunch bell rang. Naturally, our appreciation for Dave's horticulture skills took a back seat to our desire to get out in the sunshine and play. I think we had a very intenese of kiss chase to get through that day, or someone had brought a basketball. Not sure. Either way, it was vitally important to get out in the sun. As the lunch order basket flopped on the ground, my class descended on it like seagulls on a chip, picking it apart until only one bag left, mine. I saw my beautifully imprinted captive cursor surname GUARD loping across the bag in it's familiar green pen, and smiled as I picked up my Big M and my bag, and went to go outside. I put my hand inside and grabbed...well nothing, certainly not the Saveloy I had been expecting (this was before my conversion to vegeterianism, which would have been mocked by the lunch ladies, especially Barb, the Scottish one). In fact, all that was in the bag was two or three sad looking crumbs, and a big lump of foil, rolled up in a tight ball. I was dumbfounded, the system had let me down. I stood in shock for a moment, until someone, perhaps Alex Crawford, poked me in the arm and asked when I'd be organising kiss chase. I shook my head, and pointed forlornly at the empty bag. He gasped in shock, and asked what I was going to do. It was a good question. I really didn't know.

I took my bag up to the lunch ladies, nervously. It seemed as though I was the only person who wasn't happy that day, as they all stood around making jokes that in hindsight I've realised might be considered "working blue" if you know what I mean. I held up my bag weakly, and took the lump of foil out of the bag and held it up for examination.

"I think someone ate my dinner," I said, weakly.

"Yeah right," said Barb, laughing.

"No, really, I opened up my bag, and it only had two crumbs in it..."

Barb wasn't buying it, her hard, cracked Scottish face refusing to budge. I held my ground and pointed to the foil again. Surely, this was an open and shut case.

"Look...I didn't get my dinner!" I said, confidently.

Megs B, in the midst of a phase where she had to run everywhere, ran past and asked what was going on.

"I didn't get my dinner!" I said, mopingly, holding up the foil.

"That's terrible!" she said, stopping running. "Are you getting a new sav?"

"No she isn't!" said Barb, anticipating a Mexican stand off.

A couple of other kids, desperate to run away from girl germs in a game of kiss chase, wondered where I was. They too, asked what happened, and studied the foil intently when I told them. It was then, that out of the crowd, came Amber Bennett. Amber and I were not seeing eye to eye over an incident involving a skipping rope, but she parted the crowd with her cool ways, and stood dead centre.

"I heard - you can't have your dinner?"

"Yeah, all I got was FOIL" I said, the foil catching the light. We stared at each other in an oddly tense manner for a moment, until Amber Bennett held up her lunch order bag, her three lettuce leaves or whatever she had that day, and threw it down on the steel topped counter.

"If Y can't have her dinner, I don't want mine!" she said. I motioned for her to stop - I mean I appreciated the gesture, but it wasn't 40 hour famine time, there was no need to be rash. She wouldn't be stopped, and pouted, staring directly at Barb. Claire, who wasn't my friend at this stage, also pushed the crowd, with a half eaten Bubble O Bill, and slammed it on the counter, watching as pink drops stained the carpet. Alex Crawford put his Big M on the counter. In all, 10 or 12 kids broke the system and handed back their lunch in support of their colleague. I was beaming. I stared at Barb, who under the strain of having to pick up 12 bags and put them in the bin (I didn't say it was a good plan), was beginning to crack.

"But we don't have another Saveloy!" pleaded Barb, softly, but it was too late. We were making our stand, taking on the man. Defeated, she clicked her fingers, and called out Ira, her companion.

"Make her another Saveloy," she said, shaking her head.

We took in our moment of triumph for about three seconds, and then everyone sprinted away, realising they were wasting their lunch time. I stood on my own, a little bewildered as to what had just happened. Barb just glared at me, for ages, and then handed over my Saveloy. I wanted to make peace with her, as even at an early age, I realised that annoying the people who prepare your food wasn't smart. On my way out, I yelled out a strange sentence that puzzles me to this day.

"I love the way you wrap things in foil" I said. This isn't one of those cute little internet "on my way to the theatre" stories, I really did say that. I have no idea why, but I did. Ira nodded though, and pointed to Barb, and behind her back, mouthed something that has stayed with we for the rest of my days.

"She ate it," mouthed Ira, pointing.

It seems if you are honest about foil, and are willing to stand up for yourself, the world reveals some strange truths...

Desperately Seeking Celebrity Workout DVDs

2005-01-27T02:25:00.000-08:00

This was the stumbling block (everything else is downhill slalom when logic is applied) but the lovely Atom at this lovely spick and span site called Music For Torching wanted a tale about Celebrity Workout DVDs? Well...it took a while tiges...but I got there...

Desperately Seeking Celebrity Workout DVDs

Like a lot of people, I put great store in what celebrities recommend. Or at least I did, in my youth. And not even big celebrities like Soleil Moon Fyre or Alf (the alien, not Alf Stewart, although I have adopted his voice whenver I say "flamin hoons"). Pretty much anyone I had seen on TV, even the Toyworld big purple bear, was a source of great inspiration to me. And few people have had the impact on my life that Jennie Garth has. Whenever her brand of calm, considered acting came on screen throughout the peak era of Beverly Hills 90210, I was genuinely transfixed. She is the only person to inspire me to go and buy a jacket because I saw it on TV (although I must admit, I want one of Tina T/Finlay Roberts hats). She also once had her fan mail address printed in the "Ask the Editor" section of Smash Hits, and I ALMOST put pen to paper, but alas, I lost the edition of Smash Hits when my mum threw it away, and so Ms Garth never did find out the adulation a small, benny girl from Melbourne had for her and everything she did.

It was many years later, when I was much older, and wiser, and looking to Layne Beachley for guidance, that I found myself in Cash Converters. I had decided that I needed to actually do something with my day, rather than sit around half heartedly painting, and watching day time talk shows. Probably spending the day in Cash Converters, Australia's favourite 2nd hand store for poor people to get beer money by selling their fridge for 4 bucks, wasn't the most productive idea, but I did enjoy scouring through their many Formula 1 videos, and kettles with no lids. It was then that my eyes came across a thing of beauty. Someone had made an illegal copy onto DVD (at least I think it was illegal) of "Body In Progress" - the 1992 Jennie Garth workout video that inspired me every day I owned it - the video in which Jennie G talks about the joys of a low impact workout, her love of seeing fatty boombahs get skinny, tells you how to reduce your jeans size, and does some fine working out to her own husbands synth music - I was flushed with joy, and my mind spun back to the first time I owned this sacred item - Christmas, 1992...

It had been an ordinary Christmas. My parents had decided that in 1993, I was to get more serious about my studies, which lead to many heavy discussions. Worse, we had to go round to Auntie Kates, to sit with the classic "once a year" relatives, who sat in a circle talking about boats and, amazingly, ferreting. My uncle Clark announced seriously the problem with the youth of today was that the kids today, they didn't get to go ferreting. I looked deeply into my chocolate milkshake, and giggled my heart out. I couldn't stop, throughout the turkey and sprouts and whatever else we ate that day. I thought that if this my world, my mum in her spotted polka dot dress trying to be serious and parent like, my uncle talking about ferreting, people patting their stomachs and pretending that Dot's turkey was a "treat" when it was clearly a mess - if that was my world, it was ridiculous, and all I could do was laugh.

I was up in my treehouse that night, writing in my diary (for you young folk, people used to have keep a written diary with pens and paper, rather than keeping one of these things) when Claire climbed up the ladder with my Christmas present. Claire and I had a difficult first few months after she came back, mostly because Claire was still pining for Scotland, and had struck up a friendship with Lisa Davis that saw her briefly orbit in our school social elite. So we were working through, trying to work out our new place as best friends, when she came up the ladder, thrusting a brown paper parcel in my hand.

"What's this?" I said, smiling.

"It took a while to get - I hope it works..." she said. She furrowed her brow, as if getting this gift was one of the hardest things she had ever willed herself to buy.

I unwrapped it carefully, and there, in front of me, was the Jennie Garth workout Video, a mint copy of Body In Progress. I looked at Claire, and was genuinely greatful.

"I know how hard it was for you to buy this," I said, smiling.

"Fucking hard," said Claire, and when Claire swears, I know something is difficult.

"Do you...want to watch with me?"

Claire paused, at this pivotal moment in our friendship. Her love for Shannen Doherty was on the line. Would she lower herself to come down and watch Jennie Garth do a low impact aerobics workout? Would she be that good a friend?

"That's OK..." she said, pouting, "I just thought you'd like it, I didn't want to actually watch it myself..."

It was the perfect answer. Because Claire, being Claire, wouldn't actually deign to watch it. And throughout her psuedo-friendship with Lisa Davis, she was doing a lot of stuff she didn't want to do, to impress Lisa and her crew. The real Claire wouldn't care less, and if something was lame, she'd refuse to do it. I knew then, as she climbed back down the ladder, that we'd be OK...we were really back to being best friends - after all, there was no way in gods earth I'd sit and watch something as stupid as Blindfolds: Acts Of Obsession with Shannen Doherty in it...

I took home the DVD (I obviously paid for it first) and put it in for Claire, and as she came in, I pointed to the screen...

"You don't STILL watch that crap?" she said, shaking her head and putting on a mardy pout.

"Tina T would watch it," I said, smilling.

"She doesn't tell the truth, that's why I'm your best friend, I keep you right so you don't stray into benny territory - I failed in this case..."

At which point, Jennie Garth began doing some step aerobics, and Claire stormed off into her room, disgusted...it's more than a workout video or DVD you know...it's a true marker in a friendship...and that's far more than Melissa George ever managed...

Desperately Seeking Yo-Yos

2005-01-26T23:11:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't updated, I'm battling to come up with ideas for some of the suggestions, but I think I've got my mo-jo back, and I'm keen to plough on, and with my friend Jacx wanting me to tell my yo-yo story, I thought this would get me over the hump...

Desperately Seeking Yo-Yos

Recently, a friend of mine suggested that people of my age were really the last generation who had to go out and play. I began to reply, but I was achingly aware that to say "oh we went out and played with a frisbee" or such like things was to invite derision at to just how old I was, and that to talk about how my childhood was devoid of Playstations and DVDs would make me sound like an old Grandma, and the queue to the Country Womans Association and the jam making club was calling.

The one thing that I haven't seen lately is anyone playing with a yo-yo. The only people who are hanging around Melbourne with a yo-yo are stoned students who can't afford a hacky-sak, and buskers who aren't talented enough to juggle. Even then, there seems to be a limited amount of tricks performed, the yo-yo profession failing to move forward from the big two, the round the world and the walking the dog. Once you've achieved those two tricks, there's not a lot else to do, and it's time to pick up the frisbee. There are times when around the skateboaring scene, the yo-yo comes out and people are vaguely impressed, but for the most part, yo-yos are not cool, and apart from one magical moment in 1986, they never really have been. I was present for that magical week, and I'm proud to tell the tale.

In Grade 2, it seemed everyone had a yo-yo, and the ultimate in cool was to own a Coca-Cola yo-yo. Well, gold in theory, more yellow spray paint really, but considering it came after sending in 24000 ring pulls from cans of Coke, it was quite the effort to get one. It said COCA COLA in red, swirly letters. Kevin McKay was the first person to get one, and then I got one just in time that they were still cool. We spent our lunchtimes trying to do tricks, failing, but just standing around looking cool in our tracksuits, the yellow paint glinting in the sunlight, looking to the casual observer just like gold. It was on one such day that an announcement came over the public address system - the following day, the Coca Cola Yo-Yo team was performing at our school, especially for us. Naturally, we couldn't concentrate on maths footy, and any discussion of Fungus the Bogeyman was suspended for the afternoon. The entire night passed so slowly, it seemed like a year until the big day came, and we gathered cautiously, our little hands clasped around Fruit Boxes, nervously waiting, until a loud, thumping disco beat came over the PA system...they were here...

We gathered in excited groups the following morning to chat and plan. It was considered that if we could somehow get our tricks in their eyeline, maybe we could join the Coca Cola Yo-Yo team, maybe we could travel the world. I desperately tried to perfect my walk the dog in a hurry, but it was the same old problem, not so much walk the dog as the less impressive trick "tangled up in string", and my hands wound up messed up in the yo yo string, while I desperately tried to convince everyone I really wanted to do a "cats cradle". Kevin McKay scoffed, and walked his dog perfectly. I snorted derisively. Secretly, I was very jealous, but outwardly, I had appearances to maintain. "That's SO not Walking The Dog!" I said, pouting. "It SO is Stringy!" he said, mockingly. We stared at each other, for most of the day to be honest, until it was time to assemble in front of a hastily constructed wooden stage, and as the magic of "Funky Town" by Psuedo Echo pulsed through our eardrums, on they came, one by one, pumping their fists. We moved uneasily. We thought they'd be cool, but they looked like bouncing, cheesy bennys, all sparkling white teeth. We quickly took our cue from Amber Bennett, who looked at her watch and turned her neck behind her to try and find a way out. We were already losing heart, but we thought if they could at least get through the yo-yo tricks, they might save the day.

For some reason, overnight they had become the American Coca Cola Yo-Yo team according to Dull Dave, who was in charge of the less than excited introduction, and the leader, Marv, bounded on stage in a Stars and Stripes tracksuit, exhorting us to keep the energy moving...and then it happened, Marv skipped backwards, and another guy in the same tracksuit bounded forward, to warm us up with a little Round The World...and as he spun, a female in a red cheerleader Wonder Woman style bra took up her position to the left...and I don't know whether she distracted him or the wind changed, but I can still see it, as clear as day, as the yo yo spun wildly above his head, and then, as it came down, hit him right in the back of the head, and knocked him unconscious, his previously body popping energetic body landing face down on the wooden stage, landing with a dull pop, and he rolled backwards, a demented, strange smile on his face. Marv looked at his fallen comrade, then bounded in front of him, and yelled "NOW WE PARTY" which was a strange declaration. As the other members tended to their fallen comrade, and dragged him away, Marv tried to keep up apperances, dancing and clapping. He then produced from his pocket a real gold yo-yo, that genuinely sparkled, and tried to make it dance and spin, but the spell was well and truly broken. It was clear that even with a life time of yo-yo mastery, these people weren't cool, just idiots in gaudy tracksuits. We swayed from side to side, suddenly bored, and aware of how cold it was. I looked over to Kevin McKay, who was smiling sadly. The craze was well and truly over. They tried to win us back, but nothing worked. After 1/2 an hour, they bounded off, defeated, to less than polite applause. Dull Dave was amused though, chuckling over the PA as we went back to Maths.

I think in many ways, that was my first childhood disappointment. I can still see the sun setting over the hill, and a group of disappointed, dejected kids, putting their yo-yos in the bin. I watched them go, sadly, from the top of the fort. I was aware that something had changed in our lives, that whatever we did, we would not be fooled by marketing again, that we wouldn't trust crazes, that we would be bohemian, individual, that whatever the man tried to foist on us, we would be suspicious....we would be wary...

Then Amber Bennett brought in a packet of stickers and yelled "Look what I GOT" and we realised that there was no way we could let HER get one up on us, and the whole crazy cycle of Grade 2 life was about to begin again...

Desperately Seeking Pandas

2005-01-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

My #1 commenter over the Pop told me I had to write about Pandas, and so this is my story - I'm not sure if anyone is reading these tales, but hey, if not, I'll be finished soon enough!

Desperately Seeking Pandas

I mentioned the fact before that at my school, I had the moral authority to act as the negotiater between the different social classes of an average school. I was just about popular and rebellious enough (I had a tattoo I had to hide for a year) to be cool, but not cool enough to be unapproachable, while at the same time I was enough of a smiling, giggling benny that I could mingle with the downtrodden, but at the same time, I wasn't so much of a benny I was throwing peoples bags in the bin, and seeing how many times I could spin round really fast before I threw up. I could have really had a career in politics, such was the ease of my calling. It was never officially announced that I would negotiate the way things were going to be between the camps, it was just automatically assumed that if the whole school had to or wanted to go to something that was on, I'd do the arrangements, set the meeting times, and make sure everyone was happy.

From time to time, my unchallenged negotiating skills were tested by a rival, such at Katherine McCormick in Grade 4. Katherine was a stickler for social etiquette, having grown up in the wilds of Swindon, England, and carved a great (she said) playground diplomacy style trying to get the wilder students, who had already graduated to smoking and groping one another, to mix with the bennys and the cool kids. She spun some impressive tales about this, and I could tell some of the bennys were greatly impressed, especially at her ability to stop bullying, simply through the power of negotiation. I could sense though a slight overblown bluster in her voice, as if she was trying too hard to be everything to everyone. I sensed that if I hung on, she'd make a tactical error, and I, as the playground moderator, would have to fix it.

Older readers of the Y might remember the bizarre Pepsi challenge that went around in the late 80s/early 90s. For anyone who doesn't know, to great fanfare, a truck would appear in your town/city, and a stage erected. From there, the kids were presented with two cups, one with Pepsi, and one with I presume home brand cola. The challengee would be asked which one they liked best, and if they picked the Pepsi, they would get a prize bag (usually containing M&Ms and vouchers for a hair cut). Children being children worked things out pretty easily, and word spread around our playground from Kevin McKay down that the flatter, more tastless drink was the Pepsi, and the fizzier, sweeter one was Home Brand. Easy. So when the Pepsi Challenge van rocked up to Richmond, we were primed and ready to grab free stuff (my life obsession, it seems, is to get nothing but free stuff). No one in the school wanted to miss out on the opportunity to get free goods, and possibly get on the local news.

If we were going as a group though, we had to make sure everything was fixed, primed, and ready to go. We had to make sure the cool kids and the bennys weren't jumbled up together. The cool kids had things to do, and people could see them. The bennys could wait until the end, lest the social order of things collapse. I let Katherine McCormick do the organising, just to see what she was about, and while I admired her style, I could sense the cool kids weren't really buying it, as she wandered hither and tither with a broad, slightly queezy smile, telling everyone where to assemble. Eventually, Amber Bennett came over to me as I was sipping on a fruit box reading Surf Monthly.

"Alyson, why aren't you organising this - it's a group event, she doesn't know us!"

I put the fruit box down on the bench, and shrugged.

"She wants her shot, I'm happy to give her a chance to try and cross the social divides we have."

"But she's terrible at it! Already, she mixed Mark the benny up with Mark of no fixed social standing! That's a recipe for disaster!"

I inwardly smiled at her rookie mistake, but outwardly, I remained calm.

"Amber, it'll be fine - if anything goes wrong, I'll fix it"

That re-assured her. Soon enough, after a week in which I finally did nothing for a change, we gathered in the local shopping plaza, pretty much as a school group. The cool kids were looking cool, and the bennys were playing Frogger in the chip shop. I was interested to see where I was in the social standing of things according to Katherine, but I was firmly in the background, despite the misgivings of Megs B, who wasn't sure whether to go or not. After an hour of waiting and watching and seeing if my position was threatened, I was tapped on the shoulder by a man in a Panda suit.

"HI!" he said in a goofy, hyped up voice. "WOULD YOU PANDA FOR A PEPSI!"

I giggled. It was a truly crap pun, which I've always enjoyed. The man in the Panda suit did a small dance, then stopped, and pointed his paw towards the edge of the stage.

"Oh no..." he said. I had an instant feeling of dread, like the feeling someone gets when they realise they've mixed up the salt and the sugar. Sure enough, when I turned around, at the front of the stage was our school benny Mark Leaman, dancing in a Coca-Cola T-shirt and trying to do that thing people do where they make fart noises with their arm. Worse, several rogue elements and passers by were encouraging him, clapping and applauding, in the way people clap a dancing monkey, just to see it dance some more.

"ALYSON!" said Amber Bennett, rushing up to me, "DO SOMETHING!". The man in the panda suit looked at me expectantly through his eye holes. "How did he get anywhere near the stage? How did he even get invited?" I said, swallowing hard. "McCormick" spat Amber Bennett, in an "I told you so voice". I sighed deeply, knowing in my heart the Marks had been mixed up, and that was a fatal mistake. I took the Panda by the paw, and lead him to the stage.

"You have to dance with him, it'll confuse him, he'll think it's a real panda"

The man in the panda suit hesitated.

"He'll get briefly confused! Go man go, there's no time to lose!"

The man in the panda suit took me at my word, even though he really was only a decoy, and sprinted on stage, and begun waving to the kids. Mark Leaman stared hard at his upstager, confused as to his next move.

"MARK!" I yelled, in my benny control voice, over the crowd noise and applause for the Panda. "Nathan just beat your Frogger score!"

Mark grunted an idle grunt, and got down off the stage, and sprinted to the chip shop. I had averted an embarrassing moment for the cool kids, saving them from points and nudges, and sentences that ended with "hey, don't you go to school with that kid!". Amber Bennett, who was with her Grade 6 boyfriend, Daniel, was particularly greatful, and was moved enough to give me a heartfelt "well done" before pushing her way to the front of the line, Daniel in tow. It was then Katherine McCormick came running up, taking nervous steps towards me. The Panda came down off the stage, pressed some stickers and a cap in my hand, and gave me a Hi 5, as Katherine began to look around nervously.

"What happened!" she said, in a sharp, pained voice.

"Ask the Panda," I said coolly. another rival seen off, another day on the streets, it's not easy out in the playground jungle - but you get by, one day at a time...one day at a time...

Desperately Seeking Bananas

2005-01-23T02:57:00.000-08:00

Our #1 commenter over at the Pop (you know who you are, you don't need your tyres pumped!) challenged to write about some things in order - starting with bananas...I have just the tale...it's a cautionary one...

Desperately Seeking Bananas

I mentioned before our school dentist, and her never ending desire to get the kids at our school to eat more healthy food. She even, as i said, dressed up some poor benny in yellow suit and called him Mr Cheese. This was far from the only attempt to add a little extra healthy edge to our diet. There never seemed to be a day go buy bar someone was pushing the values of apples and oranges on us. Mark, our school benny, was once taken aside from a maths lesson because a teacher had spotted him munching on a jelly doughnut he said to his friend Clayton was "his breakfast" - he was given a chart on healthy eating, and promptly ate it, so as to win 5 bucks on a bet. The irony was, munching on the healthy eating chart made him ill and he had to go home. He wasn't the school benny for nothing.

Claire and I, in our youth, were really good runners, who made the Victorian state relay team (only to screw up the changeover on one occasion, and have a trackside argument, before we were friends). When you are young in Australia, the ability to run really fast makes you quite cool, and very good as kiss chase, but that's quite another story. The Victorian state relay team, even when we were 8, was a full on affair. You got tracksuits, you got shoes, you got measured up for a singlet, you were given a lyric sheet of chants - the Premier of Victoria (whoever that was) even turned up one time to watch. There was definite pressure - one girl, called Alison Bentine, from Western Australia, looked at my singlet and said, quote, "Victoria sucks!" - not standing for that, I said "No, you suck" and we exchanged dark glares from across the track at each other for an age, as if by running round a track really quickly, we'd settle the state vs state battle once and for all.

We were sponsored by Uncle Toby's that year, and Sanitarium, who make Weetbix, so we had all the free breakfast cereal and choc chip muesli bars we could handle. Our school, naturally, was proud of us for making the team, along with another girl, Margaret Vynan, who threw the hammer. The prinicipal made sure that we were often paraded on stage, to tell deep and meaningful stories to our classmates. In short, we were held up as examples of healthy living, although obviously Mark, our school benny, was deeply uninspired, as one time, in the middle of a lecture about how anyone could work hard and run for Victoria, he let out an enormous burp, and then giggled about it as if someone had said "pants".

On the second last day of the school year, we were called up again, and by now, we were seasoned media professionals. They still wouldn't let me bring my agent on stage with me though, which I still rue. We stood in our pre-determined positions, me up front, smiling, Margaret Vynan taking up half the stage, and Claire trying to squeez between us. "Today," said our principal, "we'd like to pay tribute to our Victorian state little athletics representatives." Claire swears to this day that Mark, our school benny, said "Get on with it" but I don't remember that. He then threw to a surprise guest, Steve Walters from Uncle Toby, who was holding three bags, each with our names on a label. I was getting free stuff! He had also brought a friend, Toby: rarely a day went by at our school by we encountered a crap mascot, Toby merely being a guy dressed like a surf life saver in red speedos and a cap. Had I been older, he would probably have been cute, but he looked pretty bored, as if he had three schools and some nude modelling to do before bedtime.

Steve spoke about healthy eating, healthy living, plugged the company for all it was worth, then lead the school in the most 1/2 arsed round of appreciative applause since Emma Cobb came third in a statewide crossword competition. Steve handed us our bags, clapped Mags V on the back, shook hands with Claire, and gave he a hug. Even at a young age, I was worried about wandering hands. He whispered in my ear something that sounded like "keep up the good work, we need you": I hope that's what it was anyway. Then he and Toby got in the Uncle Toby mobile and drove off to the next school. Actually, they made a cute, subtly homo-erotic couple.

We went backstage to compare our loot: Mags V got chocolate, stickers, a ruler and a hat with UNCLE TOBS on it (the Y had fallen off in the bag). Claire got the same, except her hat had the Y still on it. Me, I didn't get any chocolate, I got a lunchbox, a bright blue Uncle Toby's lunchbox, which contained a banana, a salad sandwich and a fruit box. I also got my stickers, and my hat, but also an Uncle Toby's jumper and a pair of socks, plus a medal that said "Outstanding Achiever".

I took all of this in for a moment, and stared at the lunchbox - clearly, they had got me mixed up with someone else, an actual proper achiever who had done something worthwhile. That explained the hug, that explained the extra gifts - I was pretty happy to keep it all though, especially the medal, but at that moment, I went right off little athletics - I mean, if you were ordinary, you got chocolate, but if you did well, you only got a banana and a salad sandwich. No one at Uncle Toby's had heard of the incentive scheme clearly.

I give my banana to my friend Megs B, because she loved bananas, with a monkey like passion.

"Do you want me to autograph it for you?" I said, proudly holding up my medal.

"Nah mate, I want Toby to autograph it for me," she said, with a faraway look in her eyes. I had found out that running wasn't worth much, and had lost the attention of my friend to a bored surfy male mascot who looked kinda cute. It was a day of valuable, life changing lessons, that only a banana in a lunchbox could truly provide...

Desperately Seeking Ghosts

2005-01-22T23:14:00.000-08:00

Well, striking out on your own is all care and no responsibility! Someone from Blog Explosion gave me a 1 out of 10 and I keep checking for comments! What a palaver! So anyway, the lovely Mr Panda'lus over at this fine site wants nana to ramble on about ghosts for a bit . So this is what I came up with my lovely 2 readers...

Desperately Seeking Ghosts

I was driving my child Tanaya to the doctors yesterday, and trying to teach her the joys of Hilary Duff. She screwed up her face, and inevitably began to wriggle as if her existence depended on impressing some kind of invisible wriggling judge, who was scoring her out of ten. It was only when I skipped the CD to "I'm Still Alive" by Alex that she settled down and settled into a routine of merely quiet, contemplative gurgling.

My mind began to wander, past the point where I wonder who actually watches that show where you've got 30 seconds to perform your act, past even the part when I get bored and start reciting Rodney Dangerfield jokes, and to the point where I begin to drift to whether ghosts really exist. I don't have any real basis for a decision either way, except our Grade 8 camp, and that was purely circumstansial anyway, depending on how you listen to.

Our Grade 8 camp (and I'll milk the 3 days before I'm out of stories I promise) was in Ballarat, and it was the first real quality time I got to spend with Claire since her return from living in Scotland for 4 years. She was still my unofficial best friend, but she was pretty unhappy for a while, proclaiming everything was better in Scotland, and missing going to watch Celtic. Worse, her previous school trip had been to Zurich, and Ballarat just wasn't cutting the mustard. Much like Jennifer Danielle's obsession with Sweden, we were tiring of Claire's endless tales of skiing and drinking white wine spritsers and cute skiing instructors. For most of us, the chance to pan for gold in a puddle with a bloke called Russell trying to look ye olde authentic and keep his fake beard on was sounding pretty good. After all, there would be no parents around - we could sit up to 1am, and maybe even watch Chances.

On the first night, after the teachers had all gone to bed, tired from too much Trivial Pursuit, the girls retired to the rumpus room, which was very girly, apart from a giant pool table. Even though I wasn't in the cool circle, I was pretty much friends with everyone, and thus was able to negotiate across the room what we would do with this strange, intoxicating freedom. The bennys wanted to go to sleep or play cards, the cool girls wanted to watch a video of Beverly Hills 90210, and the bitches wanted to go and meet some local boys who had invited them out earlier (we warned them off - too much flannel). I took all this in, and came to a fair compromise, we would watch Chances and Beverly Hills 90210, the bennys could control the cassette player, if anyone wanted to meat a Ballarat local called "Dwayne", they were free to do so, and then we would tell ghost stories. Everyone applauded. I could sort the worlds problems out me, if I could be bothered.

So that was everyone happy, except Claire. "I've seen this episode" she pouted, as the tape player showed Shannen Doherty wandering into Steve's car for a lift to the Peach Pit. "There's too much Jennie Garth!" she moaned, and sighed deeply. "How can you have too much Jennie Garth?" I said, spinning on my heels to look her in the eye. "Jennie Garth sucks!" she said, filing her nails. I was stunned, and swallowed my gum. "What's wrong with Jennie Garth?" "Everything!" "Everything?" "Yeah - Shannen Doherty's heaps better!"

A life long debate was born - who's better, Jennie Garth vs Shannen Doherty, a debate that's never been settled. I looked Claire deeply in her mardy blonde eyes, and pursed my lips.

"I don't even know you any more..." I said, storming off. After 5 years of friendship (albeit with 4 via mail) we had our first fight. It was a tense moment. We wordlessly sat through the rest of the episode (I think someone stole Steve's car, maybe even Garth) and then an episode of Chances, while at least two of the bitches went off to find Dwayne, and some of the bennys went to bed to read Proust or Smash Hits or whatever. We were left with a smattering of cool kids, hangers on, Claire, one or two of the skipping team, other Claire, some of the bennys who couldn't sleep because they'd had too many push pops, and me, brokering the awkward peace between everyone, and fending off Claire's insistence everything was really lame.

There's a particular ghost story about a ghost killer which involves turning all the lights out, and then spinning a torch round a circle, and the key part of it involves a loud thumping noise. To cut a long story short, the end of the story is "...and the killers next victim was....YOU!" at which point, you stop spinning the torch and just shine it on someones face - scary stuff. I felt that my role as peacemaker across the school would be jeopardised if I didn't at least try to make peace with Claire, and obviously the best way to do that was to attempt to scare her with my amusing ghost story. So I span through it, blah blah, thump on the roof, thought it was rain, get out of the car, "What is it", don't look behind you...all that stuff, I had even the cool kids going - and then, the big finish...

"...was YOU" I said, shining the torch in Claire's face. Everyone squealed, except Claire, who casually began filing her nails. Amber Bennett (who was utterly desperate to do anything to get her cool points back by this time) turned the lights on, and I went up to Claire, and got in her face (I wouldn't do it now by the way, she'd kill me).

"Oh what - ghosts stories not what they do in SWITZERLAND" I said, as angrily as I can.

"It's so little league, everything is just so - backward!" she said, motioning around the drafty room.

"FINE - go to bed then, we don't want you up!"

"FINE!"

"FINE!"

And with that, Claire went down the corridor and to bed, as Amber Bennett tried to suck up to the room. "What's her problem!" she said.

"She's just...I don't know..." I sighed sadly. Was it true, Claire had changed, she wasn't my best friend anymore? I slumped on the beanbag, and even the cool kids were sympathetic.

We sat in silence for 5 minutes, while Amber Bennett made Milo and said "please be my friend" a lot. It was Megan Barker (not Megs B) of no fixed social standing who first piped up "Do you hear that?"

There was a loud, repetitive thumping noise coming from down the corridor...thump...thump...thump...we all stopped, Amber Bennett put down the sugar...thump...thump...thump...Megs B hid behind a beanbag..."You heard it!" opined one of the cool kids, maybe Lisa Davis, to Megan Barker, who shook her head vigorously. Thump...thump...thump..."maybe it's the ghost killer, Alyson summoned her" said Siobhan De Vogt. "Hey, don't blame me!" I said, nervously. But it was obvious Siobhan had struck a chord with the room, and pretty soon, I was being sent down the corridor to investigate the thumping...and it was coming from Claire's room...with great bravery and personal disregard for my own safety, I pulled on the handle of Claire's room, and Claire came tumbling out, breathing hard and looking extremely anxious...Amber Bennett made her a Milo, and she sat in the middle of the room recounting what had happened.

"I left my watch on the beanbag, but when I tried to get out of the door, I couldn't...the door wouldn't open...I couldn't get out..."

"It was the ghost, it was angry," opined Siobhan, and we all nodded in agreement, turned off the TV, and took turns to guard the corridor, lest the ghost come and attack us all in our sleep...

I looked back and Tanaya and smiled. "What Claire has never known to this day," I said, smiling at my little baby, "was she was trying to push the door when you in fact pull it open...I found that out the next day when I was searching for the ghost..."

I smiled gently at Tanaya. "I know you'll never tell will you? As far as Claire knows...it's a real life scary ghost..." And with that, we pulled into the doctors, laughing together at our little secret...

Desperately Seeking Anke Huber

2005-01-22T03:30:00.000-08:00

I have so many good suggestions still to get through, but Claire wanted me to tell this particular little tale, and the poor little lamb is having a rough week, so ya know...this is for you babes!

Desperately Seeking Anke Huber

If you know me even vaguely, you'll know that I look like a particular low ranked tennis player who I have developed a paternal instinct for following. Supporting her through her trials and tribulations has given me an appreciation for failure...what it must be like to perpetually front up to tournaments, knowing you had no hope of winning. It must be amazingly frustrating to never quite seize the spotlight. In contrast, when you play a player that you know you can whip, it must be tempting to just see how much hope you can give them before dropping in the big guns. I do have some special insight into tennis though, and I got it in Fitzroy of all places...

Melbourne hosts the Australian Open tennis every year in January, which means it's school holiday time and as a kid, you can see big name tennis players casually wandering around Melbourne ordering sandwiches and coffee. For me, this was no big deal, until for some vague reason in the middle of 1994, I had gained a giant passion for tennis. To the point of picking up a racket and seeing if my hand eye co-ordination was good enough to make me the new Kristine Radford or Kerry Anne Guse. Alas, I was such a benny, I kept not only missing the ball, but positioning myself in such a way that I would slap my arm with the racket. I had a pretty good Monica Seles grunt (a sort of HEY-YAHA!) but by the time the grunt the out, I had usually already missed the ball. I realised then and there that I was probably best suited to keeping a tennis scrapbook, alongside my penned in results for the world surfing championships.

So it was tennis time, 1995, January, the big names in town: so there I am, casually wandering through Fitzroy, on my way to get massaged (I had a weird back thing going on in 1995, it was really worrying, especially given my surfing career would have been over) and get my back clicked into place, when a Mercedes with a chaffeur zoomed past at 100kmhs, straight past two old men on their way to bowls or something in a Skoda Bravo, overtaking illegally, and just managing to get back into its lane in time to narrowly avoid a head on collision with a Toyota Crown. Everyone stopped and beeped their horn loudly at the Mercedes. Out of the window came a defiantly feminine middle finger, and the Mercedes drove off, leaving the old men to put their teeth back in and recover from the shock. "Bloody hoons doing blockies" sagely noted a Jamaican woman, who then bizarrely did a black power fist in the direction of the old men. "Right on sistah" I said, under my breath, and continued on my merry way.

When I got to the masseuse, about 1/2 an hour later, I noticed the Mercedes was in the private parking space, and the chaffeur was reading a German newspaper (Bild I think) and chuckling at the German equivalent of Fred Bassett. I was going to go and introduce myself, but he was so into Herr Bassett, I didn't have the heart. I went through the double doors, and as always the receptionist greeted me like a long lost cousin. "Hey Y!" she said, beaming. "Hey Betty" I said, smiling broadly. "Have you lost weight?" said Betty, handing me my swipe card to the waiting room. "Not as much as you have you old fox!" I said, and swiped my card. We had quite the banter, Betty and I. I wish we'd exchanged numbers.

I went into the waiting room, and sitting in the waiting room in an all white outfit and a cowboy hat was top 10 ranked German womens tennis Anke Huber, sitting reading a copy of German Vogue from about 1976. She was intently studying the orange pastel colours that lit up the rooms in those days. I couldn't believe it. From my scrapbook! I mean, THE Anke Huber! I didn't know what to do, but I was sufficiently star struck to hold in a burp that I had to do after drinking too much fizzy orange juice. I sat in this weird tense state for about a minute, then I had to blurt it out.

"I saw you before - you're Anke Huber!"

She looked at me funny and pulled her face into a mask of disdain. "At the car...thing...your driver...he el loco..." I said, clearly mixing Spain and Germany up, but I didn't know the German for crazy. She broke into a dis-arming, if slightly patronising smile, and put down her magazine.

"He is crazy," she said, spinning her finger round her head in the internationally approved sign for crazy.

"Crazy," I repeated, as if I had made a breakthrough with a Sri Lankan man who had just got off the plane, or in the voice Jane Goodall used to communicate with chimps, as opposed to someone who could speak English just fine. She went to pick up her magazine, but put it down again and looked at me oddly.

"Is he GOOD?" she said, pointing to the name of the masseuse on the door.

"Yeah, really good!" I said, nodding. "Dr Oldfield, he's...well he's good...he's worked on my back..."

She smiled again, and paused, like I was going to ask for an autograph. She even held her hand out like I should give her a pen. I didn't have a pen, and if I asked Betty for one, she'd tell me people are people and I shouldn't be lowering myself for autographs. It got the point where Anke was clearly bored of waiting, and took out her own pen, and signed a piece of paper she tore off a doctors pad, and handed it to me wordlessly. It said "Best wishes, Anke Huber" next to the address for a gynaecologist. I studied it for a second, and she smiled warmly for the first time, and went back to reading.

After two more minutes of tense silence, Dr Oldfield came out, and said "Ms Huber - time for your ankle workout..." Ankle workout? Did they not have a problem blurting out such information at this time? I could have gone to the Herald Sun with such vital news that Anke had a an ankle problem. Anke turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, I swear to god: "Champions...drink milk...good for the bones..." And then she was gone, forever, out of my life, and my doctor, Dr McLooe, took me into his room, and clicked my back into place. When I went out into the carpark an hour later, the Mercedes was gone, the German Vogue was gone, and Anke went out in the last 16 to Mary Pierce, and made the final the year after, losing to Monica Seles. Betty, citing patient confidentiality, wouldn't tell me where she was staying, and it soured our relationship to be honest.

I still that autograph somewhere, and I've thought a lot about meeting Ms Huber. I've thought it must me great to be a champion at something, to live out your dream. To be athletically gifted, to be strong, self confident, to tour the world doing something you utterly, utterly love, and being paid a fortune to do it.

It doesn't, however, mean you still can't be a spaced out absolute benny though...

Desperately Seeking Aliens

2005-01-21T20:27:00.000-08:00

this is kind of like the "ten minutes writing" we used to do in grade five. my much beloved mrs watson would flick a topic at us and then nonchantly wander up and down that tiny stage at the front of the class room while we scurried out strange tales of "aliens" or "breakfast" or "heroes".

Sounds Sjusju like just the kind of topics the Y Bird needs to peruse...

Desperately Seeking Aliens

Every school, in addition to having a school benny and a school spirit girl, also has a school clever clogs. I'm not necessarily talking about clever academically, I'm talking more generally, the boy or girl with a firm grasp on facts. Generally, it will be someone with a big sister or big brother, and it will parlay itself outwardly into the ultimate fast facts, all those lies about sex you hear when you are 12 ("no...it's true...my big brother said his girlfriend did it!")

Our school clever clogs was called Michael Millar, a kid with a big nose, glasses, and possession (we thought) of a book called 1000000 Fast Facts to amaze your friends. Whatever the situation, we relied on Michael to settle debate. His speciality, as it happened, was "Footy Maths", a game our teacher made us play in Grade 2, where the teacher would squeal out a maths question ("3 + 2") and the first one to correctly answer would move the ball closer to their goal. Michael was awesome at this, and also speed spelling. He could spell hippopotamus in 3 seconds. A great effort you'll agree. He rarely left the library, and he always had a book under his arm on the history of cricket: if you needed to know anything about bodyline or the Kerry Packer take over in 1977, he was able to provide you with dates and scores. In short, he was our guru, and we looked up to him.

I can't remember the exact date our faith in him crumbled, but we had our doubts by Grade 3 (I think it was Grade 3) mostly because cynicism had entered into our lives. Claire (who was vaguely my best friend) was the first to catch the disease, muttering an "AS IF" when Megan B was telling a story. We turned around stunned. Someone had dared to challenge a story, and from then on, it was open slather. Michael Millar was now required to prove things - we didn't just take his word for things anymore. It threw him for a bit, but he regrouped, he read more books, he worked harder, did more research, and was ready to back anything he knew up with reference numbers and books, lest cynics rain on his parade.

One day, the week before Easter, we ran outside for lunch and assembled duly by the pipe. In the 1980s, it was perfectly acceptable to put some concrete pipe down on the ground and call it playground equipment, and for kids to crawl through it regardless of the amount of rainwater, litter and dog piss that was in it. Still, it was always easy to meet "at the pipe". As we gathered, Kate Marie had a big announcement to make.

"Come and see what I found!" she said, emphasising the "I".

She lead to us to one of the outside concrete paths, and pointed to a series of suspiciously chalked footprints on the ground. The footprints lead inside the school, but only after veering off in a mad direction towards the hut where dull Dave, our groundsman, kept his lawnmower. We took in this strange turn of events for a moment, and scratched our collective brains.

"Where do you think they came from?" said our friend Megs B, puzzled.

"We better ask Michael," I suggested, gently.

"As If!" said Claire, in the middle of her phase of saying "As If" to everything.

We gathered in the library, and waited for Michael to put his book down (he was slumming it - reading a Betsy Byars book, another sign of his fading intelligence). When he did, he heard our story and smiled smugly.

"It's obvious...it's aliens..."

"As IF" said Claire, emphatically.

"No really, have you heard of Haley's Comet?"

"Leave Hayley out of it!" said Megs B, thinking he was referring to her sister. Michael Millar explained patiently and at boring length what Haley's Comet was, and how it brought aliens to earth all the time, to look for somewhere to work amongst us, and how this was well known, and how if we followed the foot prints, we'd find an alien, a real life one.

"Not one like ALF?" I said, curiously.

"No, it'll be green and ugly, but friendly, as long as you don't provoke it," said Michael. And he put his book down on his chair, and motioned for us to follow him.

When we got outside, and he clocked the footprints, he pointed to dull Dave's hut and where the footprints lead to the locked in Flymo.

"That'll be where their ship came in," he nodded to Megs B.

"I thought they came in on Haley's comment" said Megs B, wearily.

"Yeah, they ride in on a ship that's on the tail of the coment - it's only little" said Michael.

"As if!" said Claire, who by now was immensely bored and eating an Uncle Tobys muesli bar.

The footprints lead windingly past dull Dave's hut, past the glass doors, and inside. Oddly, the footprints were textaed when they were inside, on bits of paper. Michael began shuffling uneasily. By now though, we were desperate to see the alien, which sounded like it brighten up a dull day. It was then that we looked down the carpeted assembly hall, and saw dull Dave, taping bits of paper on to the ground, texta in hand. Claire raised an eyebrow and tutted loudly.

"What! Your alien was dull Dave!"

Credit to dull Dave, who seeing his carefully crafted Easter surprise ruined by some nosey kids, played it beautifully. "Hi kids...I found this texta and a footprint...think it was the Easter bunny...he hopped off that way...I think..."

We could buy that, and our outrage cooled, but we all eyed Michael Millar with deep suspicion. He adjusted his glasses and then spoke casually.

"I KNEW it wasn't an alien - I knew it was the Easter Bunny, I was just tricking! I mean - aliens aren't real like the Easter Bunny!"

I think that day we learned that you can put your faith in aliens, religion, bunny rabbits or celebrities, you can put your belief in some grand plan in the universe, but if you put your faith and trust in a 9 year old kid with social problems and the hope you don't challenge what he says, you only end up down blind, carpeted alleyways, looking at a bored groundsman holding a texta in his hand...

Desperately Seeking Giddiness

2005-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

The lovely Adrian off of the Life Itself board said "Oi Alyson - why don't you write about Giddiness" - "Giddiness" I said - is that how you spell it - and after watching a video clip of a girl in roller skates, I figured out just what was required...

Desperately Seeking Giddiness

There was at some point in the mid to late 1990s a public information character created called Giddy Goanna. He had a theme song that ran "Giddy...Giddy Goanna...what shall we do shall we run and play?"...frankly, he was a fraud. In much the same way we refused to be conned by Mister Cheese, real kids knew that if they went to "run and play" with Giddy Goanna, they'd be subjected to a tedious 3 hour lecture on road safety. Giddy Goanna would only be trusted if he'd lived up to his name, and had done a dizzy whizzy until he fell over, or at the very least, ushered the kids to a nearby roundabout, and said "go for it little ones."

In the summer between Grade 2 and Grade 3, our school prepared for us a special surprise. Some brand new, state of the art, prime model, 1987 top of the line kis playground equipment, Firstly, they invested in a big yellow caterpillar, that wound on for miles, that all the kids could climb on. Secondly, they spent up big on a metal disc they had nailed to the ground, with handles on it to grip on, a flimsy looking thing that looked unfinished, but which spun off it's axis whenever it was gently pushed. "I guess it's a roundabout" said Claire, before we were friends. "Give the girl a chocolate bar", said Amber Bennett, preening. We stood in magic awe, oblivious to the fact that the caterpillar was actually gleaming and finished. This thing in the ground, it looked sexy and dangerous, like the kind of thing that should have yellow tape around it. Then the bell rang. It pierced the silence. We trooped into class to meet our new class teacher, who wondered audibly why everyone was so quiet. We sat through two tedious hours of that thing you have to do sometimes where you stand up and say a fast fact about yourself ("Hi I'm Alyson - I'm on crystal meth" "Sit down Alyson, you're only 8!") and some pointless games, when all we wanted to do was go back outside into the sunshine and examine this new contraption. And when the bell rang, we, as a grade, sprinted back outside to examine it with quiet reverence and awe.

Kids naturally gravitate to anything that involves running or spinning or rolling or throwing themselves about. Some of my happiest memories involve sprinting down the hill, chasing a brightly painted easter egg, and falling on my bum about 20 times, laughing all the way. We were hardy kids though, no public liability insurance for us, oh no. We didn't need it, we had PC. I mentioned before that Paul "PC" Clark was our go to guy when we wanted "shit tried out". He was just earning that hard won reputation, having the year before tested whether it possible to jump from the top of the fort, not from the top of the ladder, but the other way, by leaping over one of the wooden walls (it was, but it wasn't easy). There seemed no doubt to us that if anyone was going to test whether our so called round a bout was magic or dodgy, it would be PC. He looked hard at it, and rubbed his hands together in a tense motion.

"Look PC, if it's too much for you, I don't mind having a go," said Adam Bastick, who luckily would later change his surname to avoid the nickname "Bastick the Spastick"

PC glared at him fiercely. You should never challenge the moral authority of the "try shit out" guy in Australia. "Let's spin," said PC, gripping on to one of the handles. The roundabout was so poorly constructed, even a 7 year old had trouble sitting on it to be spun, so PC had to stand up on it, holding onto a handle that wobbled unsteadily in his hand, a handle that more or less blu tacked into the ground. Worse, the handles were positioned as if the roundabout was to be spun clockwise, when in fact it spun anticlockwise. Still, he wasn't our try shit out guy for nothing, and he motioned it was time to go.

I can't remember who span the unfinished roundabout that day, but it was a tense moment. As girls, we had to stand back, this was no place for the weak of heart. Claire and Amber Bennett even bonded, wincing together as PC held on for dear life. He gripped on tightly as the rickety contraption span uncertainly off it's flimsy foundations, round and round, round and round, and even past the 7 second attention span we had at the time, we were still completely gripped, as PC went round and round...and suddenly, he was airborne, as a nail came out of the roundabout, landing on the ground with a plop in the mud. The roundabout wobbled like a see-saw, but it was too late, PC was going to fast, and had to grip on with one hand. Through the crowd, Kevin McKay and Kevin Patterson grabbed onto him, and managed to pull him away, just as the roundabout went completely mental and the handle PC had been holding onto seconds before came out of the hole it had never quite been in in the first place, and fell on top of the roundabout. The roundabout wouldn't stop spinning, wobbling unsteadily for most of the rest of the day. We looked at the roundabout, going completely crazy, and then at PC, who was being held up by the arms.

"I'm fine!" he said, in the manner that made him the go to guy. The Kevins let him go and for a moment, there was a beautiful calm in the air. Seagulls cawed their appreciation. It was then PC, in front of his appreciative audience, said something so profound, it's stuck with me to this day.

"I'm giddy," he said, with a demented smile, as he fell face down into the mud.

You spend your whole life chasing that feeling, the out of control magical moment of falling, of being giddy and off in another world. Forget drugs - the seagulls knew the score - it was still best when all it took was a cheap hunk of junk roundabout, and a quick, hard push...

Desperately Seeking Scandinavia

2005-01-20T23:49:00.000-08:00

I could just rest on my laurels, and listen to Billie, but the lovely and wise Mr Fop (the kind man who gave us our first plug and said nice things about the Y) asked us to kindly tell a tale about Scandinavia...it was very difficult...but ya know...I'm happy to help...

Desperately Seeking Scandinavia

One of my best friends in life, the devine Tina T, actress extraordinaire, came from Denmark, and is always at me to go with her to see her family, and Legoland. Denmark of course welcomes Australians since the marriage of Princess Mary to whatever the Prince was called. It's inspiring that you can pick up a prince in a bar called the "Slipp Inn". Conversely, I have no desire to even once go to Sweden. I'm sure it's lovely and nice and the people are awesome, but I've been put off for life.

Jennifer Danielle Wiley was our school spirit girl. Every school has got one. I can remember whenever tins were needed, or a fete was to be organised, there she was, rattling the donation tin or a raffle ticket book in your face. When we went to high school, she took my place as a house captain, mostly because she bailed up the principal on orientation day with ideas as to how the Grade 6s could be more involved in school spirit. I was probably wondering why I had to walk so far to get a cupcake or something, but I was blindsided and was back to being a body on the hill. I even had to hand in the clipboard. For the next three years it seemed it wasn't possible to have an event, not even a game of "Celebrity Head" (of which more later) bar Jennifer Danielle was standing up in assembly banging on about it, and tying it into our latin school motto, whatever that was.

Our Grade 9 teacher was called Miss Lennon, and she was always trying to be super funky, even though she was the SUPER old age of 27, and we were turning 15. She clutched a copy of Charlotte's Web to her chest one day and proclaimed it would change our life. She tried to tell us one day how much she loved Nirvana (Claire visibly blanched). She one day tried to show us how she danced at nightclubs, only to spin around so fast her dress flew up (a recurring theme at our school, seeing peoples pants). And most of all, she thought she was funky because she "rejected" making people read books. We had to feel the text, and the best way to do this was through endless stand up presentations and verbal speeches. We always knew we were in trouble when Jennifer stood up to talk, her perky voice and shrill manner were designed to irritate all and sundry, and her hand gestures are embedded in my head. Worse still, she insisted on participation. Audience participation. She read off cards, but when she put them down, you knew she was working the room. Claire and I, in the back corner, always tried hard to avoid direct eye contact. It was fatal.

The one thing about Jennifer Danielle was that she went to Sweden when she 10, and LOVED it. She was going back to Stockholm University to study - well anything. "And ohmigod, you should SEE Stockholm! It's SO pretty - and did I mention how friendly the people are and how great the weather is and blah blah..." She managed to work a reference to Sweden into every single topic that was meant to be discussed, even if it was just a reference to ABBA. Claire once took a sweepstake as to how soon she could mention Sweden in a supposed debate about animal cruelty: 35 seconds, Jay Nicholls won 50 bucks after she read out research from the Swedish government. So when Miss Lennon announced one day that it was open topic day, there was no doubt we were about to be harangued beyond belief about the wonders of the land of Volvos.

Sure enough, in she came, with cue cards, and a Swedish flag. Claire headbutted the desk. Miss Lennon (who loved audience participation) was visibly beaming. The rest of us shuffled like livestock sensing danger.

"WHO...has been to SWEDEN?" she said, beaming. She visibly fixed the class with an eyes and teeth stage school smile, pausing and counting to three to carry on...one...two...

"I HAVE"

It was a sound no one had expected or prepared for. From the back of the room, Mark Leaman, our ertswhile school benny, had raised his hand, a first. Mark was a big man, who spoke in snorts and grunts. As far as we knew, he had never gone further than Geelong. His idea of school spirit was not kicking the footy into adjoining gardens. All we ever knew about him was he supported Hawthorn in football, since he often wore a Hawthorn beanie. This was a meeting of the minds, a collision of social levels. We sat in silence, waiting the confrontation.

Jennifer took an awkward step back. She had asked for audience participation, and now she had it. Even Claire lifted her head, caught up in the moment.

"Oh," she said, nervously standing near her flag, and blinking nervously. "And...um...what did you think of it?"

"I thought it was a fucking hole," said Mark, beaming proudly. There was uproar, Jennifer Danielle stood in bewilderment, trying to think of a comeback. Miss Lennon couldn't flaunt her true colours and throw Mark out, lest her down wit da kidz persona slip, and so stood like a mute, mouth agape. Claire lead a mini ovation, and Mark basked in most memorable school moment with a proud smile, and the tiniest, most impercitable bow. Jennifer had to sit down, for nothing she could say was going to change our minds now about Sweden. She had to get back up, defeated, and symbolically unpin the flag.

And it put me off for life. Because if Jennifer Danielle loved it, and the fabulous, one-moment-in-time-triumphant, Mark Leaman didn't, it's really not the kind of place I want to go to...

Desperately Seeking Y-Fronts

2005-01-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Young Michael over at Lizjournal, he set me a challenge to ramble on a bit about Y-Fronts...only one thing truly came to mind...and this was it...

Desperately seeking Y-Fronts

Anyone who grew up in Australia in the 1980s would almost certainly have been in a house. No, not the comfy one your parents may or may not have given you, but a house for school sports day. This was the first form of strict social segregation you were exposed to, the day you were handed/told to bring in a single in one of four colours, and told "that was your house". And depending on whether you got a red, yellow, blue or green singlet, you'd either sit with your friends and have a lovely day, or plot to change behind the teachers back because you were bored and lonely and surrounded by bennys. I was in Yellow house in primary school, and we were feared and always won (even yours truly put in a couple of 1st place ribbon winning efforts). We were a bit like the East German sports program though, ruthlessly ensuring that everyone ran to their full potential. "You can't let the HOUSE down!" we'd say to slackers. Claire was in the far more laissez-faire Red house, the Aussies if you will, who sometimes would just stop running if they couldn't be bothered, or who would sometimes just not show up for their races. How we mocked them from our elite place on the hill.

Incidentally, sometimes the houses were named after other things like explorers (Cook house, Bass house etc) or whatever, but any school that broke the colour code and had a pink house or a purple house, they were rogue elements, and were not to be trusted with your childs education.

I digress. By the time we got to Grade 5 (house carnivals mean a lot until Grade 5, at which point, they become an excuse for a day off), I was captain of yellow house (and school vice captain dontch'a know) and my first task was to motivate yellow house at the swimming carnival. I had a lot of pressure on me - but I wasn't worried? Why? Because we had Brendan Malcyzk. Brendan was a Polish born swimming machine, literally not good at anything else, including speaking, walking or colouring in, but a man fish born to reign over the pool, the Rachel Lee Peacock of the Richmond swimming scene. Interestingly, like Rachel, puberty wasn't kind to him, he moved to another school, got over a terrible case of acne, and then blossomed into a honey, lost interest in swimming, and shacked up with a 36 year old cleaner named Patricia, causing quite the commotion. At this point though, this was all before him. At this point in his life, we had him in 9 races, and with 9 wins in the Grade 5 section, and a guaranteed win in the non swimmers kickboard section thanks to fancy paperwork putting people who could swim in the races (like the East Germans, we had spies and ways to cheat too), my reign at Yellow house was about to begin in glory.

When I got to the swimming pool, I was armed with my clipboard, pen and all the self importance a Grade 5 can muster. I had the little kids primed to paint their faces in yellow sunblock, I got us the prime "middle of the hill" spot, I even arranged our house to get free ice creams for our race winners from Tony's Milk Bar. I had things going my way. I only had to marshall our crack diving crew (and convince Kevin McKay not to do a bellywhacker, even if it was "for a Freddo cos it was a bet"). It was then I looked over onto a small brick wall, and saw Brendan, if not crying, then certainly visibly distressed. He was looking around anxiously, and had a towel around his shoulders. It didn't look good at all. I certainly didn't want to be the first captain of Yellow house since the 100 years war to lose a major event. It was with great tact and diplomacy I took it on myself to deliver a motivational speech of great class.

"What's up?" I said. Allan Jeans would have been proud.

Brendan said nothing. He put his head in his hands, taking his trembling left hand off his face long enough to gesture behind him. Through the wire fence, was a man in beige/brown Y fronts that redefined the words "budgie smugglers". He was clearly a child of the 1980s, and he was leaning against a brown and battered Torana, taking giant gulps of Solo from a can. He had a fantastic mullet, the kind that looks in the middle like the mullet might stop, but then carries on and on, and he had nothing else on except for his Y fronts, save for a fair of bright blue thongs, and a handlebar moustache homaging cricket great Merv Hughes. It was quite the sight, but then it dawned on me. I looked at Brendan, I looked at Solo man, cracking a thirst, then back at Brendan.

"THAT'S your Dad?" I said, in perhaps a tone or two away from soothing.

"It's embarrassing isn't it," he said, dejected. "Don't tell anyone, I hope he's not wearing those to watch me - I can't swim - what if someone finds out..."

It was at this point that our school cheerleader, the most popular girl in school, Amber Bennett, joined the group. Her eyes were bulging out of her head. She looked hard at the porn star in our midst who if he had not come to clean ze pool, had come to embarrass Brendan, and steal our hopes of victory. Amber was in Red House, and in the blink of an eye had clocked Torana man, and was keen to gossip and gain a vital psychological edge for her team.

"Who's the DUDE!" she said, pointing behind us.

I had at this point, a powerful choice to make. I could have betrayed Brendan, I could have sided with Amber, I could have upped my popularity a little bit had I spread the gossip that I saw Mr Malcyzk in his beige Y fronts, and that it was SO embarrassing - instead, I looked her with a cool, captains gaze...

"Dunno, some guy," I said, defiantly unaware of my social standing.

"YOU," she said, "don't know nuffink."

"YOU don't know nuffink" I said, in an exchange that would be repeated many times over on the Jerry Springer show in future years.

"Whatever," said Amber, walking off to join her posse, unaware that in the future, her cool points would drop after a Grade 6 "did she eat out of the bin!" incident clouded in mystery to this day.

Brendan looked at me appreciatively, as his Dad finished his last drop of solo, and went into the change rooms to dress more appropriately. We basked in a bonding moment, and then we had to re-focus. And re-focus we did. Brendan won 8 of his 9 races (we would have won the relay for a clean sweep except Kevin McKay fell in the pool and did a bellywhacker on the changeover) and thanks to a great effort from the Prep kids, we caned it in. Me, Brendan, and two of our kickboard champs posed for a photo in the local paper. I had (well, we had) kept our yellow winning streak.

Parents mean well generally. Certainly, it must have been hard for Brendan, but he came through. I can't think of many more embarrasing things your Dad could do than parade around in brown Y fronts. I was so proud of Brendan, and for weeks afterwards, whenever it was time to take the trophy out for polishing, we'd share a knowing glance, the kind of wink people do at the end of a bad heist movie.

But this was one occassion, for sure, when the power of Y was not a good thing, but a very wrong and bad thing...

Desperately Seeking Office Furniture

2005-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

Well people are nothing if not challenging I guess. The lovely SjuSju over at this fine place left a lovely comment and politely asked that I start writing about Office Furniture...OK...I'll certainly be keen to try...

Desperately Seeking Office Furniture

Jewel, when challenged to tell the world just one thing, declared she'd tell it that it's all OK, and not to worry, since worry is wasted, and useless in times like these. Me, I'd tell the world that if you are doing Grade 10 Work Experience, have a very clear and passionate goal (even if you don't - fake it) to work in art or media - or at the VERY least, something cushy. Luckily, I've always loved painting so it came naturally to me, but so many of my friends didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives, and so were sent off to factories and chemists, to slave away for a week. Me, I got sent to work in an art gallery, thus continuing my lives ambition to never do a proper days work in my life.

I should say, I work and earn a living painting surfboards and skateboards. I'm fascinated by the office culture, without ever desiring to work in one. The clockwatching, the Christmas party, the chain mail e-mails, and of course, having your own desk, with pictures and toys and wacky little office in jokes. I've never had any of that. I was going to take up work for a brief period of time, just to try and see if I could do it. But then I remembered I really can't make a good cup of coffee and I get drunk within 2 drinks, and it would eat into my surfing time. It's not likely to do a lot for my career prospect if I show up pissed with a surfboard.

Our career councillor was a homely, bespectacled possibly lesbian lady called Ms Eaves. She had many books on war, and an entire shelf of motivational tapes that she would lend to students and probably never see again. She was always running late for things too - an appointment with her set aside for an hour would run about ten minutes because she had to be somewhere. It was Ms Eaves who organised for to work at the art gallery though. She was very, very excited about this, and I was very excited back. I think she also liked the fact that I was happy to have a chat to her (as I do to anyone) and that I returned her tapes on time. She lent me one once which was the speeches of Winston Churchill set to ambient mood music. I think she made it herself while tripping out to be honest.

The art gallery people had never had a work experience person before, and pretty much let me either wander about with tourist groups, or use their pens and papers to draw designs on. In fact, the curator told me after I went to a sandwich shop for an hour that "I shouldn't skimp on my lunch break". For some reason, I began talking to the security guard, Liam, who guarded the pricless art armed with wit, cunning and the ability to say things like "nah mate, none of that round here". He was a pretty cool guy though, but he was most proud of one thing. Out the back, round the corner, down the corridor and past that Aboriginal display everyone said they liked but never visited, was an antique, but abandoned, old desk, in the middle of a cold, dark, abandoned gallery that once housed Belgian art or something.

"This is me office kid," he said proudly. He motioned to me to look over this desk, his treasure. and pulled back the top. When he did, there was a hollowed out drawer, like a big plastic tray. He was clearly very proud of this desk, but even more proud of the hollowed out plastic tub inside that held his stash. Proudly, he took out a packet of jelly snakes and eat one longingly. He picked up his paper and sat down on the chair.

"This is the good life, bastards don't know about it!" he said.

"Very impressive - tres chic," I said, nodding in approval.

And that would have been that, except for a dishevelled American man, who was suddenly amongst us. He had wandered out the back, round the corner, down the corridor and past the Aboriginal display everyone said they liked but no one ever visited. He had golf clothes on, and looked stereotypically Jewish, although that might just have been a stereotype.

"Excuse me, is this modern art?" he said, bemused.

"Nah mate, just me fucking desk," said Liam, eating a snake, and getting up and leading our Jewish friend back to the Aboriginal art display.

I don't know much about office furniture, I've never had to order a pen on stationery, but I know one thing - they might not be art, but you can at least hide shit in them, and sometimes, that's really you want out of life - functionality, not beauty, black and white over colour - a packet of jelly snakes instead of caviar...

Desperately Seeking Smile

2005-01-19T17:52:00.000-08:00

Hmmm...ice cream post...0 comments...OK, I'll do my best to improve...

Jonny at Jonny's site esoterically wanted me to write about the word "smile"......it was tough...but I respond to ALL suggestions...

Desperately Seeking Smile

I don't mean to sound like Kevin from the Wonder Years here, but when I was 7 and growing up in the suburbs, I was always running around and couldn't sit still. I didn't have ADD or anything, but the world just seemed so cotton picking BIG, that I thought if I sat still for a moment, I'd miss out on something. Claire, my best friend, would probably think nothing has changed. I can see her now, sitting with arms folded, looking at me with her mardy blonde face, and saying, "Alyson - slow down! What's with the big dopey smile on your face?"

I can't help it though, although I did have a brief lose my smile phase. It seems as though my mum loves to remind me daily of my Grade 2 PE report - "Alyson has not fully participated in games this year - she seems unhappy at the thought of any physical activity" - in fact, it's a house catchphrase now - even though I'm pretty fit (even post baby) and surf and skate and gym up a storm, I'm still tagged as the "lazy one"...I think I know why they wrote that though...

We played a game at school called Bootball which is possibly the most demented game I've ever played. The rules were that the fielding team...well they fielded, and it was played the same way as baseball. Except that instead of pitching, the "pitcher" just threw a basketball to you to catch. Then, if you caught it, you could kick it anywhere you liked. Our school playground was on a big sloping hill, and that made the game even more demented. Provided you could kick it with a tiny amount of force, you could get the basketball to pitch and spin on the edge of the hill, and roll amusingly just out of reach of the fielder. Our school nun (yes, I am Catholic, although deeply lapsed - the same nun told me to shush up in church one day, and that was that) invented it, while bored out of her mind watching Highway To Heaven one Sunday. Given she also to visit the students (I remember she came to my house one day to play Connect 4 and my Dad was deliberately losing so she'd go home quicker), I can imagine that inventing silly games to play were probably her idea of a fun night out.

There was a girl at our school called Rachel Jane Peacock. She was our school whiz at sports. She was proper athletic, and the first person I ever saw in my life do the splits. I was an OK runner, I made state relay titles and things, but she was just a lightning rod of pace. Sadly, she grew breasts and was never the same again. But back then, we used to point knowingly at the map as we waited for the 88 Olympics, as if a 10 year old kid was going to win gold. Silly kids. A bronze was at least realistic.

To cut a long story short, Rachel had kicked the ball and got the right amount of spin, but a diving Kevin McKay had thrown the thing back quickly just before it ran out of reach down the bottom of the hill, so she had only made it to third. It was my turn to kick, but I was picking daisys and talking to my friend Jess. "Cerm orn Alyson" said the nun, gently. "Geez!" I said, in my best sulky teen voice. "Come on Y" yelled Rachel, in a manner that was just a bit too matey for my sulky self. Incidentally, I've tried to remember why suddenly at 7 I was feeling sulky, and I honestly can't think...was that the week I was dark because Live Aid was on instead of Punky Brewster? Anyway, whoever the pitcher was threw me the ball, and I caught it, and I really did try my best to kick it, but I had new Hush Puppies on, and I think that in my mind, I was probably concerned between drop and kick that I'd scuff my shoes, and the ball dribbled a centimetre from my toe. There's a rule in Australia - "tippernay run" - which means if you have made contact with the ball, everyone runs. And so, I ran. Oh I was fine, made it to second. But Rachel, she was screwed. She ran like a girl heading for the gallows, and was promptly "tagged" with the ball by a fat kid, revelling in the fact that he had beaten the star in something athletic. She was out.

She didn't take it well. She stormed up to second base, where I had found a ladybug to be my friend.

"WHAT..." she said sternly, "...was THAT?"

I stood quietly for a moment, looked at Rachel, looked at the ladybug, looked back at Rachel. The nun sprinted (well ambled) over to us, and said in a stern voice "Now girls...remember...Jesus would turn the other cheek...he would accept mistakes happen..."

Rachel turned and looked the nun dead in the eye and said "Jesus...would have got me a HOME RUN!" in a "I'll screawm and screawm until I'm sickkk" voice.

And something about the whole situation was just so utterly funny, so weird, and so demented, that I laughed. I sat on second base and cried with laughter. I couldn't play anymore that day. In fact, every time I looked at Rachel after that, I just burst into laughter, the harder she played, the funnier I found it. Every time we went out to play sport, as she stretched and limbered up, I couldn't help but just...laugh...in fact, I casually picked on her many times in the years afterwards...once she dropped a library book in Grade 12, and I wandered past muttering "Jesus wouldn't have dropped it". She looked like the weariest girl in the world.

She can always rest assured though that she has caused me to never lose my smile...

Desperately Seeking Ice Cream

2005-01-18T22:43:00.000-08:00

From cheese - to a suggestion I write about ice cream from the lovely Hannah at Whatevers Left UK Chart site - so yeah, why the hell not...

Desperately Seeking Ice Cream

Who was the genius who made up the childhood chant "I scream, you scream, we all scream, for ice cream?" - do people who make up childhood chants get credited? Artists rights? Royalties? Who was the first guy at a football game or whatever to start support by just spelling the teams name. "Give us a G" "Why?" "Just go with me..." "What do I do?" "Just when I say give us a G, you say G" "Why?" "Just do it! We'll spell the teams name!" "Can't we just say the teams name?" "NO! Spelling is inspirational!"

But I digress - I said before candy is the most illicit of substances for a child, but ice cream signifies a more special treat. To be honest, candy was everwhere, and cheap - 1c, 2c - but ice cream? That could cost a whole 20c minimum. Whenever I think of ice cream I think of the song "Pleasure and Pain" by the Divinyls, which posited there was a fine line between pleasure and pain. Ice cream was like that - it could bring joy and it could bring misery. And the biggest causer of pleasure was the treat that was the Golden Gaytime - an ice cream named in more innocent times, a yummy treat containing nuts, and nougat and which was also so cold on first bite, it hurt your teeth. It was a good ache though, a slight tremble ran through the eater as they enjoyed such a treat. It was (before Vodka laced Magnums) the high end of the ice cream spectrum.

There was a milk bar Claire and I visited on one of our trips to Tasmania, in a town called Pengiun, so called because once, fairy penguins were spotted there. There a milk bar we went into, and there was a moustached man behind the counter. He was putting salt on chips, even though we were the only two people in town, just in case someone needed chips NOW damn it. He had a giant signed John Farnham poster behind the wall, and green plastic garden furniture all through his store, that we figured he took home at the weekends. It took a moment to register he had customers, but when he did, he slowly put the salt down and looked at us calmly. He didn't speak, he just nodded slowly. I pointed to two Golden Gaytimes in the freezer. "Sorry...two Choc Wedges?" he said, smiling. "No," I said, pointing again, while Claire tried to demolish an antique version of Pacman by hitting the buttons too hard. "Two Bubble O Bills?" he said, motioning to another boy, his son I presume, as if my request was too difficult. "No, two Golden Gaytimes!" I said, shaking my head. At this point, the son and father bonded with a look, and then had a hearty chortle. He handed over the ice creams, saying "Enjoy your...Gaytime!" and waving us off, laughing at us as if we'd told him the one about the three nuns and the runaway rabbit.

We've often wondered about this, and whether he did this to everyone. Whether eventuallly the towns folk passed an ordinance to ban the sale of Golden Gaytimes from his store, or a passing gay rights activist had one day found this offensive, and complained. Maybe this was just the only way he could communicate to his son, the only common bond they shared. Or maybe, they laughed when anyone wanted an ice cream, chuckling at people buying Eskimo Pie's or Redskin Splits...

The Redskin Split was a strange ice cream, the kind your mum bought you when she had no money left in her purse, the lower end of the ice cream spectrum. It was like an Icy Pole, but with ice cream in the middle. It cost 20c back in the day, and doled out as an irregular treat round our house. One of my favourite memories in life is that once, my Dad, doing some work for charity, received about 100 Redskin Splits he was meant to distribute to the poor, but instead, he just bought all 100 and gave them to us. I hope the delivery guy gave the money to charity. Also, oddly, there was a Green Redskin split, which seemed to defeat the purpose.

My first best friend was called Emma Cobb, a pudgy girl with mannish hands, but a fantastic taste in back packs that I hope outlasted our friendship. Text books try and tell you a girl changes in puberty - real girls know the biggest change in any girl comes in the summer between age 5 and 6 when girls discover something more powerful than boys or drugs or all that other so called life changing stuff. They discover the power of being a bitch. They discover gossip, and very quickly form the cliques that will set them up for their high school life. One or two will even discover that if they just share a little bit of their lunch with the boys, and say that anything anyone carries "totally sucks", they can climb the social ladder.

Emma Cobb went from being a normal kid who liked stamps and running really fast into walls (well, avoiding them at the last minute) to a moody ball of angst, who cried when her lunch order bag was late, and who wouldn't do colouring in or play with lego because "it was for babies". One day, in the playground, I was munching on one of the 100 Redskin Splits we had (I think we had about 70 left at that point) when Emma Cobb came up to me, and wordlessly took it out of my hand, and threw it on the ground. I stood stunned, coming face to face with my first experience of bullying, of someone deliberately ruining something for pleasure. It was a pivotal moment, one that would set up my life. Word got round the Grade 1 playground quickly - "come quick, Alyson is having her first experience of bullying, let's hope she cries!"

I could have hit her. Well, I could have aimed a slap at her blotchy face. I could have walked away. I could have cried, given the masses what they wanted. Instead, out of nowhere, I screwed up my face, smoothed my brunette hair with my left hand, looked at the fallen ice cream, offered a moment of silent reflection, and hit the big Grade 1 1-2 punch...

"Oh...that was so funny, I forgot to laugh! Just cos your family is too poor for ice creams!"

Too poor for ice creams! I had hit her where it hurts. If needs be, I could have started up a chant about picking her nose, rubbing it in the dirt and eating it for desert, but the damage was done. Emma ran away to the corner of the playground crying, and didn't speak to me for the rest of our primary school lives, unless forced to be my partner in something. I realised then that I wasn't cut out to be a bitch, that I would embrace my role in life was to be a benny, dispassionate to social standings. Emma Cobb moved to Adelaide at the end of Grade 5, having seemingly made peace with the world, even bringing lamingtons to her farewell party.

There's a fine line between pleasure and pain? There's a finer line between ice creams bringing people together and tearing people apart - life is based on the motto - the better it tastes, the more people want it...it took ice cream to teach me that lesson...

Desperately Seeking Cheese

2005-01-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

The first little improv post went well didn't it? Well my good friend Tina T has challenged me to write about...cheese? Well, I guess we can do that...can't we?

Desperately Seeking Cheese

Childhood is a time of illicit thrills and simple pleasures. When you think about it, you spend your whole life being denied things when you are a child. Ice cream, fizzy drinks, chocolate, toys...candy is your obsession. The last thing you need or want is something "healthy" or "nutritious", no matter how cool you think your mum is. In Australia, cheese is just that thing in the sandwiches you have to either eat really quickly or throw away before you get to eat the delicious fun sized chocolate your mum has put in your lunch box.

I'm a vegetarian now, so I eat a lot of cheese, but back then, cheese was the enemy. So it wasn't a good idea to send "Mr Cheese" to our school. We had, like most schools in Australia, a dental van, a mobile dentist who drove around and came to schools to check the kids teeth out. This lead to two interesting points - firstly, my best friend Claire to this day claims the female dentist hated her, and would stamp her hand really hard when it came time to get the turtle stamp of approval (for being a good girl) and secondly, our dentist was obsessed with healthy diet. Obsessed to the point that kids eating candy would get a firm playground rebuke. These days, given the amount of boom-bah-latahs in our playground, she was probably quite right to be worried, but back then, she was just a boring benny speaking Flemish. Candy was wrong? What? So clearly, needing to work on her sales pitch, she invented Mr Cheese. And so, one day, he was there - suddenly into our lives.

Mr Cheese was an odd character. He was a man in a yellow suit and yellow top hat, who smiled a lot. He was the representative of the healthy food industry, sent to us from above, to sing, to dance, and teach us about the joys of vegetables. He looked like one of Australia's premier theatre restaurant performers, with a slightly sad smile through the clowning, but the dentist was impressed, using the "Point and Shout" technique favoured by kids acts ever since. "LOOK KIDS!" she said, pointing and shouting, "IT'S MIS-TAAHHH CHEEEESEEEE!" And lo, before a bunch of bored 8 year old kids, Mister Cheese appeared.

Mr Cheese was crossing the great 8 year old divide. He was on our turf. He was a childrens character with a message. I'd swear it was just our groundsman, dull Dave, but that might be my mind playing tricks on me. He stood at one end of the playground, we at the other. Time stood still. Tumbleweed blew across the ashpalt. He slowly and deliberately went up to a kid in our class called Bronwyn, and with all the professionalism he could muster, said to Brownyn "Do you like CHEEESEEE?". Everyone stopped. It would be up to Bronwyn, and Bronwyn alone how this would play out. If Bronwyn, a girl we'd mocked the previous year because she did a cartwheel and we saw her underpants, cracked, and said yes, she wanted to hear all about cheese, we'd all be here for 1/2 an hour, be force fed cheese until we turned yellow, we'd never see a Milky Way again...she had every reason to betray us, to bask in our suffering...the dentist and teachers eyed her coolly, we folded our arms, yearning for her to stay in our posse, in our gang. She slowly, and deliberately, spoke...

"NUP"

Mr Cheese had no hope after that. He was finished. Even our school bennys knew what to do. Whatever he did was dead. He even swung on the monkey bars, but he got nothing. Only the dentist applauded at the end. No one ever mentioned Bronwyn's underpants again. She was a school hero for the rest of her days.

For Bronwyn was lying. She loved cheese. She had a cheese sandwich every day for the rest of the time I knew her, but in my mind, she was the noble heroine of the only morality play children ever involve themselves in - fun vs boring.

And that, to me, is why I always remember cheese as a metaphor for life...

Testing

2005-01-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

My solo project is up and running...I should explain, I write for this website called CFB Goes Pop!

And it's fun and it's fine, but you know what, I've got things and jokes and stories that I need to post that perhaps wouldn't fit at The Pop. Besides, what I've always wondered is if I could strike out on this crazy internet voyage on my own...I haven't abandoned my Pop post, but I'm just...intrigued...

So blessed by the Power of the Y bird, let's set sail for adventure...