First I got into a yelling match with a bus driver.
Then, and more significantly, I found out that my son has Asperger's. Not that the school psychologist is available to share any of the details until a month from now.
That's what you get when you don't pay for services.
I'll post later.
Just felt the need to share. Or vent. Whatever.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Carlton
I grab my first coffee of the day at Tiamo’s: take-away. I’m on my way to the office of my job-that-pays-the-bills, a trip I make approximately twice a month.
At the bar, a stout middle-aged man sits before a plate of vegetables and unidentifiable blobs of rich brown meat. He sinks his fork into the meat with great gusto. It smells, and not in a good way. (To me, anyway.)
‘Join me!’ he admonishes the blonde young waitress, in perfectly enunciated BBC English.
‘Mmm, no thanks,’ she calls back over her shoulder, her back to us, hands busy in the sink. ‘I’m just not a fan of liver.’
The man laughs heartily in reply. So: that’s liver.
**
I’m in the fruit and vegetable shop, fetching a snack. Queuing. In front of me is a woman with a dark bob, expensively cut. She wears skinny jeans under baggy black leather boots, studded. A fine black woollen top clings tastefully to her lean torso. A hint of white singlet keeps her from revealing more than a crumb of cleavage. She turns her head to talk to the ‘older’ gentleman with her, and I realise with a shock that she, too, could be called ‘aging’. It’s only now that I notice the ever-so-slight steely glint to her hair, the silver that dances where the light falls on the crown of her head. Maybe you can buy youth, I reflect. Somehow, she doesn’t look ridiculous. She actually looks good. I juggle my mandarins and paper-bagged almonds from hand to hand as she chats with the aproned girl at the register and remember that I didn’t buy skinny jeans earlier in the month because I’m too old. I’m still too old.
**
I step out of my office onto the street. It’s dinner time, and I’m taking a break. The scene is breathtakingly, unexpectedly beautiful. Lygon Street is wreathed in fog. Down the road, at the intersection with Elgin Street, the familiar street scene fades into nothingness. A symphony of colours blinks back at me out of the mist like fairy lights: bright white, orange, red and green. (Street lamps, traffic lights, car headlights.) In the middle of the road, birch trees stand stark against the grey night. Their black branches reach into the fog and disappear.
I cross the road tentatively, carefully. I can barely see the cars approach – how will they see me?
I dawdle on my way to eat, wandering in circles, poking my head in and out of shops. At the entrance to Lygon Court, outside Borders and Nova cinema, a trio of violinists play a jaunty tune. The Big Issue vendor who normally sets up camp here is nowhere to be seen, perhaps hastened away by the cold tonight. Everywhere, people look content, relaxed, even as they breathe cold steam and brace themselves against the winter that has finally arrived. The street rings with voices. It is Friday night in Carlton and people are here to relax, throw off their weekday worries and ease into their two days of freedom.
In one of the shops, I overhear a conversation between two of the staff.
‘God, I hate weekends’ says one. ‘All the people from the SUBURBS come out and ask STUPID questions.’
**
Tiamo’s. Again. The outside tables are packed with people, wrapped in winter coats and wreathed in tightly wrapped scarves. One table is empty, though still littered with dishes. I glance inside through the window. People are queuing at the bar, waiting for tables. I poke my head through the door, the hanging wooden beads falling about my shoulders. Inside, it is warm and noisy and dimly lit. I’m hungry, and I’m wearing my trusty New York parka. I brave the cold at the free table outside.
A waiter is clearing the dishes as I approach. He is darkly handsome (though not really attractive), with a caterpillar moustache and a regal bearing. He looks at me and holds up three fingers, then two, then one.
‘How many?’
‘One.’
‘Ah.’
He sneers a little as he takes it in. I soon realise that sneering a little is his thing. He sneers as he brings my bread (buttered, which I asked not to have), as he lays out my cutlery, as he brings my spaghetti, and finally, as he ushers me inside to pay.
**
An Aboriginal woman appears over my shoulder as I sip from my glass and scribble on a scrap of paper I have found in my bag. She is not much older than me, by her appearance. Long, stringy hair frames her face from beneath her beanie. Steam drifts from her mouth as she begins.
‘Do you have any change?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Okay, have a good night.’
I am tired. I don’t know if I have any change, actually. I don’t really give it a second thought as I bend back to my paper.
I hear her repeat the question and glance up to see her legs at the next table. They dismiss her, as I did.
As she moves on, their conversation holds my attention.
‘Oh, I had the WORST beggar the other day. He was a dwarf …’
‘You just don’t know who the real beggars are, that’s the problem …’
‘SOME of them are genuine, I’m sure. A few.’
‘When I was in FRANCE, there was this MAN. His head looked like it was on backwards, like THIS. And then his legs went THIS way. Anyway … And he was shouting something, in the street. It was like GIVE ME MONEY!’ (This last bit is squealed in a desperate, shrill tone.) ‘GIVE ME MONEY!’ (Shrieks with laughter) ‘Of course, that’s not EXACTLY how he sounded.’ (The speaker is in hysterics now.) ‘It was IN FRENCH, of course!’
I glance up in alarm. I’ve been imagining these voices as belonging to a gang of well-off students, or maybe twenty-something professionals. Instead, the laughing woman bears a rigid grey coif and wire-rimmed glasses. Her gentleman companions wear blazers over knitted jumpers. They are members of the left-wing middle-class.
I feel ashamed that I didn’t at least look for some change.
**
Inside, three women in big winter coats are thawing on stools at the bar, wineglasses before them. The closest one to me wears a coat like a teddy bear: fluffy fake fur. Its collar brushes her cheeks. Springy curls, cut short, tease the tip of her collar. They are coffee-coloured, flecked with silver. A golden flower glints in her nose. Behind the counter, a grey-bearded man zipped into a slim-fitting tracksuit jacket barks orders like a traffic cop.
‘I can’t go any faster’ wails the grizzled, plaid-shirted man behind the coffee machine, as he pours hot milk into latte glasses.
As I pass through the door on my way out, another waiter dips a little bow in my direction and stands flamboyantly, gallantly aside to let me pass.
**
It’s 10pm when I gather up my laptop, my papers, the several books I have bought, and head for home: to the soundtrack of violins, the hum of car engines and the metal clanking of trams rounding the corner of Elgin Street.
At the bar, a stout middle-aged man sits before a plate of vegetables and unidentifiable blobs of rich brown meat. He sinks his fork into the meat with great gusto. It smells, and not in a good way. (To me, anyway.)
‘Join me!’ he admonishes the blonde young waitress, in perfectly enunciated BBC English.
‘Mmm, no thanks,’ she calls back over her shoulder, her back to us, hands busy in the sink. ‘I’m just not a fan of liver.’
The man laughs heartily in reply. So: that’s liver.
**
I’m in the fruit and vegetable shop, fetching a snack. Queuing. In front of me is a woman with a dark bob, expensively cut. She wears skinny jeans under baggy black leather boots, studded. A fine black woollen top clings tastefully to her lean torso. A hint of white singlet keeps her from revealing more than a crumb of cleavage. She turns her head to talk to the ‘older’ gentleman with her, and I realise with a shock that she, too, could be called ‘aging’. It’s only now that I notice the ever-so-slight steely glint to her hair, the silver that dances where the light falls on the crown of her head. Maybe you can buy youth, I reflect. Somehow, she doesn’t look ridiculous. She actually looks good. I juggle my mandarins and paper-bagged almonds from hand to hand as she chats with the aproned girl at the register and remember that I didn’t buy skinny jeans earlier in the month because I’m too old. I’m still too old.
**
I step out of my office onto the street. It’s dinner time, and I’m taking a break. The scene is breathtakingly, unexpectedly beautiful. Lygon Street is wreathed in fog. Down the road, at the intersection with Elgin Street, the familiar street scene fades into nothingness. A symphony of colours blinks back at me out of the mist like fairy lights: bright white, orange, red and green. (Street lamps, traffic lights, car headlights.) In the middle of the road, birch trees stand stark against the grey night. Their black branches reach into the fog and disappear.
I cross the road tentatively, carefully. I can barely see the cars approach – how will they see me?
I dawdle on my way to eat, wandering in circles, poking my head in and out of shops. At the entrance to Lygon Court, outside Borders and Nova cinema, a trio of violinists play a jaunty tune. The Big Issue vendor who normally sets up camp here is nowhere to be seen, perhaps hastened away by the cold tonight. Everywhere, people look content, relaxed, even as they breathe cold steam and brace themselves against the winter that has finally arrived. The street rings with voices. It is Friday night in Carlton and people are here to relax, throw off their weekday worries and ease into their two days of freedom.
In one of the shops, I overhear a conversation between two of the staff.
‘God, I hate weekends’ says one. ‘All the people from the SUBURBS come out and ask STUPID questions.’
**
Tiamo’s. Again. The outside tables are packed with people, wrapped in winter coats and wreathed in tightly wrapped scarves. One table is empty, though still littered with dishes. I glance inside through the window. People are queuing at the bar, waiting for tables. I poke my head through the door, the hanging wooden beads falling about my shoulders. Inside, it is warm and noisy and dimly lit. I’m hungry, and I’m wearing my trusty New York parka. I brave the cold at the free table outside.
A waiter is clearing the dishes as I approach. He is darkly handsome (though not really attractive), with a caterpillar moustache and a regal bearing. He looks at me and holds up three fingers, then two, then one.
‘How many?’
‘One.’
‘Ah.’
He sneers a little as he takes it in. I soon realise that sneering a little is his thing. He sneers as he brings my bread (buttered, which I asked not to have), as he lays out my cutlery, as he brings my spaghetti, and finally, as he ushers me inside to pay.
**
An Aboriginal woman appears over my shoulder as I sip from my glass and scribble on a scrap of paper I have found in my bag. She is not much older than me, by her appearance. Long, stringy hair frames her face from beneath her beanie. Steam drifts from her mouth as she begins.
‘Do you have any change?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Okay, have a good night.’
I am tired. I don’t know if I have any change, actually. I don’t really give it a second thought as I bend back to my paper.
I hear her repeat the question and glance up to see her legs at the next table. They dismiss her, as I did.
As she moves on, their conversation holds my attention.
‘Oh, I had the WORST beggar the other day. He was a dwarf …’
‘You just don’t know who the real beggars are, that’s the problem …’
‘SOME of them are genuine, I’m sure. A few.’
‘When I was in FRANCE, there was this MAN. His head looked like it was on backwards, like THIS. And then his legs went THIS way. Anyway … And he was shouting something, in the street. It was like GIVE ME MONEY!’ (This last bit is squealed in a desperate, shrill tone.) ‘GIVE ME MONEY!’ (Shrieks with laughter) ‘Of course, that’s not EXACTLY how he sounded.’ (The speaker is in hysterics now.) ‘It was IN FRENCH, of course!’
I glance up in alarm. I’ve been imagining these voices as belonging to a gang of well-off students, or maybe twenty-something professionals. Instead, the laughing woman bears a rigid grey coif and wire-rimmed glasses. Her gentleman companions wear blazers over knitted jumpers. They are members of the left-wing middle-class.
I feel ashamed that I didn’t at least look for some change.
**
Inside, three women in big winter coats are thawing on stools at the bar, wineglasses before them. The closest one to me wears a coat like a teddy bear: fluffy fake fur. Its collar brushes her cheeks. Springy curls, cut short, tease the tip of her collar. They are coffee-coloured, flecked with silver. A golden flower glints in her nose. Behind the counter, a grey-bearded man zipped into a slim-fitting tracksuit jacket barks orders like a traffic cop.
‘I can’t go any faster’ wails the grizzled, plaid-shirted man behind the coffee machine, as he pours hot milk into latte glasses.
As I pass through the door on my way out, another waiter dips a little bow in my direction and stands flamboyantly, gallantly aside to let me pass.
**
It’s 10pm when I gather up my laptop, my papers, the several books I have bought, and head for home: to the soundtrack of violins, the hum of car engines and the metal clanking of trams rounding the corner of Elgin Street.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Show and tell
It wasn't just me who audibly snorted during today's show and tell in seven-year-old F's class today. The teacher's aide was similarly bemused.
Young A brought along her baby blankets to show the class. Very sweet. Then she rummaged in her bag for 'my first phone'. I expected a flourescent plastic thing. Instead, she triumphantly held aloft a stainless steel contraption much, much nicer than my last mobile phone.
'It takes photos and everything' she beamed importantly.
There was a collective gasp among her classmates.
As I said, the teacher's aide snorted. I don't know what I did. I think I laughed.
'I've taken the battery out' she said. 'My mum gave it to me last week when she ordered her new phone. She wanted a black one.'
So, I figured it must have been relegated to A's toybox instead of hard rubbbish.
I was wrong.
'Do you send messages?' asked a classmate.
'Yes. LOTS. I'm only supposed to do it when my mum and dad are in the room watching, so they know who I'm talking to, and because it costs lots of money. But ACTUALLY I send lots and lots from my bedroom upstairs.'
'Are there games?'
'Yes. LOTS.' She proceeded to list the games.
'Thank you A' said the teacher. 'Next please.'
Young A brought along her baby blankets to show the class. Very sweet. Then she rummaged in her bag for 'my first phone'. I expected a flourescent plastic thing. Instead, she triumphantly held aloft a stainless steel contraption much, much nicer than my last mobile phone.
'It takes photos and everything' she beamed importantly.
There was a collective gasp among her classmates.
As I said, the teacher's aide snorted. I don't know what I did. I think I laughed.
'I've taken the battery out' she said. 'My mum gave it to me last week when she ordered her new phone. She wanted a black one.'
So, I figured it must have been relegated to A's toybox instead of hard rubbbish.
I was wrong.
'Do you send messages?' asked a classmate.
'Yes. LOTS. I'm only supposed to do it when my mum and dad are in the room watching, so they know who I'm talking to, and because it costs lots of money. But ACTUALLY I send lots and lots from my bedroom upstairs.'
'Are there games?'
'Yes. LOTS.' She proceeded to list the games.
'Thank you A' said the teacher. 'Next please.'
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Hypothetical dilemma
What to do when you are nearly eight years old, you profess to hate girls, and you realise - to your horror - that you have 'fallen in love' with one?
You don't tell anyone, even your mother, for a really long time.
You nearly DIE when she walks past you at the school disco and LOOKS at you - for once - and you are crying because a prep has been beating you up. How EMBARASSING!
She collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards, so you challenge her to a duel. But she says she is too scared to duel. You plot to convince her to duel you and PLAN TO LET HER WIN. This is a big thing, as you HATE to lose. Anything. And you often cheat in order to win, though you'd never admit it, not even to yourself.
You draw a love heart with your names in it and hide it in your drawer, never to show anyone. As you get out your textas to draw it, you decide to confide in your Mum about your BIG SECRET. You make her promise never to tell anyone, not even Dad.
'I won't,' she promises. 'Not even The Husband.'
'You can tell HIM,' you say.
Your Mum is on the phone to her Mum.
'My son is telling me a secret,' she says. 'But I can't tell you, sorry.'
'You can,' you say. 'Just her. I think she might know something about boy's fashion, and I need advice.'
When your mum gets off the phone she asks why you need to know about boy's fashion. You are not known for a great interest in fashion, beyond light-up TMNT sneakers that were JUST PERFECT for the disco and your habit of writing slogans on skivvies with permanent texta. And you quite like to wear your navy school trackies on weekends.
'So she will fall in love with me, too,' you tell your Mum.
'Oh,' she says. 'You think fashion will make her fall in love?'
'Yes.'
Your Mum tells you that she will certainly seek some advice on fashion for you, and suggests that the Husband may have some advice, as he knows a lot about boy's fashion.
'Oh YES!' you say. 'Good one Mum. That would be PERFECT!'
'And your aunties love fashion,' she says. 'They are FASHION EXPERTS. They used to buy all your clothes.'
'YES, that would be great.'
'What about me?' your Mum asks. 'Do I know about fashion?'
'Yes.'
'What about your Dad?'
'No.'
'He doesn't know about fashion?'
'No, he DOES NOT.'
'No,' your Mum smiles. 'He does not.'
The most important thing, your Mum says, the thing that will really make a difference, is if you are fun to be around. 'Do you want to know what made me fall in love with The Husband?' she asks.
'YES!'
'Well, he was handsome, of course. But more than that, he was very nice and we had great talks and we had fun together. And most of all, he made me laugh.'
'Oh,' you say. 'Well, that could be a problem.'
'But I thought you said you were the class clown?' says your Mum.
'Yes, I am.'
'But nobody laughs at your jokes?'
'They do,' you explain. 'Lots of them do. But some of them don't. And SHE never seems to laugh.'
Your Mum has one last piece of advice to deliver.
'Do you know what would make you even handsomer than you are now?' she says.
'No, what?'
'If you let me comb down your hair before school in the mornings and flatten down the sticky-up bits.'
'Mum,' you say. 'I don't think that will help AT ALL.'
You don't tell anyone, even your mother, for a really long time.
You nearly DIE when she walks past you at the school disco and LOOKS at you - for once - and you are crying because a prep has been beating you up. How EMBARASSING!
She collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards, so you challenge her to a duel. But she says she is too scared to duel. You plot to convince her to duel you and PLAN TO LET HER WIN. This is a big thing, as you HATE to lose. Anything. And you often cheat in order to win, though you'd never admit it, not even to yourself.
You draw a love heart with your names in it and hide it in your drawer, never to show anyone. As you get out your textas to draw it, you decide to confide in your Mum about your BIG SECRET. You make her promise never to tell anyone, not even Dad.
'I won't,' she promises. 'Not even The Husband.'
'You can tell HIM,' you say.
Your Mum is on the phone to her Mum.
'My son is telling me a secret,' she says. 'But I can't tell you, sorry.'
'You can,' you say. 'Just her. I think she might know something about boy's fashion, and I need advice.'
When your mum gets off the phone she asks why you need to know about boy's fashion. You are not known for a great interest in fashion, beyond light-up TMNT sneakers that were JUST PERFECT for the disco and your habit of writing slogans on skivvies with permanent texta. And you quite like to wear your navy school trackies on weekends.
'So she will fall in love with me, too,' you tell your Mum.
'Oh,' she says. 'You think fashion will make her fall in love?'
'Yes.'
Your Mum tells you that she will certainly seek some advice on fashion for you, and suggests that the Husband may have some advice, as he knows a lot about boy's fashion.
'Oh YES!' you say. 'Good one Mum. That would be PERFECT!'
'And your aunties love fashion,' she says. 'They are FASHION EXPERTS. They used to buy all your clothes.'
'YES, that would be great.'
'What about me?' your Mum asks. 'Do I know about fashion?'
'Yes.'
'What about your Dad?'
'No.'
'He doesn't know about fashion?'
'No, he DOES NOT.'
'No,' your Mum smiles. 'He does not.'
The most important thing, your Mum says, the thing that will really make a difference, is if you are fun to be around. 'Do you want to know what made me fall in love with The Husband?' she asks.
'YES!'
'Well, he was handsome, of course. But more than that, he was very nice and we had great talks and we had fun together. And most of all, he made me laugh.'
'Oh,' you say. 'Well, that could be a problem.'
'But I thought you said you were the class clown?' says your Mum.
'Yes, I am.'
'But nobody laughs at your jokes?'
'They do,' you explain. 'Lots of them do. But some of them don't. And SHE never seems to laugh.'
Your Mum has one last piece of advice to deliver.
'Do you know what would make you even handsomer than you are now?' she says.
'No, what?'
'If you let me comb down your hair before school in the mornings and flatten down the sticky-up bits.'
'Mum,' you say. 'I don't think that will help AT ALL.'
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Best Stepfather in the World
Today, The Husband reminded me of why I am so incredibly lucky to have him, not only as a husband but as co-parent of my child. F sent him a quite haughty email:
I'm afraid I was terribly amused and proud of his seven-year-old writing ability. However, The Husband took the more appropriate and useful parental response and chastened him for his attitude. In the nicest way.
I mean in THE NICEST WAY, too. In fact, he sent a two-page inspirational email on learning to handle annoyance at not getting things right or needing help, using a football analogy throughout, along with a charming illustrative anecdote about Chris Judd's brother.
I am so incredibly impressed by this damned fine example of (step) parenting that here is his response:
And here is the best bit, the story of Chris Judd's little-known brother:
I read it aloud to F. He looked at me with wide eyes during several sections, and looked pleased during others. Especially when I read about how good Chris Judd is.
'Wow' he said when I'd finished. 'If I keep going the way I am, I'll end up like Chris Judd's brother, won't I?'
*** I don't think the story about Chris Judd's brother is anything but an allegory, of course. Though I am so clueless about footy that it may well be.
As you know it is very hard for me to work out my dream teams' passwords because I have two.
JUST TELL ME WHO THE PLAYERS ARE!
I'm afraid I was terribly amused and proud of his seven-year-old writing ability. However, The Husband took the more appropriate and useful parental response and chastened him for his attitude. In the nicest way.
I mean in THE NICEST WAY, too. In fact, he sent a two-page inspirational email on learning to handle annoyance at not getting things right or needing help, using a football analogy throughout, along with a charming illustrative anecdote about Chris Judd's brother.
I am so incredibly impressed by this damned fine example of (step) parenting that here is his response:
I didn't actually know that it is very hard for you to work out your
dream teams' passwords because of the fact you have two. Maybe next time you can use the same password, then you only have to remember one.
Shouting at me, all be it via email, is not appropriate. If you want my help you know all you have to do is ask nicely rather than demand that I tell you.
When you can't work something out or you get frustrated remember that getting cross isn't going to help. All that does is make you feel awful and unhappy and it doesn't solve the problem. Take a few deep breaths and ask yourself "Now, how can I solve this?" and if you don't think you can solve it yourself ask someone else, politely of course.
The rewarding thing about finding things that you can't do or work out is learning how to do them. Because once you've learnt how to do them it's an extra thing you can do. Sometimes it's challenging, but you feel really good once you have learnt how to do it. Remember when you hated to kick the footy because you didn't know how? Well, maybe you don't remember, but you used to hate it and never wanted to go outside and kick it. Now look at you you love it, you can't stop kicking it, it's all about footy for you. And it feels really good when you do a good kick, doesn't it? When you kick it straight to someone or kick a goal it's the best feeling.
When you are having difficulty with something, on the computer or playing sport or doing schoolwork, just remember that great feeling you get when you can do it. Focus on that and remember that you will feel that way if you try and work it out rather than getting angry. Even thinking about how good you feel when you accomplish something can make you feel good. Sometimes it's tough, but often the toughest challenges, the hardest things to do, give you the greatest reward and make you feel the best.
Remember this also, you have a lot of people around you who love you and are there to help you and always want the best for you. You should see all those people as people you can learn from so you can be the best you can be. Look at your Dad and Mum and Stepmother and me, we've been around for a while, and we've had to go through all the things you are going through and will go through. All we want to do is help you and make it easier for you. When we show you how to handball, or write, or draw, or ride a bike we're just trying to help you out and help you improve in these things and make it easier for you.
You know people like Chris Judd and Daniel Kerr and Mark Seaby and Andrew Embley and Chad Fletcher and David Wirrpunda and Jason Akermanis and Aaron Davey and Michael Jordan and heaps of other people all became the best footballers and best basketballers and the best at what they do because they would watch what other people did, ask them for advice and listen to the advice that was given to them. They
realised that to be the best, the key was to get help and advice from others and not think that your way is the best way and the only way.
And here is the best bit, the story of Chris Judd's little-known brother:
Chris Judd has a brother who's not much older than him. He played football with Chris when they were growing up together and he used to always act like and say he could do everything. When his Dad tried to show him how to handball, he would say, "That might be your way but I do it like this" or when his Dad tried to show him how to tackle he said, "I know, I know" and not listen. Chris's brother didn't want to show anybody that he couldn't do something, he was a little embarrassed, so he would just make up how to do things on his own. Chris on the other hand listened to his father, his coach, the next-door neighbour, his friends and would practice what he was taught.
Chris's brother struggled through junior football, he really wanted to be good at footy, but he couldn't bring himself to take the advice or ask the advice of his Dad and coach and other people, because he didn't want to look like he didn't know how to do something. Meanwhile, Chris got really, really good. He would train and practice everyday, listen to the advice his coach and Dad and others gave him
and admitted that he didn't know how to do something, because then he knew that someone would show him how to do it and he would be even better.
Now you haven't heard of Chris Judd's brother* have you? That's because he didn't make it to the AFL or any football league for that matter. He still doesn't listen to anyone or even see his family and does his own thing. He lives by himself in a small apartment in Perth and has no friends, no job and no family. He's always angry and miserable.
As you know, Chris Judd went on to play in the AFL, the best football league in the world, and was officially named the best player in that league a couple of years ago. He went on to win the 2006 premiership and became captain of his side. He even said when he won the Brownlow medal and the premiership, that he couldn't have done it without the help of a lot of people. People still reckon he is the best player in
the league, and you know what, he still trains and practices and listens to his coach and his Dad and others everyday to make sure he stays the best!
Love you lots
The Husband
I read it aloud to F. He looked at me with wide eyes during several sections, and looked pleased during others. Especially when I read about how good Chris Judd is.
'Wow' he said when I'd finished. 'If I keep going the way I am, I'll end up like Chris Judd's brother, won't I?'
*** I don't think the story about Chris Judd's brother is anything but an allegory, of course. Though I am so clueless about footy that it may well be.
The email generation
The Husband Skyped me today with a query about an email he had received this morning from my seven-year-old son. I was frantically making school lunches at the time he sent it and hadn't had a chance to read what he had written.
This was it:
They both play this online footy tipping competition called AFL Dream Team. That's what the email was referring to. Neither of us are quite sure what problem he was experiencing or why he asked the Husband, in Mexico, for his help.
But what made the Husband especially curious and me laugh and laugh was the way he phrased it, as if they are working together on a business project.
And the thing that REALLY made me smile was that F seems to have mastered, either by accident or design, what so many high school graduates have not: the art of the correct use of the apostrophe. Just look!
He is destined for a bright future.
* From a Chastened Mum: the Husband sent F a long and beautifully considered email about how to solve problems by talking rather than yelling at a person, even if it is yelling via email. (Including, 'Well, no, I actually didn't know that it was hard for you ...') Which is absolutely true. I really shouldn't be proud or amused by haughty emails. He is destined for a bright future so long as his stepfather helps his mother keep her head screwed on right.
This was it:
As you know it is very hard for me to work out my dream teams' passwords because I have two.
JUST TELL ME WHO THE PLAYERS ARE!
They both play this online footy tipping competition called AFL Dream Team. That's what the email was referring to. Neither of us are quite sure what problem he was experiencing or why he asked the Husband, in Mexico, for his help.
But what made the Husband especially curious and me laugh and laugh was the way he phrased it, as if they are working together on a business project.
And the thing that REALLY made me smile was that F seems to have mastered, either by accident or design, what so many high school graduates have not: the art of the correct use of the apostrophe. Just look!
He is destined for a bright future.
* From a Chastened Mum: the Husband sent F a long and beautifully considered email about how to solve problems by talking rather than yelling at a person, even if it is yelling via email. (Including, 'Well, no, I actually didn't know that it was hard for you ...') Which is absolutely true. I really shouldn't be proud or amused by haughty emails. He is destined for a bright future so long as his stepfather helps his mother keep her head screwed on right.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Yapping bitches
I trudged to school for my afternoon pick-up through the bucketing rain today, wearing full eye make-up and lipstick as a result of an afternoon client meeting, teamed with and my trusty $10 hooded parka. Classy.
At school, I tied the dogs up by the gate and scurried across the yard to join the huddle of parents waiting under the shelter. No sooner had I started chatting to one of the few dads there, than the unmistakable yapping of small dogs cut through the dull thud of the rain. I started to go.
'Whose dogs are they?!' exclaimed one of the nearby mums.
'My god! I know!' boomed another, raising her voice in the hope of its reaching the culprit.
'They're right next to the SCHOOL GATES!' huffed yet another.
'Right!' said a fourth. 'I'm off to the microphone. That's IT!'
Meanwhile, I stood frozen, vacillating between running to move the dogs a few metres from the gate, as was my original instinct, and hiding so the pack wouldn't pounce and burn me at the stake.
When they mentioned the microphone, I jumped to it.
'That's my dogs they're talking about' I whispered to the dad. He laughed.
I bent in the rain to untie them and moved them down the road. As I turned to rejoin the schoolyard, I ducked my head again, though the rain was easing.
Back under the shelter, I made eye contact with the dad.
'If people really want you to do something, they shouldn't speak like that' I am surprised to find myself say. 'I was almost too embarassed to move the dogs then. If they'd asked reasonably instead of shouting about how awful the person with the dogs is, they would have got a quicker reaction.'
I realise I am speaking loudly.
I realise that once again, I am furious with petty playground politics and the way I always seem to take the role of the weird kid at school who can't do anything right.
I fetch my son, who has unbuttoned his shirt as I TOLD HIM NOT TO, revealing the bitten-off hole in his skivvy underneath. (He did it himself in the midst of a temper tantrum.) His parka is in his backpack and he stands shouting his news of the day into the rain.
'Stupid yappy bitches' I growl under my breath as we duck back across the yard and out of the gate.
At home, I ask F to peel off his wet clothes and put them straight into the washing machine. All except the skivvy, which goes straight into the bin.
At school, I tied the dogs up by the gate and scurried across the yard to join the huddle of parents waiting under the shelter. No sooner had I started chatting to one of the few dads there, than the unmistakable yapping of small dogs cut through the dull thud of the rain. I started to go.
'Whose dogs are they?!' exclaimed one of the nearby mums.
'My god! I know!' boomed another, raising her voice in the hope of its reaching the culprit.
'They're right next to the SCHOOL GATES!' huffed yet another.
'Right!' said a fourth. 'I'm off to the microphone. That's IT!'
Meanwhile, I stood frozen, vacillating between running to move the dogs a few metres from the gate, as was my original instinct, and hiding so the pack wouldn't pounce and burn me at the stake.
When they mentioned the microphone, I jumped to it.
'That's my dogs they're talking about' I whispered to the dad. He laughed.
I bent in the rain to untie them and moved them down the road. As I turned to rejoin the schoolyard, I ducked my head again, though the rain was easing.
Back under the shelter, I made eye contact with the dad.
'If people really want you to do something, they shouldn't speak like that' I am surprised to find myself say. 'I was almost too embarassed to move the dogs then. If they'd asked reasonably instead of shouting about how awful the person with the dogs is, they would have got a quicker reaction.'
I realise I am speaking loudly.
I realise that once again, I am furious with petty playground politics and the way I always seem to take the role of the weird kid at school who can't do anything right.
I fetch my son, who has unbuttoned his shirt as I TOLD HIM NOT TO, revealing the bitten-off hole in his skivvy underneath. (He did it himself in the midst of a temper tantrum.) His parka is in his backpack and he stands shouting his news of the day into the rain.
'Stupid yappy bitches' I growl under my breath as we duck back across the yard and out of the gate.
At home, I ask F to peel off his wet clothes and put them straight into the washing machine. All except the skivvy, which goes straight into the bin.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Recipe for a successful weekend (or: lazy blog topic)
1. Finally tackling the pile of dirty dishes threatening to engulf the sink and feeling virtuous
2. A lazy day trip to Carlton to sip lattes and eat lemon meringue tarts at Brunetti’s, while catching up with an old friend
3. Picking up your lay-by of a coveted pair of shoes (Doc Marten zip-up boots in a delicious shade of red)
4. Putting down a new lay-by on jeans … though not the skinny pair you’d kind of planned on, as these officially make you look like Mutton Dressed As Lamb
5. Dinner at the pub with a new(ish) friend and too much red wine, wearing wonderful new boots
6. Hot chocolate with pink and white marshmallows in front of a DVD (though it doesn’t go too well with the red wine, as you discover as you lie in bed half-watching Rage at the end of the night, feeling your age as you marvel at Depeche Mode and Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
7. Plotting revenge on your neighbourhood nemesis by sketching out a Desperate Housewives style satirical novel with HER as the villainess. Your pleasure is not diminished by the fact that you know you will never write it.
8. Serendipitously stumbling upon new lodgings – and getting a loan to help you move house within minutes (thanks Dad!)
9. Evading work and a creeping deadline for as long as possible*
10. Sunday night home-made lasagne (by you) with generous lashings of red wine in the sauce and enough left-overs to feed you for a week … which you’ll probably need, as you’ll now be too busy working to cook.
* I should mention that Sunday WAS spent working (though I should have been doing it Saturday too, really). But hey, then I got lasagne ...
Monday, May 21, 2007
Hell is other parents’ hang-ups
On Saturday, F and I trekked out to Readings Carlton to meet a certain idol of his. Author Andy Griffiths, king of the kids thanks to his wicked, Paul Jennings-ish sense of humour … and his wholehearted embrace of bums and toilet gags.
F is a big fan. He reads Andy’s Just series (Just Kidding, Just Annoying, Just Stupid) so often that the books look as if they’ve been buried under a few acres of landfill (which his room DOES sometimes resemble). He reads them on the train, in bed and on the toilet. More often than I’d like, about an hour after bedtime, I’ll open the door to the toilet and there he is, pants around his ankles, frowning intently at a Just book – with the look of a boy who has been hiding out in there for a Very Long Time.
***
Sunday, we had another engagement F was very much looking forward to: a birthday party for his sometime best friend, A. F had played at A’s house once or twice a week, until A’s mother cut off the play dates ‘until further notice’ a couple of months ago. She said she couldn’t cope with her son’s behaviour when F was over, and she was punishing him by depriving him of F’s company.
Yeah, right.
My fellow parent had not liked F very much for quite a while. Who could forget such gems as ‘the problem with his personality is …’ (one of them was ‘he reads above his age level’, I kid you not) and her ongoing annoyance that he had told her son where babies come from?
***
When I got back from overseas, my ever-so-slick ex had wrangled a couple of mothers into helping him out by each having F after school once a week. One of them was a single mother, who was helping him because he told her he was ‘all alone’. I pointed out to her that the Ex has a stay-at-home wife. (‘Oh god’ she said. ‘I never thought of that.’) The other was The Mother.
On my return, I offered to have her son every week for a while, or for the boys to play at each of our houses on alternate weeks. I could somehow sense that she wasn’t up to having F every week. In fact, while I was in Mexico, the Ex had laughingly told me about a few incidents where he would arrive to pick F up and find her having a meltdown over the boys’ behaviour.
The first Wednesday I was back (their old play day), I found F outside A’s classroom, giggling together over AFL trading cards. The Mother was looking slightly panicked by his presence.
‘But I play at A’s house on Wednesdays!’ F protested when he saw me.
‘Not necessarily anymore. We’re going home now.’
‘Can F come and play?’ chorused A and his younger brother. ‘Pleeeeease?’
The Mother smiled, with her mouth but not her eyes. I’d spontaneously taken her boys the previous day because she’d had a headache.
‘Oh, okay’ she said.
‘Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!’
The three boys raced ahead to the bike shed. I suggested the alternate weeks idea.
‘YES!’ she said, relieved. ‘Let’s do that. W [her youngest] was playing with A and F in the playground at the start of the year and I was worried and I spoke to his teacher and she said that’s normal, that’s fine for preppies to hang out with older kids they know. Now A is playing with B in the playground instead, so THAT’s good, but W is still playing with F. And he’s been coming home saying rude words ever since he started school and he NEVER did that before. So, yeah, it would be good to, uh, limit the amount they …’
At this point in the monologue it seemed to dawn on her that I wasn’t suggesting the boys only play together every other week, but that they rotate houses. She paused.
‘Yes, okay, let’s do that. Swap houses every week. Okay.’ She sounded like she wasn’t sure how to get out of it. Which I’m sure is exactly what happened between her and my Ex.
I bolted home across the park. I had mountains of work to do and I was (really truly) all alone for a month with F. I planned to make use of my newly gifted time to get through some work. As I sat down at my computer, the phone rang. I let it go through to the answering machine, listening to see if it was something I really needed to answer. No one spoke.
At 6pm, I arrived at the Mother’s front gate, as arranged. Our two small, fluffy white dogs yapped piercingly at my side. Her waist-high black dog barked back menacingly from behind the gate, lurching its great head through the bars to gnash its teeth at us. I stood there, shouting ‘F! I’M HERE!’
The Mother arrived and escorted Kujo into the house. She scurried back to the fence.
‘Oh GOD’ she huffed. ‘I called you as soon as I got home to say I’m sorry, I can’t do this, and ask you to pick him up. But you obviously weren’t there yet.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, it wasn’t REALLY his fault.’
Apparently, A offered F his bike to ride home. F rode it. A started screaming and wailing that he wanted his bike. They caught up to F, who was waiting further across the park. A screamed that he wanted his bike. F said no, he gave it to him. The Mother said to A ‘no, I heard you give it to F, you can’t take it back.’
‘But, you know, he really could have given it to him anyway’ she said to me now. ‘He could see how upset he was. But anyway …’
A screamed all the way to the end of the park, where F waited to cross the road to A’s street. He offered A the bike. A screamed no. ‘But I wanted to ride it HOME FROM SCHOOL!’ he apparently wailed. ‘We’re NEARLY HOME now!’ And then once inside, he didn’t want to share his toys either, the cause of more screaming.
‘A is so HYSTERICAL’ wailed the Mother. ‘He says such NASTY things to me, to get a rise out of me. I don’t know where he gets it from. Neither of US are like that.’
I shake my head and commiserate as F comes out, schoolbag in hand, to join us. W scales the fence as F and A exit through the gate. They’re obviously fine now, all three of them squealing excitedly about nothing much.
‘I think’ said the Mother. ‘That we should not have F over any more. Until further notice. You know, to punish A.’
‘Okay’ I said, probably quite snippily, and stalked off down the street with the dogs straining at their leashes and her two boys following us on scooters.
‘F was bad’ W told me.
‘W’ I snapped. ‘Every time I see you, you tell me F was bad. He never tells me anything bad about you. Maybe he will if you keep doing it. I don’t really want to hear it.’
‘He took my brother’s biiiike’ W drawled, in that sing-song ‘I’m dob-bing’ tone.
I swung on him. Inappropriately. I’m 31, he is five.
‘Well, I heard that your brother gave him the bike. That your brother threw a tantrum about it. It sounds like your brother was naughty.’
F was looking at me with wide eyes.
‘No, he waaaasn’t. It was his bike. F was bad.’
‘He wasn’t, W. And I don’t want to hear it.’ I walked off, ignoring his shouts to the contrary at my back.
F didn’t say anything as we crossed the creek on the path home.
‘You won’t be playing there anymore’ I had to tell him. ‘It’s because of A being naughty, not you.’
***
Saturday. We are on the train, our first leg of our journey to Readings. We are deciding what to get A for his birthday. I suggest that maybe we should get something at Readings.
‘YES’ says F firmly. ‘Do you know that they don’t have ANY BOOKS? Really, mum. Their bookshelves are full of toys. Toys! A is NOT that into reading. All he reads are COMICS. We MUST get him a book and get him into reading.’
I am amused and tickled and pleased for so many reasons. As a bookworm, it’s nice to be reminded (by his natural enthusiasm) that my son is one of his own volition, not my pushing. As a profound disliker of The Mother, I am bitchily amused by his observation. As his mother, I am amused by his staunch statement. And as a lazy woman embarking on a lazy Saturday, I am pleased that we can kill two birds with one stone at the bookshop.
‘But we can’t get an Andy Griffiths’ says F. ‘[The Mother] hates Andy Griffiths. She says he is inappropriate.’
‘Ah, yes’ I say. ‘Though we could get him The Cat on the Mat is Flat. That’s not rude. It’s just silly.’
‘We’ll get him Maxx Rumble. A is into footy, so he might get into that. And it’s illustrated by Terry Denton. Will he be there? He can sign it!’
‘Oh. I think he is.’
‘Good. That’s settled. Do you know they don’t even get bedtime stories?’ says F, full of seven-year-old scorn. ‘They just get bedtime TOYS.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure they have books. Maybe they’re somewhere else, not in their rooms.’
‘They don’t! I’ve SEEN their house.’
I’m not sure. The Mother is a crazy bitch, but I know she reads.
**
The children’s buyer at Readings is an old friend. F looks at the table of Terry and Andy books and asks her where the Maxx Rumble books are.
‘You’re so clever!’ she tells him. ‘I forgot about them.’ F fetches them from the shelf, feeling very important, and hands them over, keeping one for himself. He takes a place near the signing table and sits between a couple of 11 and 12 year-old boys. One of the boys clutches a pile of the Just books.
‘Oh. I have them’ says F.
‘I LOVE the Just books’ says the boy. ‘I have the whole series.’
‘Not Just Shocking’ says F. ‘That’s not out yet.’ I don’t know how he knows that. I don’t know that.
‘I KNOW’ breathes the boy. ‘I have the whole series except that one. I HAVE to get it as SOON as it comes out. If I don’t get the whole Just series, if I don’t get Just Shocking, I will DIE. My life WILL NOT be worth LIVING.’
F looks at him in solemn admiration.
‘Me too’ he echoes approvingly. I can barely contain my amusement. This boy is talking exactly like F.
The three boys begin an animated discussion of the ‘bumosaurs’ in the new book and the characters in the Just series. They talk in detail about characters, events and favourite stories. I buy F the new book at the counter and get back just as Andy and Terry arrive.
The boys gaze at them in awe.
F is the star of the show. Or maybe, he's the sideshow. I veer between amused, proud and mortified. I'm not sure how much I should let him be and how much I should urge him to pull his head in. When the kids are asked to demonstrate farts, his is the grossest. He asks questions about ‘the time your sister Jen …’. He suggests Terry add a poo to his picture of a bumosaur. He suggests Terry name a bumosaur after him, inspired after another girl gets the honour. At question time, he shows signs of being one of those incredibly annoying people at writer’s festivals. The ones who make a statement instead of asking a question. ‘I was wondering, the other day I made a new comic about Bum Man. And his power is earthquake farts.’
‘And your question?’ asks Terry.
‘Well, Andy, I wondered if you would write it as a story in Just Shocking?’
When F’s turn comes to have his book sign, Andy greets him by name.
‘This one is for Terry’ F says. ‘It’s for my friend.’ He gets his Bumosaur book signed, then moves over to Terry.
‘Hi F.’
‘Terry, my friend’s mum is NOT IMPRESSED with Andy.’
Terry laughs. A lot.
‘Why is that?’
‘She thinks his books are INAPPROPRIATE.’
Terry laughs more.
‘Tell Andy. Hey Andy.’ He plucks his sleeve. ‘F has something to tell you.’
He repeats his statement. Andy splutters with laughter.
‘I think she sounds inappropriate! No, really, she’s absolutely right. My books ARE inappropriate.’
F goes home happy. So do I.
I tell him many times pre-party NOT to tell The Mother about what Andy Griffiths said about her. And what he said. I can tell he is dying to do it.
**
Sunday. I remind F as we cross the park not to tell The Mother about Andy. (He is recalling the incident.) I remind him two doors from the house not to tell the Mother about Andy. ‘Yes mum.’ I remind him that there always seems to be trouble here and that he must behave. ‘Yes mum.’
I find another parent lurking at the gate, looking worried. Kujo throws himself at the bars in a frenzy.
‘I’m not goin’ in there with that dog!’ the parent says. ‘I’ll wait ‘til someone comes out.’
‘Yeah, me too’ I concur. I’m sure Kujo doesn’t bite, but he puts on a pretty convincing show.
The Mother soon arrives and pushes the dog inside and out the back.
‘Hi’ she says.
‘Hi’ says F. ‘I went to see Andy Griffiths yesterday!’
I hold my breath. The Mother actually rolls her eyes at me and makes a disapproving face. It’s as if he told her we went to Sexpo yesterday. I am, as always, gobsmacked by the weird lack of social niceties. Who does she think took him to see Andy Griffiths? Why would I join in the disapproval?
‘Oh DID you?’ she says wryly. ‘And was he RUDE?’
F is off down the hallway, thrusting his present at his friend. Crisis averted. For now.
Another mother, dressed gaily in Bulldogs colours, breezes out the door, after arranging that she will pick her son up when the game finishes.
‘So, what time do I pick him up?’ I ask. I always ask this question when I drop him off anywhere, just to make sure I’ve got it right. But it seems I’m being confronting.
‘Well, B’s mum is coming at the end of the footy, so late in the afternoon. And the other kids … well, some of them are staying later and … The party finishes at three. Pick him up at three.’
She could have just said ‘three’.
***
I arrive to pick F up at 3pm. There’s no dog at the gate, so I am able to ring the doorbell. The Mother sweeps me down the hallway. A huddle of boys in football jumpers are watching TV. All except F, who is nowhere to be seen. They swing to look at me.
‘F said a bad word’ says A.
‘Okay’ I reply.
I give The Mother a questioning look.
‘I think he might be upstairs’ she says. ‘In A’s room.’ I nod at her and climb the stairs. The door is locked. I knock. No answer. I call his name. The Mother is behind me. She pokes a wire into the lock, as if she’s done it a million times before. F stands glowering at the door, arms crossed.
‘I have had the worst day in my entire life’ he grunts.
‘What’s wrong F?’ asks the Mother, bending to look at him and putting her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘What’s up?’ I ask, a sinking feeling in my stomach.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘We can’t help you if you don’t talk,’ she coos.
‘We’ll talk on the way home.’ I take F by the hand and lead him downstairs. He says a grumpy goodbye to his friend, under duress. A waves cheerily back at him. He gets his lolly bag. The Mother follows us to the door, and then the gate. I say as little as I can without being rude.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
They had a fight over footy cards. A said his were lame. He said they weren’t. They shouted at each other.
‘And you said a rude word?’
‘No.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said B was an idiot.’
‘That’s the rude word?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you get sent to time out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘[The Mother] sent you up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long had you been there?’
‘Not that long.’
‘Was [The Mother] very angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She told me never to use that word again.’
The Mother has told me that her own mother used to call her stupid and an idiot and that she never wants to hear those words in her house.
I was pissed off. I admit that I have no sense of what’s reasonable where this woman is concerned now. To use a cliché, I’m a lioness with her cub. I know The Mother doesn’t like F and I can’t trust anything she says about him because she is biased. Any other parent, any other house, and F would get a talking to. I have no problem whatsoever, in principle, with any other adult telling F off or putting him in time out. As it is, I brushed it off. I’m sick of the ritual of punishment on the way home from A’s house. I told him I don’t think it’s a big deal. I told him I’m more concerned with how he treats people than the words he uses (I know – not always true) and that though he shouldn’t have fought with B, it sounds like there were a few people at fault. I asked him if anyone else was told off. He said no.
We walked to the supermarket and did some grocery shopping. When we got home, I made him a hot Milo with three marshmallows and cooked roast for dinner, with lots of roast potatoes. We watched The Simpsons together (VERY inappropriate, I’m sure).
**
The Mother has been avoiding me after school since I got back from overseas. Which I have appreciated, actually. Today, she was all over us.
‘HI F. HI there.’ Some white noise about her after school plans. Me, too pissed off to actually listen. All my conscious attention on not being rude. ‘Have you recovered from yesterday F?’
‘Yes.’
As we walked down the road from the school, she chattered to our dogs. The Evil One lurched at her, barking. F looked her in the eye.
‘He doesn’t like you,’ he said.
F is a big fan. He reads Andy’s Just series (Just Kidding, Just Annoying, Just Stupid) so often that the books look as if they’ve been buried under a few acres of landfill (which his room DOES sometimes resemble). He reads them on the train, in bed and on the toilet. More often than I’d like, about an hour after bedtime, I’ll open the door to the toilet and there he is, pants around his ankles, frowning intently at a Just book – with the look of a boy who has been hiding out in there for a Very Long Time.
***
Sunday, we had another engagement F was very much looking forward to: a birthday party for his sometime best friend, A. F had played at A’s house once or twice a week, until A’s mother cut off the play dates ‘until further notice’ a couple of months ago. She said she couldn’t cope with her son’s behaviour when F was over, and she was punishing him by depriving him of F’s company.
Yeah, right.
My fellow parent had not liked F very much for quite a while. Who could forget such gems as ‘the problem with his personality is …’ (one of them was ‘he reads above his age level’, I kid you not) and her ongoing annoyance that he had told her son where babies come from?
***
When I got back from overseas, my ever-so-slick ex had wrangled a couple of mothers into helping him out by each having F after school once a week. One of them was a single mother, who was helping him because he told her he was ‘all alone’. I pointed out to her that the Ex has a stay-at-home wife. (‘Oh god’ she said. ‘I never thought of that.’) The other was The Mother.
On my return, I offered to have her son every week for a while, or for the boys to play at each of our houses on alternate weeks. I could somehow sense that she wasn’t up to having F every week. In fact, while I was in Mexico, the Ex had laughingly told me about a few incidents where he would arrive to pick F up and find her having a meltdown over the boys’ behaviour.
The first Wednesday I was back (their old play day), I found F outside A’s classroom, giggling together over AFL trading cards. The Mother was looking slightly panicked by his presence.
‘But I play at A’s house on Wednesdays!’ F protested when he saw me.
‘Not necessarily anymore. We’re going home now.’
‘Can F come and play?’ chorused A and his younger brother. ‘Pleeeeease?’
The Mother smiled, with her mouth but not her eyes. I’d spontaneously taken her boys the previous day because she’d had a headache.
‘Oh, okay’ she said.
‘Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!’
The three boys raced ahead to the bike shed. I suggested the alternate weeks idea.
‘YES!’ she said, relieved. ‘Let’s do that. W [her youngest] was playing with A and F in the playground at the start of the year and I was worried and I spoke to his teacher and she said that’s normal, that’s fine for preppies to hang out with older kids they know. Now A is playing with B in the playground instead, so THAT’s good, but W is still playing with F. And he’s been coming home saying rude words ever since he started school and he NEVER did that before. So, yeah, it would be good to, uh, limit the amount they …’
At this point in the monologue it seemed to dawn on her that I wasn’t suggesting the boys only play together every other week, but that they rotate houses. She paused.
‘Yes, okay, let’s do that. Swap houses every week. Okay.’ She sounded like she wasn’t sure how to get out of it. Which I’m sure is exactly what happened between her and my Ex.
I bolted home across the park. I had mountains of work to do and I was (really truly) all alone for a month with F. I planned to make use of my newly gifted time to get through some work. As I sat down at my computer, the phone rang. I let it go through to the answering machine, listening to see if it was something I really needed to answer. No one spoke.
At 6pm, I arrived at the Mother’s front gate, as arranged. Our two small, fluffy white dogs yapped piercingly at my side. Her waist-high black dog barked back menacingly from behind the gate, lurching its great head through the bars to gnash its teeth at us. I stood there, shouting ‘F! I’M HERE!’
The Mother arrived and escorted Kujo into the house. She scurried back to the fence.
‘Oh GOD’ she huffed. ‘I called you as soon as I got home to say I’m sorry, I can’t do this, and ask you to pick him up. But you obviously weren’t there yet.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, it wasn’t REALLY his fault.’
Apparently, A offered F his bike to ride home. F rode it. A started screaming and wailing that he wanted his bike. They caught up to F, who was waiting further across the park. A screamed that he wanted his bike. F said no, he gave it to him. The Mother said to A ‘no, I heard you give it to F, you can’t take it back.’
‘But, you know, he really could have given it to him anyway’ she said to me now. ‘He could see how upset he was. But anyway …’
A screamed all the way to the end of the park, where F waited to cross the road to A’s street. He offered A the bike. A screamed no. ‘But I wanted to ride it HOME FROM SCHOOL!’ he apparently wailed. ‘We’re NEARLY HOME now!’ And then once inside, he didn’t want to share his toys either, the cause of more screaming.
‘A is so HYSTERICAL’ wailed the Mother. ‘He says such NASTY things to me, to get a rise out of me. I don’t know where he gets it from. Neither of US are like that.’
I shake my head and commiserate as F comes out, schoolbag in hand, to join us. W scales the fence as F and A exit through the gate. They’re obviously fine now, all three of them squealing excitedly about nothing much.
‘I think’ said the Mother. ‘That we should not have F over any more. Until further notice. You know, to punish A.’
‘Okay’ I said, probably quite snippily, and stalked off down the street with the dogs straining at their leashes and her two boys following us on scooters.
‘F was bad’ W told me.
‘W’ I snapped. ‘Every time I see you, you tell me F was bad. He never tells me anything bad about you. Maybe he will if you keep doing it. I don’t really want to hear it.’
‘He took my brother’s biiiike’ W drawled, in that sing-song ‘I’m dob-bing’ tone.
I swung on him. Inappropriately. I’m 31, he is five.
‘Well, I heard that your brother gave him the bike. That your brother threw a tantrum about it. It sounds like your brother was naughty.’
F was looking at me with wide eyes.
‘No, he waaaasn’t. It was his bike. F was bad.’
‘He wasn’t, W. And I don’t want to hear it.’ I walked off, ignoring his shouts to the contrary at my back.
F didn’t say anything as we crossed the creek on the path home.
‘You won’t be playing there anymore’ I had to tell him. ‘It’s because of A being naughty, not you.’
***
Saturday. We are on the train, our first leg of our journey to Readings. We are deciding what to get A for his birthday. I suggest that maybe we should get something at Readings.
‘YES’ says F firmly. ‘Do you know that they don’t have ANY BOOKS? Really, mum. Their bookshelves are full of toys. Toys! A is NOT that into reading. All he reads are COMICS. We MUST get him a book and get him into reading.’
I am amused and tickled and pleased for so many reasons. As a bookworm, it’s nice to be reminded (by his natural enthusiasm) that my son is one of his own volition, not my pushing. As a profound disliker of The Mother, I am bitchily amused by his observation. As his mother, I am amused by his staunch statement. And as a lazy woman embarking on a lazy Saturday, I am pleased that we can kill two birds with one stone at the bookshop.
‘But we can’t get an Andy Griffiths’ says F. ‘[The Mother] hates Andy Griffiths. She says he is inappropriate.’
‘Ah, yes’ I say. ‘Though we could get him The Cat on the Mat is Flat. That’s not rude. It’s just silly.’
‘We’ll get him Maxx Rumble. A is into footy, so he might get into that. And it’s illustrated by Terry Denton. Will he be there? He can sign it!’
‘Oh. I think he is.’
‘Good. That’s settled. Do you know they don’t even get bedtime stories?’ says F, full of seven-year-old scorn. ‘They just get bedtime TOYS.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure they have books. Maybe they’re somewhere else, not in their rooms.’
‘They don’t! I’ve SEEN their house.’
I’m not sure. The Mother is a crazy bitch, but I know she reads.
**
The children’s buyer at Readings is an old friend. F looks at the table of Terry and Andy books and asks her where the Maxx Rumble books are.
‘You’re so clever!’ she tells him. ‘I forgot about them.’ F fetches them from the shelf, feeling very important, and hands them over, keeping one for himself. He takes a place near the signing table and sits between a couple of 11 and 12 year-old boys. One of the boys clutches a pile of the Just books.
‘Oh. I have them’ says F.
‘I LOVE the Just books’ says the boy. ‘I have the whole series.’
‘Not Just Shocking’ says F. ‘That’s not out yet.’ I don’t know how he knows that. I don’t know that.
‘I KNOW’ breathes the boy. ‘I have the whole series except that one. I HAVE to get it as SOON as it comes out. If I don’t get the whole Just series, if I don’t get Just Shocking, I will DIE. My life WILL NOT be worth LIVING.’
F looks at him in solemn admiration.
‘Me too’ he echoes approvingly. I can barely contain my amusement. This boy is talking exactly like F.
The three boys begin an animated discussion of the ‘bumosaurs’ in the new book and the characters in the Just series. They talk in detail about characters, events and favourite stories. I buy F the new book at the counter and get back just as Andy and Terry arrive.
The boys gaze at them in awe.
F is the star of the show. Or maybe, he's the sideshow. I veer between amused, proud and mortified. I'm not sure how much I should let him be and how much I should urge him to pull his head in. When the kids are asked to demonstrate farts, his is the grossest. He asks questions about ‘the time your sister Jen …’. He suggests Terry add a poo to his picture of a bumosaur. He suggests Terry name a bumosaur after him, inspired after another girl gets the honour. At question time, he shows signs of being one of those incredibly annoying people at writer’s festivals. The ones who make a statement instead of asking a question. ‘I was wondering, the other day I made a new comic about Bum Man. And his power is earthquake farts.’
‘And your question?’ asks Terry.
‘Well, Andy, I wondered if you would write it as a story in Just Shocking?’
When F’s turn comes to have his book sign, Andy greets him by name.
‘This one is for Terry’ F says. ‘It’s for my friend.’ He gets his Bumosaur book signed, then moves over to Terry.
‘Hi F.’
‘Terry, my friend’s mum is NOT IMPRESSED with Andy.’
Terry laughs. A lot.
‘Why is that?’
‘She thinks his books are INAPPROPRIATE.’
Terry laughs more.
‘Tell Andy. Hey Andy.’ He plucks his sleeve. ‘F has something to tell you.’
He repeats his statement. Andy splutters with laughter.
‘I think she sounds inappropriate! No, really, she’s absolutely right. My books ARE inappropriate.’
F goes home happy. So do I.
I tell him many times pre-party NOT to tell The Mother about what Andy Griffiths said about her. And what he said. I can tell he is dying to do it.
**
Sunday. I remind F as we cross the park not to tell The Mother about Andy. (He is recalling the incident.) I remind him two doors from the house not to tell the Mother about Andy. ‘Yes mum.’ I remind him that there always seems to be trouble here and that he must behave. ‘Yes mum.’
I find another parent lurking at the gate, looking worried. Kujo throws himself at the bars in a frenzy.
‘I’m not goin’ in there with that dog!’ the parent says. ‘I’ll wait ‘til someone comes out.’
‘Yeah, me too’ I concur. I’m sure Kujo doesn’t bite, but he puts on a pretty convincing show.
The Mother soon arrives and pushes the dog inside and out the back.
‘Hi’ she says.
‘Hi’ says F. ‘I went to see Andy Griffiths yesterday!’
I hold my breath. The Mother actually rolls her eyes at me and makes a disapproving face. It’s as if he told her we went to Sexpo yesterday. I am, as always, gobsmacked by the weird lack of social niceties. Who does she think took him to see Andy Griffiths? Why would I join in the disapproval?
‘Oh DID you?’ she says wryly. ‘And was he RUDE?’
F is off down the hallway, thrusting his present at his friend. Crisis averted. For now.
Another mother, dressed gaily in Bulldogs colours, breezes out the door, after arranging that she will pick her son up when the game finishes.
‘So, what time do I pick him up?’ I ask. I always ask this question when I drop him off anywhere, just to make sure I’ve got it right. But it seems I’m being confronting.
‘Well, B’s mum is coming at the end of the footy, so late in the afternoon. And the other kids … well, some of them are staying later and … The party finishes at three. Pick him up at three.’
She could have just said ‘three’.
***
I arrive to pick F up at 3pm. There’s no dog at the gate, so I am able to ring the doorbell. The Mother sweeps me down the hallway. A huddle of boys in football jumpers are watching TV. All except F, who is nowhere to be seen. They swing to look at me.
‘F said a bad word’ says A.
‘Okay’ I reply.
I give The Mother a questioning look.
‘I think he might be upstairs’ she says. ‘In A’s room.’ I nod at her and climb the stairs. The door is locked. I knock. No answer. I call his name. The Mother is behind me. She pokes a wire into the lock, as if she’s done it a million times before. F stands glowering at the door, arms crossed.
‘I have had the worst day in my entire life’ he grunts.
‘What’s wrong F?’ asks the Mother, bending to look at him and putting her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘What’s up?’ I ask, a sinking feeling in my stomach.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘We can’t help you if you don’t talk,’ she coos.
‘We’ll talk on the way home.’ I take F by the hand and lead him downstairs. He says a grumpy goodbye to his friend, under duress. A waves cheerily back at him. He gets his lolly bag. The Mother follows us to the door, and then the gate. I say as little as I can without being rude.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
They had a fight over footy cards. A said his were lame. He said they weren’t. They shouted at each other.
‘And you said a rude word?’
‘No.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said B was an idiot.’
‘That’s the rude word?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you get sent to time out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘[The Mother] sent you up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long had you been there?’
‘Not that long.’
‘Was [The Mother] very angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She told me never to use that word again.’
The Mother has told me that her own mother used to call her stupid and an idiot and that she never wants to hear those words in her house.
I was pissed off. I admit that I have no sense of what’s reasonable where this woman is concerned now. To use a cliché, I’m a lioness with her cub. I know The Mother doesn’t like F and I can’t trust anything she says about him because she is biased. Any other parent, any other house, and F would get a talking to. I have no problem whatsoever, in principle, with any other adult telling F off or putting him in time out. As it is, I brushed it off. I’m sick of the ritual of punishment on the way home from A’s house. I told him I don’t think it’s a big deal. I told him I’m more concerned with how he treats people than the words he uses (I know – not always true) and that though he shouldn’t have fought with B, it sounds like there were a few people at fault. I asked him if anyone else was told off. He said no.
We walked to the supermarket and did some grocery shopping. When we got home, I made him a hot Milo with three marshmallows and cooked roast for dinner, with lots of roast potatoes. We watched The Simpsons together (VERY inappropriate, I’m sure).
**
The Mother has been avoiding me after school since I got back from overseas. Which I have appreciated, actually. Today, she was all over us.
‘HI F. HI there.’ Some white noise about her after school plans. Me, too pissed off to actually listen. All my conscious attention on not being rude. ‘Have you recovered from yesterday F?’
‘Yes.’
As we walked down the road from the school, she chattered to our dogs. The Evil One lurched at her, barking. F looked her in the eye.
‘He doesn’t like you,’ he said.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Looking a gifthorse in the mouth
My little boy is unhappy. Really unhappy, I think. And I am angry. I’m not sure who with.
His problem, as I’ve been told by his teachers, his school principal and other well-meaning parents, is that he’s ‘so clever’. He is ‘operating on another plane to the other kids’ and ‘they don’t get him’.
Of course, that’s not his whole problem. He is also remarkably stubborn and incredibly self-centred. He lives inside his head, with the outside world coming a distant second to the rich universe he has created for himself – a source of new ideas and obsessions, or characters to be drawn in to his elaborate games.
F has a football team at school, he tells me. The Melbourne Dinosaurs. He is the captain and they win every game. They are on top of the schoolyard ladder. He describes their games and his goals in minute detail as we walk home through the park.
He also has a band. They were originally called Kids R Cool but now they are called Dimension X. He is the lead singer and the lead guitarist. One of his friends is on keyboards (he plays keyboards at school), another is on bass and another is on drums. ‘We’re counting on S for the drums!’ F tells me in the early stages. ‘He hasn’t signed on yet but he just has to. He’s the ONLY ONE who can do it.’ When I ask his friends about their band, they look confused. They shake their heads, pause and eventually say ‘yeah, okay’.
He brought his football to school earlier in the week. At the end of the day he told me it was the Worst Day Ever. That was probably the third Worst Day Ever in one week of school days. He said that the other kids took his ball and then walked off and wouldn’t let him play with them. They said ‘we don’t want to play with F, he’s boring and stupid’. He also said his team were winning and scored lots of goals. One of his friends was wandering in small circles nearby, waiting to be picked up. I asked him about the game. F was correct about what the other kids said about him. But his team were thrashed. Of course.
No one else is aware of the Melbourne Dinosaurs either, though I hear about their adventures every day.
Two weeks ago, walking home from school, F told me about his terrible day. There were bullies. A kid hit him. Another punched him. Another poked him. I hear this stuff a lot, and I know it’s not all black and white. I know F can be an antagonist. I said ‘that’s terrible’.
‘Yeah’ he continued, dragging his backpack behind him on the bitumen. ‘Then I spent half an hour hiding behind the garbage bins crying.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A teacher found me. She took me to [the principal].’
He was more upset than I’ve seen him in a long time. He was crying, he said, because he realised that he didn’t have any friends and nobody liked him. We had a big talk and I promised to go up to the school the next day and talk to the principal. I told him that he was a great kid and repeated some nice things another mum had said to me about him recently. I hugged him – and he let me, which is becoming rarer these days.
That night, we went out. It was his dad’s night to have him and he picked him up from our destination to take him home. I got a lift to a taxi stand nearer to my house. In the back seat, F begged to come to my house. He sniffled a little and talked about how it would make his bad day a bit better if he could come home with me. We told him that he was going to dad’s and I would see him tomorrow. When his dad pulled up at the taxi stand, F burst into real sobs and clung to me. I got out of the car.
‘He’s really upset’ I whispered to his dad. ‘Please let me take him.’
‘I’m his father and I need to deal with this too.’
I glanced into the back seat, where F’s face was buried in his own lap.
‘Please’ I begged. ‘I can’t tell him he’s not welcome with me when he’s this upset.’ I burst into tears. F’s poor father (who had now driven to pick him up at 8.30pm for nothing) looked at me, standing in the street sobbing into the dark, and his son, now howling on the back seat, and shook his head.
‘Fine.’
F and I guiltily held hands in the back of the taxi as we crossed the Westgate Bridge, our eyes dry.
Half an hour later, F lay still in his bed as I stroked his hair and gave him a goodnight cuddle. Usually, he wriggles and talks in an attempt to keep my attention as long as possible. Tonight, he was so content for me to leave him to sleep that I perversely turned back to sit beside him awhile.
‘Mum’ he murmured eventually, turning on his back to face me with solemn eyes. ‘Today I realised that I was weak.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t defeat the bullies, no matter how I tried.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well then’ I scrambled in my mental odds-and-ends basket of homespun wisdom, hoping to come up with something that would fit the occasion. ‘That means you’re strong, actually. They’re the weak ones, because they needed to make you feel bad in order to make themselves feel tough. Cowards do that. By doing nothing, you showed that you’re not like that.’
I kissed him good night and left. Since then, to my surprise, he has twice told kids in the playground that they are weak because they are being mean to him to make themselves feel tough. It’s always surprising what sinks in, and what provides comfort.
I should mention that F has not begged to be left with me (or with his dad) at changeover time for a year or more.
Two days ago:
‘I think the teacher has found out my secret’ he glumly announced over dinner. ‘She announced it to the whole class.’
‘What’s your secret?’
‘That I play alone in the playground because I have no friends.’
‘Oh, darling. What did she say?’
‘She said: if F comes up to you in the playground and wants to play with you, you should let him. Say, ‘hi F, of course.’ Make him welcome.’ He frowned into his bowl of noodles. ‘It was so humiliating.’
I don’t know who I am angry with. I’m angry with the kids who are mean to him. But I’m aware that a lot of it is not that black and white. He has a temper and he can aggravate some of the ‘bullying’ he gets. He likes to be in charge. And other kids, understandably, are less keen on the idea. Especially when he’s one of the less popular kids in the school. He likes to play what he wants to play. I’ve asked him ‘well, why didn’t you play with … ?’ and the answer is often related to the game they’re playing. It’s no fun. He wants other people to play with him, but he wants them to play what he wants. He needs to learn that it’s a choice. Play on your own and be the boss of proceedings, or play with others and learn to compromise. But I also know that he tries to play with other kids and they tell him to get lost. I know that friends of his don’t play with him because their other friends ‘said so’. (I remember that one from my own schoolyard days.) And yes, I know that a lot of the kids ‘don’t get him’ and are ‘not on his wavelength’.
So, what do I do? I want him to learn to compromise, but not to change who he is. I like his wavelength. Where do I find other children who are on his wavelength? Surely there are other bright, eccentric kids out there who like to create their own worlds? (And hopefully, if they exist, they could create shared worlds.)
His first teacher firmly believed that he is ‘very gifted’ and suggested we get him tested. The school principal vetoed the idea and said he was too young and that what he needs is to learn to fit in. That his problems are social, not educational. His subsequent teachers have followed the idea that F needs to do what everyone else does. His first teacher extended him with his own books, educational magazines and a range of activities for him to do when the other kids were doing work that (she said) he knew backwards already. She thought boredom was his problem. When the other kids were chanting the alphabet, he would be sitting at his table with his head in a Horrid Henry book. He was allowed to choose his readers from the library. His current teacher took away the chapter books that he was reading last year (and earlier this year). What will he read next year if he reads the chapter books now?
As you can tell, I am confused. I am confusing the issue. Is it about socialisation or education or both? Are the two linked? Socialisation is definitely the priority. That’s what is making him unhappy. But am I allowed to care about the education, too – or does that make me a crazy stage mother? Right now, my solution of the moment is that we need to find him a school where there are other bright children, which might make it easier for him to make friends. Given my teeny tiny salary, that will be a challenge.
I know I need to work on his social skills. But that’s hard to do when he doesn’t have friends to work on them with. Of the ones he has: the teachers have suggested he should be kept away from one of them as they are a bad influence on each other; another is as dreamy as him, though in a different way, and they only occasionally collide; the Mother of the last has none-too-subtly discouraged her son from playing with F and has stopped their once-regular play dates 'until further notice' because they fight. A month ago.
I'm making him do Auskick on Saturdays, which he doesn't much like, in order to teach him team skills and get him socialising. I stand at the sidelines and admonish him to 'pay attention' during the training part, and then watch dejectedly as he mooches around the field during the game, occasionally throwing himself to the ground with frustration when he doesn't get the ball and spending more time frowning at the shouting, jumping, running pack than joining it. It is torture for us both. (Me more than him, I suspect - he does enjoy horsing around with his buddies during the training. And it's incredibly embarassing that he behaves like this.) But I'm sure it's something we should be doing, at least for now. He needs to learn the skills of teamwork before he can decide it's not for him. Right?
If anyone knows anything useful about schools in Melbourne where there are bright children, or where bright children are encouraged, let me know. And thank you, if you have, for reading this far.
His problem, as I’ve been told by his teachers, his school principal and other well-meaning parents, is that he’s ‘so clever’. He is ‘operating on another plane to the other kids’ and ‘they don’t get him’.
Of course, that’s not his whole problem. He is also remarkably stubborn and incredibly self-centred. He lives inside his head, with the outside world coming a distant second to the rich universe he has created for himself – a source of new ideas and obsessions, or characters to be drawn in to his elaborate games.
F has a football team at school, he tells me. The Melbourne Dinosaurs. He is the captain and they win every game. They are on top of the schoolyard ladder. He describes their games and his goals in minute detail as we walk home through the park.
He also has a band. They were originally called Kids R Cool but now they are called Dimension X. He is the lead singer and the lead guitarist. One of his friends is on keyboards (he plays keyboards at school), another is on bass and another is on drums. ‘We’re counting on S for the drums!’ F tells me in the early stages. ‘He hasn’t signed on yet but he just has to. He’s the ONLY ONE who can do it.’ When I ask his friends about their band, they look confused. They shake their heads, pause and eventually say ‘yeah, okay’.
He brought his football to school earlier in the week. At the end of the day he told me it was the Worst Day Ever. That was probably the third Worst Day Ever in one week of school days. He said that the other kids took his ball and then walked off and wouldn’t let him play with them. They said ‘we don’t want to play with F, he’s boring and stupid’. He also said his team were winning and scored lots of goals. One of his friends was wandering in small circles nearby, waiting to be picked up. I asked him about the game. F was correct about what the other kids said about him. But his team were thrashed. Of course.
No one else is aware of the Melbourne Dinosaurs either, though I hear about their adventures every day.
Two weeks ago, walking home from school, F told me about his terrible day. There were bullies. A kid hit him. Another punched him. Another poked him. I hear this stuff a lot, and I know it’s not all black and white. I know F can be an antagonist. I said ‘that’s terrible’.
‘Yeah’ he continued, dragging his backpack behind him on the bitumen. ‘Then I spent half an hour hiding behind the garbage bins crying.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A teacher found me. She took me to [the principal].’
He was more upset than I’ve seen him in a long time. He was crying, he said, because he realised that he didn’t have any friends and nobody liked him. We had a big talk and I promised to go up to the school the next day and talk to the principal. I told him that he was a great kid and repeated some nice things another mum had said to me about him recently. I hugged him – and he let me, which is becoming rarer these days.
That night, we went out. It was his dad’s night to have him and he picked him up from our destination to take him home. I got a lift to a taxi stand nearer to my house. In the back seat, F begged to come to my house. He sniffled a little and talked about how it would make his bad day a bit better if he could come home with me. We told him that he was going to dad’s and I would see him tomorrow. When his dad pulled up at the taxi stand, F burst into real sobs and clung to me. I got out of the car.
‘He’s really upset’ I whispered to his dad. ‘Please let me take him.’
‘I’m his father and I need to deal with this too.’
I glanced into the back seat, where F’s face was buried in his own lap.
‘Please’ I begged. ‘I can’t tell him he’s not welcome with me when he’s this upset.’ I burst into tears. F’s poor father (who had now driven to pick him up at 8.30pm for nothing) looked at me, standing in the street sobbing into the dark, and his son, now howling on the back seat, and shook his head.
‘Fine.’
F and I guiltily held hands in the back of the taxi as we crossed the Westgate Bridge, our eyes dry.
Half an hour later, F lay still in his bed as I stroked his hair and gave him a goodnight cuddle. Usually, he wriggles and talks in an attempt to keep my attention as long as possible. Tonight, he was so content for me to leave him to sleep that I perversely turned back to sit beside him awhile.
‘Mum’ he murmured eventually, turning on his back to face me with solemn eyes. ‘Today I realised that I was weak.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t defeat the bullies, no matter how I tried.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well then’ I scrambled in my mental odds-and-ends basket of homespun wisdom, hoping to come up with something that would fit the occasion. ‘That means you’re strong, actually. They’re the weak ones, because they needed to make you feel bad in order to make themselves feel tough. Cowards do that. By doing nothing, you showed that you’re not like that.’
I kissed him good night and left. Since then, to my surprise, he has twice told kids in the playground that they are weak because they are being mean to him to make themselves feel tough. It’s always surprising what sinks in, and what provides comfort.
I should mention that F has not begged to be left with me (or with his dad) at changeover time for a year or more.
Two days ago:
‘I think the teacher has found out my secret’ he glumly announced over dinner. ‘She announced it to the whole class.’
‘What’s your secret?’
‘That I play alone in the playground because I have no friends.’
‘Oh, darling. What did she say?’
‘She said: if F comes up to you in the playground and wants to play with you, you should let him. Say, ‘hi F, of course.’ Make him welcome.’ He frowned into his bowl of noodles. ‘It was so humiliating.’
I don’t know who I am angry with. I’m angry with the kids who are mean to him. But I’m aware that a lot of it is not that black and white. He has a temper and he can aggravate some of the ‘bullying’ he gets. He likes to be in charge. And other kids, understandably, are less keen on the idea. Especially when he’s one of the less popular kids in the school. He likes to play what he wants to play. I’ve asked him ‘well, why didn’t you play with … ?’ and the answer is often related to the game they’re playing. It’s no fun. He wants other people to play with him, but he wants them to play what he wants. He needs to learn that it’s a choice. Play on your own and be the boss of proceedings, or play with others and learn to compromise. But I also know that he tries to play with other kids and they tell him to get lost. I know that friends of his don’t play with him because their other friends ‘said so’. (I remember that one from my own schoolyard days.) And yes, I know that a lot of the kids ‘don’t get him’ and are ‘not on his wavelength’.
So, what do I do? I want him to learn to compromise, but not to change who he is. I like his wavelength. Where do I find other children who are on his wavelength? Surely there are other bright, eccentric kids out there who like to create their own worlds? (And hopefully, if they exist, they could create shared worlds.)
His first teacher firmly believed that he is ‘very gifted’ and suggested we get him tested. The school principal vetoed the idea and said he was too young and that what he needs is to learn to fit in. That his problems are social, not educational. His subsequent teachers have followed the idea that F needs to do what everyone else does. His first teacher extended him with his own books, educational magazines and a range of activities for him to do when the other kids were doing work that (she said) he knew backwards already. She thought boredom was his problem. When the other kids were chanting the alphabet, he would be sitting at his table with his head in a Horrid Henry book. He was allowed to choose his readers from the library. His current teacher took away the chapter books that he was reading last year (and earlier this year). What will he read next year if he reads the chapter books now?
As you can tell, I am confused. I am confusing the issue. Is it about socialisation or education or both? Are the two linked? Socialisation is definitely the priority. That’s what is making him unhappy. But am I allowed to care about the education, too – or does that make me a crazy stage mother? Right now, my solution of the moment is that we need to find him a school where there are other bright children, which might make it easier for him to make friends. Given my teeny tiny salary, that will be a challenge.
I know I need to work on his social skills. But that’s hard to do when he doesn’t have friends to work on them with. Of the ones he has: the teachers have suggested he should be kept away from one of them as they are a bad influence on each other; another is as dreamy as him, though in a different way, and they only occasionally collide; the Mother of the last has none-too-subtly discouraged her son from playing with F and has stopped their once-regular play dates 'until further notice' because they fight. A month ago.
I'm making him do Auskick on Saturdays, which he doesn't much like, in order to teach him team skills and get him socialising. I stand at the sidelines and admonish him to 'pay attention' during the training part, and then watch dejectedly as he mooches around the field during the game, occasionally throwing himself to the ground with frustration when he doesn't get the ball and spending more time frowning at the shouting, jumping, running pack than joining it. It is torture for us both. (Me more than him, I suspect - he does enjoy horsing around with his buddies during the training. And it's incredibly embarassing that he behaves like this.) But I'm sure it's something we should be doing, at least for now. He needs to learn the skills of teamwork before he can decide it's not for him. Right?
If anyone knows anything useful about schools in Melbourne where there are bright children, or where bright children are encouraged, let me know. And thank you, if you have, for reading this far.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
‘THE WORLD IS NOT A GREAT PLACE, LARRY!’: Upper West Side
We catch the bus from Harlem to Central Park, passing through the affluent Upper West Side. As we reach the fringes of the Upper West, a gang of schoolkids crashes noisily onto the bus. They are about ten years old, maybe twelve at the most. They carry stainless steel mobile phones; one waves an iPod. The girls are in jeans and fleecy jackets bearing the North Face logo (currently seen on every second New Yorker), their hair tied back in flyaway ponytails. The boys are similarly dressed. The loudest kid, the one with the jauntiest strut, wears a short-sleeved Ralph Lauren polo shirt with his jeans. He stands in the aisle, legs wide apart, balancing precariously as if surfing the wave of the lurching bus. He holds forth about having been pick-pocketed for his iPod.
‘I can’t believe that you won’t all LEARN from my mistake’ he says, in a voice that fills the bus. ‘You’re stupid if you bring your iPod to school.’
Another kid addresses the boy with the iPod.
‘What are you doing flashing your iPod?’
‘Okay then, I’ll put it away.’
‘Well, people could still take it from you.’
‘How, if it’s in my pocket?’
‘They’ll hurt you.’
‘Well, if that happens a crowd will appear, won’t they?’
At this, Polo pipes up again.
‘That won’t matter! No one will help you! No one will care! Remember when [someone] got mugged? There were loads of people there – adults – and no one did anything. THE WORLD IS NOT A GREAT PLACE, LARRY!’
Meanwhile, one of the girls is sending text messages. Polo wrestles the mobile from her to see who she’s calling; obviously a noughties version of pigtail-pulling, because a lot of tugging back and forth, giggling and preening follows.
Soon enough, attention turns to iPod boy again, and what he is listening to. Eminem. They all talk about how much they love Eminem.
‘He’s SO good live’ enthuses Polo. ‘I went to a concert and he was great.’
To my amusement, the five boys burst into a macho rendition of an Eminem hit (the song from the movie 8 Mile). Not only do they rap in unison, but they spontaneously break out their rapper moves, bobbing up and down and chopping at the air with their hands.
‘That’s why [someone] could NEVER be a rapper’ says Polo. ‘He can’t dance. Have you SEEN him? He does THIS.’
‘Look at ME!’ says iPod Larry.
‘Ohhhh, you look like you’re pointing at your dick. Haha!’
We are halfway to Midtown when the boys gather at the door to leave. One of the girls holds out her arms to hug them goodbye. Polo, of course, is first in line for a squeeze.
‘I can’t believe that you won’t all LEARN from my mistake’ he says, in a voice that fills the bus. ‘You’re stupid if you bring your iPod to school.’
Another kid addresses the boy with the iPod.
‘What are you doing flashing your iPod?’
‘Okay then, I’ll put it away.’
‘Well, people could still take it from you.’
‘How, if it’s in my pocket?’
‘They’ll hurt you.’
‘Well, if that happens a crowd will appear, won’t they?’
At this, Polo pipes up again.
‘That won’t matter! No one will help you! No one will care! Remember when [someone] got mugged? There were loads of people there – adults – and no one did anything. THE WORLD IS NOT A GREAT PLACE, LARRY!’
Meanwhile, one of the girls is sending text messages. Polo wrestles the mobile from her to see who she’s calling; obviously a noughties version of pigtail-pulling, because a lot of tugging back and forth, giggling and preening follows.
Soon enough, attention turns to iPod boy again, and what he is listening to. Eminem. They all talk about how much they love Eminem.
‘He’s SO good live’ enthuses Polo. ‘I went to a concert and he was great.’
To my amusement, the five boys burst into a macho rendition of an Eminem hit (the song from the movie 8 Mile). Not only do they rap in unison, but they spontaneously break out their rapper moves, bobbing up and down and chopping at the air with their hands.
‘That’s why [someone] could NEVER be a rapper’ says Polo. ‘He can’t dance. Have you SEEN him? He does THIS.’
‘Look at ME!’ says iPod Larry.
‘Ohhhh, you look like you’re pointing at your dick. Haha!’
We are halfway to Midtown when the boys gather at the door to leave. One of the girls holds out her arms to hug them goodbye. Polo, of course, is first in line for a squeeze.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The Harlem shuffle
Finally typing up some of my New York notes. Feeling nostalgic ...
It’s raining when we emerge from the subway station; a dense, feathery drizzle. I squint through it as we pause on a street corner to get our bearings, huddled over the Lonely Planet. We choose a direction and stride, heads ducked to keep the rain from our eyes.
Fast food restaurants flash by – McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s – and I realise how rare they have been on our New York journey so far. In fact, if it weren’t for the distant view of skyscrapers, I might think we had left Manhattan behind. The buzz of Midtown and the moneyed bohemia of Greenwich Village have given way to grey streets and cheap storefronts. No more tourist kitsch or studied cool.
The faces we pass are increasingly Hispanic; taco vendors stand in the drizzle. Shop signs are in Spanish. We are walking in the wrong direction, now deep in so-called Spanish Harlem, rather than the traditional African American district we are heading for, where we hope to see Malcolm Shabbazz Mosque (where Malcolm X preached) and eat home-style Southern food. Time is short and we’ve just come from Mexico – we don’t need to linger here.
Back past the subway station, and over the invisible border to Harlem proper. Harlem is in the process of being gentrified; in New York as in Sydney, real estate prices and hot new neighbourhoods are the talk of the town. Our New York friend, D, tells us that a couple of years ago you could pick up a Harlem brownstone for $200,000-$300,000. Now, you’d be lucky to pay a million.
So, the general shabbiness of this million-dollar New Neighbourhood comes as a shock. The Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market is the first stop on our Lonely Planet tour, described as a popular marketplace and recommended for ‘alfresco shopping’. Rainbow-painted, flag-topped twin domes rise above green and yellow columns at either side of the entrance, bordering a yellow plastic sign adorned with an Islamic star. High-rise commission flats tower in the background; immediately next door, a grey brick building is sheathed in scaffolding, scraps of plastic sheeting flapping in empty windows. The market is shielded by wire mesh gates; the aisles rooved with metal frames slathered with blue plastic and hung with fluorescent lighting. The stallholders huddle in their alcoves behind card tables piled with the woollen caps, scarves and beanies we’ve browsed on Manhattan street corners, or folded African tunics in cheerful colours. There is gaudy jewellery and hanging racks lined with more tunics. The ‘alfresco’ atmosphere is sombre, to match the weather perhaps. The stallholders offer us the guarded smiles I recognise from the more touristy parts of Mexico; not friendly, but ready to pretend, in order to make a sale. They’re not delighted by our presence in their neighbourhood, but tolerant.
We browse quickly, sparsely, and move to the corner of Lenox Street, simultaneously known as Malcolm X Boulevard. We are looking for the mosque where he preached; both The Husband and I devoured his autobiography some years ago, and both of us it count it among our favourite books. (In fact, I used to tease The Husband mercilessly that he was ‘pretty fly for a white guy’, given his intense interest in African American culture.)
The mosque should be ‘next door’ to the market, according to the Lonely Planet, but we don’t see it anywhere. There is a fish market, an apartment building and a giant food market (actually a supermarket), but no sign of a mosque. We cross the street, in the direction of a grey and red brick building topped with bulbous green plaster domes. It doesn’t really look like a mosque, but we’re getting desperate. It’s not a mosque; it’s a community centre and a row of businesses: a shoe repair store, a business outreach centre, a school.
Starving and soaking wet, with the rain increasing in density overhead, we give up and head for a nearby ‘soul food’ restaurant, Amy Ruth’s. Yes, it’s listed in the Lonely Planet. And, for the first time since we’ve left the subway station, the Lonely Planet doesn’t disappoint. As I sink into my chair and wipe my glasses clear, I feel the gloom of the morning melt away. The walls are hung with glossy framed photographs of Oprah in South Africa. In one picture, her arm is casually hooked around Nelson Mandela’s neck. The power relationship suggested by the gesture makes me slightly uncomfortable.
The waitress brings us menus decorated with a sepia photograph of the eponymous Amy Ruth – and thumbnail happy snaps of the owner with all the famous customers who have passed through these doors, from Alicia Keys to a satisfied-looking Bill Clinton (who has an office in Harlem). The menu features a lot of fried chicken, a delectable-looking line of waffles, and a variety of foods I’ve read about but never eaten, like collard greens and cheesy grits. Our orders are taken with an air of polite servitude by a determinedly surly waitress. I don’t know if she’s having a bad day, if she hates her job, or if she doesn’t like tourists (or all of the above), but it’s plain that she is determined to fulfil her job description nonetheless. The waitress at the next time is warmer, more genuine.
A puffy white couple sit before fried chicken sandwiches, chewing expressionlessly. The woman wears square wire-frame glasses and a red parka vest over a white turtleneck. A greying mullet laps the nape of her neck. She knocks her drink over the table, liquid dripping from the table’s edge and onto her jeans. She dabs at her knees with a napkin as their waitress materialises and inspects the woman’s sandwich, bobbing in a lake of water.
‘Ohhhhhhhhh no, I’ll get you another one’ she clucks.
‘No, it’s fine.’ The woman is obviously keen to be free of the attention.
The waitress soon brings out enormous slices of pie and the pair continue their meal.
Wedges of steaming yellow cake are laid before us as we await our orders. Corn bread, compliments of the house. Something else I’ve read about, but never seen, let alone tried. It is unbelievably good, made better by the cold outside and our breakfast-free stomachs. It is 1pm. The Husband and I have been money-conscious and ordered fried chicken sandwiches, This, too, is fantastic – crispy, succulent, nothing whatsoever like the ‘southern fried’ chicken exported around the world. Curiosity has driven me to order cheesy grits as a side. It looks like couscous floating in liquid, and tastes something like that, too. Only with cheese. Fluorescent yellow, sticky processed cheese. The whole thing is curiously tasteless. It’s my least favourite thing, and I only manage a few lacklustre mouthfuls.
Out on the street, we are refuelled and ready to find the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque. We walk in a small circle, from the restaurant, past the domed building, back to the market and back again. Not a sign of a mosque, though we do spy a few churches nearby. (There’s a saying: in Harlem, there’s a bar on every corner and a church on every block.) Eventually, in desperation, we enter a nearby pharmacy to ask for help. The shelves are sparsely stocked, the aisles deserted. Nobody behind the counter either. We stand by the till and shout tentatively into the back room. A small, white-haired white man shuffles to our aid. We explain our dilemma and ask if he knows where the mosque is. He squints and shakes his head.
‘I drive my car here every day from Queens, I park my car across the street, I go home. I’m sorry, I don’t know the area at all.’
We ask at the supermarket next door, where we meet a knowing look and step-by-step instructions.
Strangely, we still can’t find it. We walk up and down the stretch of road where the mosque should be – in front of the green-domed building. Only the businesses, and the school. We walk to Amy Ruth’s and back. A string of passers by wear traditional African dress – floor-length robes and pillbox turbans. Some of them turn and enter the school.
‘The mosque MUST be here,’ says The Husband.
And suddenly, we see it. Or rather, he does. The small white sign over the school: ‘Malcolm Shabbazz Masjid. Sister Clara Muhammad Elementary & Secondary Schools.’ Masjid is mosque in Arabic. It was right in front of us all this time.
Look at the sign on the far right: that's it!
A few men mill around the entrance, talking. They look hard-edged, serious, huddled into parkas and beanies. We don’t go in. We cross the road and take photos instead. From the unprepossessing shopfront, it doesn’t seem that the people who live here are particularly keen on attracting tourists to the site.
We pass a discount department store as we round the corner onto Malcolm X Boulevard and head for the next site, The Liberation Bookstore, a well-known independent community bookstore specialising in African American culture. I duck backwards, past the woman selling newspapers outside who didn’t know where the Malcolm Shabazz mosque was (we asked around a bit) and zip past the armed security guard and into the store. The Husband follows. I want an umbrella. There is no umbrella in sight, but I do see $10 hooded parkas. I squeeze between the clothing racks and a mirror and peel off my own damp jacket to inspect myself. The parka is fleecy on the inside; fake fur lines the hood. I am warm and dry. Even if I can’t fit this in my bag and have to leave it behind, it will be worth it for the afternoon. Other customers eye me with a blend of curiosity and suspicion as I queue and pay. We are the only white faces in the semi-crowded store. I guess even the tourists who do make it here don’t generally detour to buy clothes. At the doorway, as we leave, a small crowd has gathered. The security guard, the woman selling newspapers and one of the shop assistants are confronting a shoplifter. They are offering to not call the police if he gives back the stolen goods they are convinced he has hidden. The shop assistant is dominating proceedings, shouting at him as if she's a Jerry Springer guest.
We pass beauty and hair braiding salons, greasy spoons specialising in fried chicken and a soul food catering service. There really IS a church on every corner. A sign outside on one them reads: ‘It’s More Than a Symbol, It’s the Solution. Bring Your Family Back to God.’ Obviously, gentrification is in its early stages; there are still plenty of non-millionaires here. It’s obvious from the people walking by, from the 99 cent stores, and from the lack of polished-wood coffee shops. We pass buildings in various stages of disrepair: tired-looking red-brick buildings, boarded-up brownstones, and other brownstones elegantly restored (or preserved). Sometimes, we peer down side streets lined with gorgeous Queen Anne brownstones, bare-branched trees and – inevitably - parked SUVs. These pockets of full-blown gentrification are mirror images of Brooklyn’s Park Slope.
When we eventually reach the Liberation Bookstore, after pausing to glimpse the Apollo Theatre (famous for hosting the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and the Jackson Five early in their careers), it is well and truly shut.* Iron bars cover the windows and door. We look mournfully through the windows and read the sign on the door that confirms, according to the hours displayed, that it SHOULD be open. The windows are plastered with political pamphlets and stickers. One declares against the war in Iraq, following up with (something alone the lines of): ‘the only terrorists OUR community has ever known are the NYPD’. It’s interesting, and sobering, after spotting the NYPD t-shirts and coffee mugs all over Midtown and the spontaneous declarations of love scribbled on the streets of Brooklyn and much of Manhattan. Like the vast painted wall in Park Slope given over to: ‘God bless the NYPD and FDNY’, with an American flag flying in the background.
We are tired and somewhat despondent. We walk a few blocks further, before pausing in front of another flowering of commission flats behind a supermarket.
‘Shall we hail a bus and go?’ asks The Husband. I agree. It’s entirely likely that we missed the best of Harlem by not continuing on. But two disappointing cultural landmarks were enough for one day.
* As an anonymous commenter kindly pointed out, the Liberation Bookstore has been shut for several years. (I did wonder after googling and finding some articles about the fight against its impending closure, but as these were dated 2003 and the Lonely Planet was published last year, I figured it must have somehow survived. Apparently not.)
It’s raining when we emerge from the subway station; a dense, feathery drizzle. I squint through it as we pause on a street corner to get our bearings, huddled over the Lonely Planet. We choose a direction and stride, heads ducked to keep the rain from our eyes.Fast food restaurants flash by – McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s – and I realise how rare they have been on our New York journey so far. In fact, if it weren’t for the distant view of skyscrapers, I might think we had left Manhattan behind. The buzz of Midtown and the moneyed bohemia of Greenwich Village have given way to grey streets and cheap storefronts. No more tourist kitsch or studied cool.
The faces we pass are increasingly Hispanic; taco vendors stand in the drizzle. Shop signs are in Spanish. We are walking in the wrong direction, now deep in so-called Spanish Harlem, rather than the traditional African American district we are heading for, where we hope to see Malcolm Shabbazz Mosque (where Malcolm X preached) and eat home-style Southern food. Time is short and we’ve just come from Mexico – we don’t need to linger here.
Back past the subway station, and over the invisible border to Harlem proper. Harlem is in the process of being gentrified; in New York as in Sydney, real estate prices and hot new neighbourhoods are the talk of the town. Our New York friend, D, tells us that a couple of years ago you could pick up a Harlem brownstone for $200,000-$300,000. Now, you’d be lucky to pay a million.
So, the general shabbiness of this million-dollar New Neighbourhood comes as a shock. The Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market is the first stop on our Lonely Planet tour, described as a popular marketplace and recommended for ‘alfresco shopping’. Rainbow-painted, flag-topped twin domes rise above green and yellow columns at either side of the entrance, bordering a yellow plastic sign adorned with an Islamic star. High-rise commission flats tower in the background; immediately next door, a grey brick building is sheathed in scaffolding, scraps of plastic sheeting flapping in empty windows. The market is shielded by wire mesh gates; the aisles rooved with metal frames slathered with blue plastic and hung with fluorescent lighting. The stallholders huddle in their alcoves behind card tables piled with the woollen caps, scarves and beanies we’ve browsed on Manhattan street corners, or folded African tunics in cheerful colours. There is gaudy jewellery and hanging racks lined with more tunics. The ‘alfresco’ atmosphere is sombre, to match the weather perhaps. The stallholders offer us the guarded smiles I recognise from the more touristy parts of Mexico; not friendly, but ready to pretend, in order to make a sale. They’re not delighted by our presence in their neighbourhood, but tolerant.
We browse quickly, sparsely, and move to the corner of Lenox Street, simultaneously known as Malcolm X Boulevard. We are looking for the mosque where he preached; both The Husband and I devoured his autobiography some years ago, and both of us it count it among our favourite books. (In fact, I used to tease The Husband mercilessly that he was ‘pretty fly for a white guy’, given his intense interest in African American culture.)
The mosque should be ‘next door’ to the market, according to the Lonely Planet, but we don’t see it anywhere. There is a fish market, an apartment building and a giant food market (actually a supermarket), but no sign of a mosque. We cross the street, in the direction of a grey and red brick building topped with bulbous green plaster domes. It doesn’t really look like a mosque, but we’re getting desperate. It’s not a mosque; it’s a community centre and a row of businesses: a shoe repair store, a business outreach centre, a school.
Starving and soaking wet, with the rain increasing in density overhead, we give up and head for a nearby ‘soul food’ restaurant, Amy Ruth’s. Yes, it’s listed in the Lonely Planet. And, for the first time since we’ve left the subway station, the Lonely Planet doesn’t disappoint. As I sink into my chair and wipe my glasses clear, I feel the gloom of the morning melt away. The walls are hung with glossy framed photographs of Oprah in South Africa. In one picture, her arm is casually hooked around Nelson Mandela’s neck. The power relationship suggested by the gesture makes me slightly uncomfortable.
The waitress brings us menus decorated with a sepia photograph of the eponymous Amy Ruth – and thumbnail happy snaps of the owner with all the famous customers who have passed through these doors, from Alicia Keys to a satisfied-looking Bill Clinton (who has an office in Harlem). The menu features a lot of fried chicken, a delectable-looking line of waffles, and a variety of foods I’ve read about but never eaten, like collard greens and cheesy grits. Our orders are taken with an air of polite servitude by a determinedly surly waitress. I don’t know if she’s having a bad day, if she hates her job, or if she doesn’t like tourists (or all of the above), but it’s plain that she is determined to fulfil her job description nonetheless. The waitress at the next time is warmer, more genuine.
A puffy white couple sit before fried chicken sandwiches, chewing expressionlessly. The woman wears square wire-frame glasses and a red parka vest over a white turtleneck. A greying mullet laps the nape of her neck. She knocks her drink over the table, liquid dripping from the table’s edge and onto her jeans. She dabs at her knees with a napkin as their waitress materialises and inspects the woman’s sandwich, bobbing in a lake of water.
‘Ohhhhhhhhh no, I’ll get you another one’ she clucks.
‘No, it’s fine.’ The woman is obviously keen to be free of the attention.
The waitress soon brings out enormous slices of pie and the pair continue their meal.
Wedges of steaming yellow cake are laid before us as we await our orders. Corn bread, compliments of the house. Something else I’ve read about, but never seen, let alone tried. It is unbelievably good, made better by the cold outside and our breakfast-free stomachs. It is 1pm. The Husband and I have been money-conscious and ordered fried chicken sandwiches, This, too, is fantastic – crispy, succulent, nothing whatsoever like the ‘southern fried’ chicken exported around the world. Curiosity has driven me to order cheesy grits as a side. It looks like couscous floating in liquid, and tastes something like that, too. Only with cheese. Fluorescent yellow, sticky processed cheese. The whole thing is curiously tasteless. It’s my least favourite thing, and I only manage a few lacklustre mouthfuls.
Out on the street, we are refuelled and ready to find the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque. We walk in a small circle, from the restaurant, past the domed building, back to the market and back again. Not a sign of a mosque, though we do spy a few churches nearby. (There’s a saying: in Harlem, there’s a bar on every corner and a church on every block.) Eventually, in desperation, we enter a nearby pharmacy to ask for help. The shelves are sparsely stocked, the aisles deserted. Nobody behind the counter either. We stand by the till and shout tentatively into the back room. A small, white-haired white man shuffles to our aid. We explain our dilemma and ask if he knows where the mosque is. He squints and shakes his head.
‘I drive my car here every day from Queens, I park my car across the street, I go home. I’m sorry, I don’t know the area at all.’
We ask at the supermarket next door, where we meet a knowing look and step-by-step instructions.
Strangely, we still can’t find it. We walk up and down the stretch of road where the mosque should be – in front of the green-domed building. Only the businesses, and the school. We walk to Amy Ruth’s and back. A string of passers by wear traditional African dress – floor-length robes and pillbox turbans. Some of them turn and enter the school.
‘The mosque MUST be here,’ says The Husband.
And suddenly, we see it. Or rather, he does. The small white sign over the school: ‘Malcolm Shabbazz Masjid. Sister Clara Muhammad Elementary & Secondary Schools.’ Masjid is mosque in Arabic. It was right in front of us all this time.
Look at the sign on the far right: that's it!
A few men mill around the entrance, talking. They look hard-edged, serious, huddled into parkas and beanies. We don’t go in. We cross the road and take photos instead. From the unprepossessing shopfront, it doesn’t seem that the people who live here are particularly keen on attracting tourists to the site.
We pass a discount department store as we round the corner onto Malcolm X Boulevard and head for the next site, The Liberation Bookstore, a well-known independent community bookstore specialising in African American culture. I duck backwards, past the woman selling newspapers outside who didn’t know where the Malcolm Shabazz mosque was (we asked around a bit) and zip past the armed security guard and into the store. The Husband follows. I want an umbrella. There is no umbrella in sight, but I do see $10 hooded parkas. I squeeze between the clothing racks and a mirror and peel off my own damp jacket to inspect myself. The parka is fleecy on the inside; fake fur lines the hood. I am warm and dry. Even if I can’t fit this in my bag and have to leave it behind, it will be worth it for the afternoon. Other customers eye me with a blend of curiosity and suspicion as I queue and pay. We are the only white faces in the semi-crowded store. I guess even the tourists who do make it here don’t generally detour to buy clothes. At the doorway, as we leave, a small crowd has gathered. The security guard, the woman selling newspapers and one of the shop assistants are confronting a shoplifter. They are offering to not call the police if he gives back the stolen goods they are convinced he has hidden. The shop assistant is dominating proceedings, shouting at him as if she's a Jerry Springer guest.
We pass beauty and hair braiding salons, greasy spoons specialising in fried chicken and a soul food catering service. There really IS a church on every corner. A sign outside on one them reads: ‘It’s More Than a Symbol, It’s the Solution. Bring Your Family Back to God.’ Obviously, gentrification is in its early stages; there are still plenty of non-millionaires here. It’s obvious from the people walking by, from the 99 cent stores, and from the lack of polished-wood coffee shops. We pass buildings in various stages of disrepair: tired-looking red-brick buildings, boarded-up brownstones, and other brownstones elegantly restored (or preserved). Sometimes, we peer down side streets lined with gorgeous Queen Anne brownstones, bare-branched trees and – inevitably - parked SUVs. These pockets of full-blown gentrification are mirror images of Brooklyn’s Park Slope.
When we eventually reach the Liberation Bookstore, after pausing to glimpse the Apollo Theatre (famous for hosting the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and the Jackson Five early in their careers), it is well and truly shut.* Iron bars cover the windows and door. We look mournfully through the windows and read the sign on the door that confirms, according to the hours displayed, that it SHOULD be open. The windows are plastered with political pamphlets and stickers. One declares against the war in Iraq, following up with (something alone the lines of): ‘the only terrorists OUR community has ever known are the NYPD’. It’s interesting, and sobering, after spotting the NYPD t-shirts and coffee mugs all over Midtown and the spontaneous declarations of love scribbled on the streets of Brooklyn and much of Manhattan. Like the vast painted wall in Park Slope given over to: ‘God bless the NYPD and FDNY’, with an American flag flying in the background.
We are tired and somewhat despondent. We walk a few blocks further, before pausing in front of another flowering of commission flats behind a supermarket.
‘Shall we hail a bus and go?’ asks The Husband. I agree. It’s entirely likely that we missed the best of Harlem by not continuing on. But two disappointing cultural landmarks were enough for one day.
* As an anonymous commenter kindly pointed out, the Liberation Bookstore has been shut for several years. (I did wonder after googling and finding some articles about the fight against its impending closure, but as these were dated 2003 and the Lonely Planet was published last year, I figured it must have somehow survived. Apparently not.)
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Why I'm glad I don't have a girl
They don't look very nice to me.
Because I'd LOVE my pre-teen to list her three top activities as beautifying, shopping and hanging with the girls. (The last one is just fine, of course.)
Once again: sleeping (fine), doing her nails (?!), gossiping on the phone (at least she's not TXTing - joke).
Where are these gems of pre-teen wisdom to be found? The Bratz Door-Hanger Book. Honestly: what high school girl would be caught dead playing with Bratz, let alone proudly hanging Bratz on her door? Meaning this stuff is aimed at little girls. Probably aimed squarely at girls my son's age (seven, nearly eight).
My son made a sign for his door earlier this year. It said 'Science Boys Only. Experiments in Progress.' Later, he added: 'NO GIRLS ALLOWED.'
If my son is out, he's probably playing some kind of Lego or footy. He might be making posters or comic books or footy cards. He might be in the shed listening to Wolfmother or playing his guitar or reading Andy Griffiths books. We might be at the beach or the playground or in the park. At worst (if it's a weekend - no electronic media during the week), he might be playing Play Station or surfing the Lego Club website.
If I had a little girl instead of a little boy, I'd hope that her 'nice' friends would not be wearing fishnet stockings and tutus with crop-tops and stilettos laced over their ankles.
I'd hope that if she was out, she would be in the park or drawing pictures or playing with dolls or reading books. Or just something, anything, that KIDS do - rather than anorexic Paris and (no-knickers era) Britney clones.
I hate this shit.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Can it be a GOOD thing ... ?
My brain broke this afternoon.
I answered The Husband's Skype call from Mexico with this information. After patiently listening to me for a while, he suggested I go for a walk in the park with the dogs to clear my head. I meekly agreed.
He called me back half an hour later. I hadn't gone. He STRONGLY ADVISED I go to the park, and quickly.
Brain still broken (of course), I gathered up the dogs, my purse and my backpack and firmly shut the front door behind me. Which is when I realised that I had locked myself out of the house.
***
Two weeks ago, I locked F and myself out of the house as we began our walk in the park. He scaled the back fence and got stuck in the part we'd blocked off with chickenwire to stop The Evil Dog from escaping. I climbed onto the garage roof and jumped off into the backyard. I let F in through the side gate (he wasn't VERY stuck). We tried all the windows, hoping for an open crack. There was none. We tried jiggling the frames (or at least I did). No luck.
'Mum,' said F solemnly. 'We might have to break a window. Shall I do it?'
'NO!'
After twenty minutes and another search through my backpack, I found the key. Crisis averted.
***
Two weeks later, today, the backpack was well and truly empty apart from my purse. So were my pockets. And I knew, from recent experience, that the house was pretty inpenetrable.
This time, the garage rollerdoor wasn't locked. At least I didn't have to scale any rooves.
I didn't break a window, but I did break down the door.
If you try to break down your door, and the lock quite easily snaps off*, and the now-obviously rotting door-frame crumbles around it ... it means you can get inside. So, it's great news. At first.
But, if you live alone (apart from a seven-year-old) and it's that easy to break your door down ...
can it REALLY be a GOOD thing?
* By the way, I banged the lock back into the door-frame with a hammer and it's seemingly back to normal now, so it's not like I'm COMPLETELY without household security. Just in case you were wondering.
I answered The Husband's Skype call from Mexico with this information. After patiently listening to me for a while, he suggested I go for a walk in the park with the dogs to clear my head. I meekly agreed.
He called me back half an hour later. I hadn't gone. He STRONGLY ADVISED I go to the park, and quickly.
Brain still broken (of course), I gathered up the dogs, my purse and my backpack and firmly shut the front door behind me. Which is when I realised that I had locked myself out of the house.
***
Two weeks ago, I locked F and myself out of the house as we began our walk in the park. He scaled the back fence and got stuck in the part we'd blocked off with chickenwire to stop The Evil Dog from escaping. I climbed onto the garage roof and jumped off into the backyard. I let F in through the side gate (he wasn't VERY stuck). We tried all the windows, hoping for an open crack. There was none. We tried jiggling the frames (or at least I did). No luck.
'Mum,' said F solemnly. 'We might have to break a window. Shall I do it?'
'NO!'
After twenty minutes and another search through my backpack, I found the key. Crisis averted.
***
Two weeks later, today, the backpack was well and truly empty apart from my purse. So were my pockets. And I knew, from recent experience, that the house was pretty inpenetrable.
This time, the garage rollerdoor wasn't locked. At least I didn't have to scale any rooves.
I didn't break a window, but I did break down the door.
If you try to break down your door, and the lock quite easily snaps off*, and the now-obviously rotting door-frame crumbles around it ... it means you can get inside. So, it's great news. At first.
But, if you live alone (apart from a seven-year-old) and it's that easy to break your door down ...
can it REALLY be a GOOD thing?
* By the way, I banged the lock back into the door-frame with a hammer and it's seemingly back to normal now, so it's not like I'm COMPLETELY without household security. Just in case you were wondering.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I'm typing at my computer with my legs crossed on the seat, yoga-style, because I've just spotted a mouse sneaking its way behind the printer.
And yes, I screamed. Loudly.
The dogs are now roaming about my feet. They don't seem to much care about the mouse, though. I wonder how long it will take before I can walk around the study comfortably. I suspect the rest of the day (in which I have much work to do) will see me creeping about the house in the manner of the mouse.
I also predict that the dogs will not catch it.
And yes, I screamed. Loudly.
The dogs are now roaming about my feet. They don't seem to much care about the mouse, though. I wonder how long it will take before I can walk around the study comfortably. I suspect the rest of the day (in which I have much work to do) will see me creeping about the house in the manner of the mouse.
I also predict that the dogs will not catch it.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
My happy place (at least for now): Williamstown
Williamstown is a strange blend of identities. The ‘Toorak of the west’: home of the rich. ‘St Kilda of the west’: a seaside suburb that families from surrounding suburbs flock to in the summer months – and on sunny days in general. I lived in Williamstown for five months (winter months, mostly) and discovered yet another identity: conservative Williamstown. A place where newcomers are carefully watched by neighbours who have lived in the area for years, and report on their quirks and foibles. (I was almost evicted because I refused to remove a couch from the front porch – both my landlords and neighbours found it unsightly.)
It's a suburb with the feel of a country town, within sight of the CBD towers and the shores of the inner-city seaside stretch between Port Melbourne and St Kilda. Perhaps it’s the geography of Williamstown – a suburb largely bordered by the bay – that retains its small-town feel. That flavour is cleverly helped along by the heritage-listed buildings housing the shops and restaurants along Nelson Place, facing the wharf with the view of inner Melbourne across the bay. Like St Kilda, Williamstown has its own Botanic Gardens adjacent to the beach, and generous parklands running along the waterfront. (Unlike St Kilda, the public transport is awful – to travel to the city outside peak hour, the traveller must change trains at Newport station, one stop after North Williamstown. Try it on a cold winter night.) You can quite easily walk from one part of Williamstown to another - and on your way from, say, the library or the local Coles, to the beach, you’ll pass parks, playgrounds and picturesque stretches of seaside. It is a wonderful place to explore with a child. And yet …
I moved out of Williamstown four years ago, unspeakably relieved to escape the isolation of that beautiful suburb across the bay for the haven of a tiny flat in North Fitzroy. But since I’ve returned from overseas, one month ago, I’ve gravitated there for rest and respite. I’ve been there four times – an average of once a week – cycling to the train station with F on the back cushion, travelling two stations, enduring the still-frustrating train change at Newport, then disembarking. And every visit has granted me the mental equivalent of a deep breath before continuing on my way. I return both invigorated and relaxed (though often exhausted from cycling around with a nearly-eight-year-old and two heavy backpacks).
Today, Anzac Day, ‘Willie’, as we’re affectionately calling it, is packed with families. It’s a gorgeous spring day (even though it's autumn): flawless blue sky, golden sunlight, crisp air. The beach is crowded with toddlers and pre-teens ankle-deep in rock pools. Middle-aged men and women settle contentedly on the sand beneath wide-brimmed hats, books or magazines in hand. Dog owners meander along the shore in tracksuits. Two elderly Mediterranean women, round as grapefruits in sleek fifties bathing suits and shiny caps, wander along the fringe of the waves. A bronzed, white-haired man, also Mediterranean in appearance, strides in the opposite direction, chin raised high, swollen belly resplendent above royal blue Speedos. The parks across the road and further along the path, where sand blends into grass, are fragrant with the aroma of barbecue. Women in headscarves and ankle-length skirts stroll along the beachfront as I huff past on my bicycle. They nod hello to the Middle-Eastern family pedalling before me in single file.
A teenage Asian couple, self-consciously hip, pose for photographs against the backdrop the sea and sand. She wears black lace leggings under her skirt; his blazer-style jacket is teamed with blue jeans. A pair of forty-something parents walk backwards, two steps ahead of their infant daughter, who totters along with a red bucket, her face framed by a matching sunbonnet. Their hand-held video camera is trained on her every move.
A young mother, early thirties, strips self-consciously down to her two-piece bathing suit and follows her primary-age son to the conspicuously empty sea. He shouts excitedly and kicks at the shallow waves with one toe, spraying water back towards her. She resolutely looks at him as she kicks back, then out at the water – anywhere but back at the sensibly clothed adults on the sand.
‘Let’s SWIM!’ shouts the boy, as the water rises to his knees, then his waist, as he barrels towards the horizon.
‘Do you think Mum can do this? It’s pretty cold.’
‘Of COURSE you can!’
Of course, this is us: me and F. I do eventually submerge myself in the cold water. Despite Melbourne’s proximity to the chilly Bass Strait (and Antarctica beyond), today, the ocean is pretty okay. That’s relative, of course. It’s still bloody cold.
F flees the deeper waters before I do.
We collect shells in the rockpools. I inadvertently collect shards of glass, some of them dangerously angled upward, and deposit them in a bin on the footpath.
‘You DO care about the environment’ observes F, admiringly.
‘Yes’ I reply. ‘And I also care about people’s feet.’
We build a sandcastle with a fort and a dug-out pool. It is messy but elaborate. As I scoop out tunnels and get increasingly muddy (in my hair, up my legs), F declares that I am obviously an EXPERT at sandcastles.
‘Well’, I say, trying to sound authoritative. ‘I HAVE been doing this for thirty years.’
He thinks about it.
‘Since you were ONE?’
‘Um, yes.’ I have forgotten that I am thirty-one, now.
We eat a fish and chips picnic on our spread-out towels.
And then we pile all our books, towels, magazines, shells and wet towels and bathers into backpacks and onto my bike (with F on his back perch) and cycle across Williamstown to Nelson Place, where we buy ice-cream cones from the Williamstown Ice Cream Factory, choosing carefully from over fifty flavours.
‘Mum, I don’t want to swap a SINGLE lick with you!’ announces F, sweeping his tongue over a mound of iridescent Blue Heaven.
‘Good’ I reply, absolutely sincerely.
We eat our ice creams in the park opposite, overlooking the boats moored in the harbour and the CBD skyline across the bay. Evening is falling. The colours of the sky sky blend purple into mauve into dusky pink, then powdery blue over the sea. The lights come on over the tennis courts adjacent to the playground. A small boy sits on the end of the slide, chin in hands, watching the players with rapt attention. The dogwalkers and cyclists and joggers and shrieking children dissipate. F swings up and down on the flying fox. Across the playground, under a tree, his mother sits under a tree and scribbles in a notebook, pausing at intervals to inhale the evening air or listen to a magpie’s last call. Not really watching him.
‘MU-UUUUUM!’ he hollers. ‘PLAY WITH ME!’
Friday, April 20, 2007
Everything old is new again
It's week two of my new (old) job, editing a fairly unglamorous monthly publication, which I have returned to after two months overseas and one year working elsewhere.
Despite being absolutely exhausted; despite working from approx 9am until 1am every day for a week (with parenting breaks in between); despite the fact that adapting to a new publication design has meant lots of fiddling and readjusting and completely replacing every single image in the document after finishing them all; despite the fact that a change to the scheduling is resulting in a part of the publication being finished the weekend before we go to print (Monday!), at a time when I should be home with my son but instead will be bringing him to work - despite ALL these frustrations, I am really really pleased to be back.
Deeply pleased, in a way that convinces me, in my heart of hearts, that I have done the right thing.
In my previous job, despite the fact that they tried to be flexible, it was a full-time, 9-5 (okay, 8-4) office job, and I was the member of a tiny team charged with holding the office fort. There's only so flexible an employer can be within those constraints.
Even though - strictly career-wise - that previous job was a leap forward and this one is (comparatively) a step backward, this one is the right thing for me, right now.
I had always wanted my old job. It satisfied what I thought was the place I wanted to be in the world, where I wanted my career to culminate (or nearly - culmination is pretty final). But the day after I accepted it, I sat in bed and cried - really sobbed as if my heart would break. (Giving myself an enormous headache into the bargain.) I felt sick. I felt as if I had betrayed my son. Deep inside, right at my core, I felt as if I had given a part of him away, or decided to neglect him in some meaningful way.
I'm not saying anything about what women should or shouldn't do. It's just how I felt.
This week, I feel good. That deep core of me is at peace. My heart is glad.
I know this sounds very flowery and cliched, but - pah! - I'm too tired to do much more than type what comes to me.
In my new (old) job, I work bloody hard - ridiculously hard - for one week, relatively hard (but not quite full-time) for one week, and barely at all for the other two weeks of the month. I'm in the Bad Week now. But, because I've done this job before, I know how the cycle will settle in.
And apart from all the lovely picking my son up from school AT 3.30PM and taking him to his classroom door in the morning, the being able to bug him to bring home his reader and chat to his teacher about his behaviour, the watching how he interacts with other children and with school staff ... apart from all this, I am also very, very happy to do be doing the actual job again. I love the fact that I know everyone. That people are glad to see me back. That I really like and respect my colleagues. And the work is deeply interesting - to me, anyway.
I am tired and delirious and incredibly overworked today. But I'm also ridiculously happy.
Despite being absolutely exhausted; despite working from approx 9am until 1am every day for a week (with parenting breaks in between); despite the fact that adapting to a new publication design has meant lots of fiddling and readjusting and completely replacing every single image in the document after finishing them all; despite the fact that a change to the scheduling is resulting in a part of the publication being finished the weekend before we go to print (Monday!), at a time when I should be home with my son but instead will be bringing him to work - despite ALL these frustrations, I am really really pleased to be back.
Deeply pleased, in a way that convinces me, in my heart of hearts, that I have done the right thing.
In my previous job, despite the fact that they tried to be flexible, it was a full-time, 9-5 (okay, 8-4) office job, and I was the member of a tiny team charged with holding the office fort. There's only so flexible an employer can be within those constraints.
Even though - strictly career-wise - that previous job was a leap forward and this one is (comparatively) a step backward, this one is the right thing for me, right now.
I had always wanted my old job. It satisfied what I thought was the place I wanted to be in the world, where I wanted my career to culminate (or nearly - culmination is pretty final). But the day after I accepted it, I sat in bed and cried - really sobbed as if my heart would break. (Giving myself an enormous headache into the bargain.) I felt sick. I felt as if I had betrayed my son. Deep inside, right at my core, I felt as if I had given a part of him away, or decided to neglect him in some meaningful way.
I'm not saying anything about what women should or shouldn't do. It's just how I felt.
This week, I feel good. That deep core of me is at peace. My heart is glad.
I know this sounds very flowery and cliched, but - pah! - I'm too tired to do much more than type what comes to me.
In my new (old) job, I work bloody hard - ridiculously hard - for one week, relatively hard (but not quite full-time) for one week, and barely at all for the other two weeks of the month. I'm in the Bad Week now. But, because I've done this job before, I know how the cycle will settle in.
And apart from all the lovely picking my son up from school AT 3.30PM and taking him to his classroom door in the morning, the being able to bug him to bring home his reader and chat to his teacher about his behaviour, the watching how he interacts with other children and with school staff ... apart from all this, I am also very, very happy to do be doing the actual job again. I love the fact that I know everyone. That people are glad to see me back. That I really like and respect my colleagues. And the work is deeply interesting - to me, anyway.
I am tired and delirious and incredibly overworked today. But I'm also ridiculously happy.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Post office surprise
Went to the post office this morning with one of those slips from the mailbox in hand, curiously addressed to Mr F [Surname].
I'd forgotten. My mum asked last week if she could buy and send him a fortnightly comic she thought he'd like, because when she was a girl, her far-away grandmother used to do that for her.
Today is the first instalment, now waiting on the kitchen table for when F finishes school.
When the Express Post package was handed to me over the counter today and I saw my mother's familiar handwriting, I wanted to cry - for just one little split-second moment.
I have no idea why.
I'd forgotten. My mum asked last week if she could buy and send him a fortnightly comic she thought he'd like, because when she was a girl, her far-away grandmother used to do that for her.
Today is the first instalment, now waiting on the kitchen table for when F finishes school.
When the Express Post package was handed to me over the counter today and I saw my mother's familiar handwriting, I wanted to cry - for just one little split-second moment.
I have no idea why.
Monday, April 16, 2007
The Evil Diaries: 1
10pm
Since The Husband left, I hate this part of the evening. I open the back door - just a ruler-length wide - and shout into the blackness for the dogs. Every time I open that door, I can't prevent the thought rushing through my head that something else might come in - that, ridiculous as I know it is, there might be an intruder on the back porch, waiting for this opportunity. Though I also know that if there WERE an intruder, the dogs would have gone crazy.
The Good Dog shuffles quickly into the house. No sign of the Evil One. I peer into the night, into the far reaches of the backyard. Not only no sign, no sound either. It's obvious. He has escaped to the front yard again.
For some reason, I don't repeat the process at the front door. I return to my computer, the Good Dog spiralling at my heels before finally wamdering off to stalk the kitchen for mice.
11pm
Work finished for the night, I've settled in to read the last gasp of my book in bed. Outside my wondow, I hear movement in the front yard. Wood clanking, softly but unmistakably. Is it someone trying to open the front gate, getting stuck on the fortress of wooden palings plugging the gaps at the bottom of the white picket fence? No, it's the Evil One, nosing around and trying to escape.
I am tired, especially of That Dog, so I go back to my book, dropping it on The Husband's side of the bed and switching off the bedside light when I'm finished. I fall assleep quickly.
2.30am
A dog is barking out on the street. Barking so loud that I am wide awake - along with half the neighbourhood, I imagine. It's a familiar bark. The Evil One has somehow made his way out of our amateur fortress.
I leap out of bed, past the Good Dog, who is shaking the sleep from her eyes and rising from her plush basket at the foot of my bed to see what all the fuss is about.
I follow the sharp, high pitched racket beyond the gate and to the footpath, where I spot the Evil One on the street corner, poised for flight to the park, spotlit by the street light. His ears and tail are pricked, his chin tilted as high as it will go, his tone defiant. He seems to be shouting at the dogs on the corner, the ones whose fence he flies at in incandescent rage when we pass on our daily walk.
I squat on the pavement in my pyjamas and coo at him to follow me. I have to ease my way to within an arm's length of him before he trots over - then sprints past me towards the house and through the front gate. He's Evil, but he's not stupid.
2.45am
I am back in bed, now wide awake, a cocktail of anger, adrenalin and self-rebuke (I should have dragged him in at 10pm!) tumbling through my veins. I really hate this dog - firmly The Husband's. It's the first day of school in the morning. I have so much work to do I'm worried about how I'll possibly get it all done. I can't sleeeep ...
The Good Dog is curled up assleep in her basket.
The Evil One is in the laundry - the sin bin - intermittently rattling on the door.
Mercifully, F is still silent in his bedroom.
Since The Husband left, I hate this part of the evening. I open the back door - just a ruler-length wide - and shout into the blackness for the dogs. Every time I open that door, I can't prevent the thought rushing through my head that something else might come in - that, ridiculous as I know it is, there might be an intruder on the back porch, waiting for this opportunity. Though I also know that if there WERE an intruder, the dogs would have gone crazy.
The Good Dog shuffles quickly into the house. No sign of the Evil One. I peer into the night, into the far reaches of the backyard. Not only no sign, no sound either. It's obvious. He has escaped to the front yard again.
For some reason, I don't repeat the process at the front door. I return to my computer, the Good Dog spiralling at my heels before finally wamdering off to stalk the kitchen for mice.
11pm
Work finished for the night, I've settled in to read the last gasp of my book in bed. Outside my wondow, I hear movement in the front yard. Wood clanking, softly but unmistakably. Is it someone trying to open the front gate, getting stuck on the fortress of wooden palings plugging the gaps at the bottom of the white picket fence? No, it's the Evil One, nosing around and trying to escape.
I am tired, especially of That Dog, so I go back to my book, dropping it on The Husband's side of the bed and switching off the bedside light when I'm finished. I fall assleep quickly.
2.30am
A dog is barking out on the street. Barking so loud that I am wide awake - along with half the neighbourhood, I imagine. It's a familiar bark. The Evil One has somehow made his way out of our amateur fortress.
I leap out of bed, past the Good Dog, who is shaking the sleep from her eyes and rising from her plush basket at the foot of my bed to see what all the fuss is about.
I follow the sharp, high pitched racket beyond the gate and to the footpath, where I spot the Evil One on the street corner, poised for flight to the park, spotlit by the street light. His ears and tail are pricked, his chin tilted as high as it will go, his tone defiant. He seems to be shouting at the dogs on the corner, the ones whose fence he flies at in incandescent rage when we pass on our daily walk.
I squat on the pavement in my pyjamas and coo at him to follow me. I have to ease my way to within an arm's length of him before he trots over - then sprints past me towards the house and through the front gate. He's Evil, but he's not stupid.
2.45am
I am back in bed, now wide awake, a cocktail of anger, adrenalin and self-rebuke (I should have dragged him in at 10pm!) tumbling through my veins. I really hate this dog - firmly The Husband's. It's the first day of school in the morning. I have so much work to do I'm worried about how I'll possibly get it all done. I can't sleeeep ...
The Good Dog is curled up assleep in her basket.
The Evil One is in the laundry - the sin bin - intermittently rattling on the door.
Mercifully, F is still silent in his bedroom.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Raising money: kid style
'Maybe we should have a garage sale,' I mused to F, as we ambled our way home from the milk bar.
While I was in Mexico, his father had taken him to the pub and set him up as a busker, raising money for his World Vision child. His father has also, in the past, taken him to the local newsagent and encouraged him to ask them to sell his hand-made comics for $2 each. And then ask the newsagent every week if they had sold any yet, or ask why they're not displayed on the counter. (The Husband felt so sorry for the newsagent - who was across the road from his bookstore - that he snuck in there one day and bought the comics to give them some peace.)
So, I wasn't surprised when F announced that he was going to sell the seashells he found on the beach yesterday for $2 each.
'We won't find any customers on our street' he told me. 'You'll need to take me to the pub.'
'I'm sorry, but no one will buy those shells for $2. And we're not selling shells at the pub. It's not quite the same as playing your guitar at the pub for World Vision.'
'Okay.'
F reappeared with his guitar.
'Let's go to the pub. I want to raise money for [World Vision child]. He doesn't have any Lego.'
'I'm sorry F, but no. We're not asking people we don't know for money.'
***
I remember how my cousin and I used to haul her white plastic ghettoblaster onto the suburban council strip, turn up the volume, and dance and sing - hats laid upside down on the grass.
'Do you have any change?' my cousin once called to a neighbour scurrying by.
'No, sorry.'
Ten minutes later, the neighbour scurried past again, head down, bulging shopping bag in hand.
'NOW DO YOU HAVE ANY CHANGE? We'll do a dance and sing for you!'
He stopped and dropped fifty cents into one of the hats.
'I'll pay you NOT to dance and sing' he muttered as he hurried off.
My aunt was mortified when she caught us.
I guess that now I'm my aunt - or my mum (who would have been equally embarassed).
***
'Wait a minute' says F, as I head for the front door, wrestling with a dog lead in each hand. He is leaning a piece of white paper against the wall, writing intently with his new lead pencil. 'I'm going to sign people up to the [Surname] Corporation.'
I watch him write 'name' and 'phone number' and picture him handing these out on the street. I know what he's doing. He's going to ask them to sign up to donate money.
'I'm sorry, you can't do that. You can't ask people to give you their details and send you money.'
'Why not? That man did it to you yesterday.'
He watched me sign up to Amnesty International yesterday on the main street of Yarravile. The 'man', a twentysomething who talked enthusiastically about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie - which we were on our way to see - had stopped us as we walked by on our route to the cinema. F had been very curious about why I would agree to give $15 per month (every bit counts) to a man on the street.
'Amnesty International and World Vision are not just people on the street. They're groups that help people.'
'I'm forming a corporation. I'm going to help [World Vision child].'
'Yes, but people know those groups. They know that the money will go to poor people. I know you'll give the money to [World Vision child], but they don't know that.'
'Oh.'
He is deflated, thoughtful, on the short walk to the milk bar. He drags his hand along the fences we pass, lets his designated dog pull ahead, leading him like a horse dragging a cart.
'How would I get a job in advertisements?' he asks, suddenly.
'Um, you have to go to a modelling agency. Why?'
'I need money! I really want some Bionicle Battle Machines.'
'I thought you needed money for [World Vision child]. Was some of that money going to be for you?'
'Only a bit of it.'
I tell him that he can save his pocket money, that maybe he can do some extra chores.
'Models have to sit nicely and their pictures taken' I tell him. 'You hate smiling for the camera, don't you?'
'Yeah.'
Thank god.
On our way back from the milk bar - drinks in hand, milk in my satchel - I suddenly blurt it out: 'Maybe we should have a garage sale.'
I do have green garbage bags full of old clothes and toys piled on the verandah. I don't mean to reinforce the message that he can sell things to get toys - it's more that he's given me an idea.
'You could get a lot of money for that mattress under your bed' F observes, sagely.
'Hmmm.'
'I could make up little bags of my toys, like they do at Savers. I have four Action Men and an Action Man top and an Action Man vest I don't want. I could make Action Man packs!'
I am a little disturbed by his savvy marketing idea.
'How will people come?'
'I'll put an ad in the paper.'
'Mum, if you have Microsoft Word, you can make signs on the computer. And we can put them up on poles. Do you have Microsoft Word?'
'I do.'
'We can say: Boys! Get Your Action Man!'
'Maybe.'
'And Mum, I have a great idea for a sign.'
'What?'
'Is it your wife's birthday? Have you got her a present? Come here! We have unwanted jumble for every kind.'
I'll say it again: I am disturbed by his savvy marketing mind. Even if it is a bit misguided.
While I was in Mexico, his father had taken him to the pub and set him up as a busker, raising money for his World Vision child. His father has also, in the past, taken him to the local newsagent and encouraged him to ask them to sell his hand-made comics for $2 each. And then ask the newsagent every week if they had sold any yet, or ask why they're not displayed on the counter. (The Husband felt so sorry for the newsagent - who was across the road from his bookstore - that he snuck in there one day and bought the comics to give them some peace.)
So, I wasn't surprised when F announced that he was going to sell the seashells he found on the beach yesterday for $2 each.
'We won't find any customers on our street' he told me. 'You'll need to take me to the pub.'
'I'm sorry, but no one will buy those shells for $2. And we're not selling shells at the pub. It's not quite the same as playing your guitar at the pub for World Vision.'
'Okay.'
F reappeared with his guitar.
'Let's go to the pub. I want to raise money for [World Vision child]. He doesn't have any Lego.'
'I'm sorry F, but no. We're not asking people we don't know for money.'
***
I remember how my cousin and I used to haul her white plastic ghettoblaster onto the suburban council strip, turn up the volume, and dance and sing - hats laid upside down on the grass.
'Do you have any change?' my cousin once called to a neighbour scurrying by.
'No, sorry.'
Ten minutes later, the neighbour scurried past again, head down, bulging shopping bag in hand.
'NOW DO YOU HAVE ANY CHANGE? We'll do a dance and sing for you!'
He stopped and dropped fifty cents into one of the hats.
'I'll pay you NOT to dance and sing' he muttered as he hurried off.
My aunt was mortified when she caught us.
I guess that now I'm my aunt - or my mum (who would have been equally embarassed).
***
'Wait a minute' says F, as I head for the front door, wrestling with a dog lead in each hand. He is leaning a piece of white paper against the wall, writing intently with his new lead pencil. 'I'm going to sign people up to the [Surname] Corporation.'
I watch him write 'name' and 'phone number' and picture him handing these out on the street. I know what he's doing. He's going to ask them to sign up to donate money.
'I'm sorry, you can't do that. You can't ask people to give you their details and send you money.'
'Why not? That man did it to you yesterday.'
He watched me sign up to Amnesty International yesterday on the main street of Yarravile. The 'man', a twentysomething who talked enthusiastically about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie - which we were on our way to see - had stopped us as we walked by on our route to the cinema. F had been very curious about why I would agree to give $15 per month (every bit counts) to a man on the street.
'Amnesty International and World Vision are not just people on the street. They're groups that help people.'
'I'm forming a corporation. I'm going to help [World Vision child].'
'Yes, but people know those groups. They know that the money will go to poor people. I know you'll give the money to [World Vision child], but they don't know that.'
'Oh.'
He is deflated, thoughtful, on the short walk to the milk bar. He drags his hand along the fences we pass, lets his designated dog pull ahead, leading him like a horse dragging a cart.
'How would I get a job in advertisements?' he asks, suddenly.
'Um, you have to go to a modelling agency. Why?'
'I need money! I really want some Bionicle Battle Machines.'
'I thought you needed money for [World Vision child]. Was some of that money going to be for you?'
'Only a bit of it.'
I tell him that he can save his pocket money, that maybe he can do some extra chores.
'Models have to sit nicely and their pictures taken' I tell him. 'You hate smiling for the camera, don't you?'
'Yeah.'
Thank god.
On our way back from the milk bar - drinks in hand, milk in my satchel - I suddenly blurt it out: 'Maybe we should have a garage sale.'
I do have green garbage bags full of old clothes and toys piled on the verandah. I don't mean to reinforce the message that he can sell things to get toys - it's more that he's given me an idea.
'You could get a lot of money for that mattress under your bed' F observes, sagely.
'Hmmm.'
'I could make up little bags of my toys, like they do at Savers. I have four Action Men and an Action Man top and an Action Man vest I don't want. I could make Action Man packs!'
I am a little disturbed by his savvy marketing idea.
'How will people come?'
'I'll put an ad in the paper.'
'Mum, if you have Microsoft Word, you can make signs on the computer. And we can put them up on poles. Do you have Microsoft Word?'
'I do.'
'We can say: Boys! Get Your Action Man!'
'Maybe.'
'And Mum, I have a great idea for a sign.'
'What?'
'Is it your wife's birthday? Have you got her a present? Come here! We have unwanted jumble for every kind.'
I'll say it again: I am disturbed by his savvy marketing mind. Even if it is a bit misguided.
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