(No Shamin') Second Best

 Through the intricacies and mysteries that are Friday nights around here, I ended up down a rabbit-hole.

A notice had been posted on the modern day village noticeboard (where the village is composed entirely of women of a certain age and stage in life by virtue of the fact that we all attended the same school together in the same year).

Below the said notice (of an annual luncheon that is indeed quite wonderful to attend for a myriad of reasons) was a photo that had been taken of approximately one half of the possible candidates for this village that I am part of.  

 

 

It was familiar, yet not - for these girls of 37 years ago were bright and promising and resplendent in their blazers.  I scanned the faces - and the names - and realised that this was part of the shared experience of the half that I was not part of.

Someone asked if anyone had a copy of the other half.

Funnily enough...

 

Loose in an old photo album on the Kallax right beside me I found - 

• a rare picture of me in the early 1970s with my father, 
• several friends and I at "O" week adventures when I first went to University, 
• my rowing crew, 
• a long lost pen-pal from New Zealand in her hen-house - 
• and THAT photo.

Now - technology, night-time and actual care factor mingled and I took an inadequate shot of the other half.

 

10B.  

I was actually never in an "A" form in my whole high school career.

People always kindly said that it was random, form selection - but we all know they were lying.

Everybody wants to be chosen for teams early.  You learn that young.  Well, other people learned that young.  That was probably one of those lessons that I missed from hiding behind a door when they were handing them out.

Some kids learned how to make themselves likeable and popular.  They had the knack of attracting people and connecting.

Apparently.

I watched this behaviour a lot, and have always found it quite fascinating.

I wasn't one of those kids.  As I said, I watched.  I read.  I occasionally got brilliant ideas and sometimes would, in a mad rush of blood, act upon them and I was actually quite good - early on - of enthusing others with my visions.

The hair salon that was three solid days of exhilirating joy - until it was shut down by the fun police and their "head lice" warnings.  I cannot recall if it was someone else's gem of an idea that I fanned by managing the salon - I knew my artistic limitations, and they extend to numbers, words and a tiny bit of bossing around.

I learned that when you are the manager, you are in constant fear of the others realising that you are doing none of the hard work and you will be found out as a fraud.  This is a very fraught lesson when you are very young.

And then there was the "ball-bouncing" olympics, organized in a fit of "throw it to the wind" grandiosity that could not sustain the organisational frenzy that was the concept of a finite group of children and balls of varying sizes and ability to bounce and a world to conquer.

This was in the days prior to social media.  Be glad.

I learned then that sometimes, brilliant ideas can be enjoyed without allowing the masses to define it.

But yes.  Choosing sides.  I was never chosen on sheer ability.  I was occasionally a curve ball - or a trick pick - but for brilliance, popularity or ability to know how to play by the rules, colour between the lines and wear the right clothes - not me.

Thus 10B - with the completely out there, 6 foot tall sarcastic madame of scathing wit and a second language form mistress Miss Phillips.

Three circles with a magnifying glass and + sign, magnifying glass and - sign and two diagonal arrows going in different directions, a skanky brown background and the top of Miss P's head

 What on earth happened to us?  Admittedly, I do have to take blame for some of it.  The photo is taken on a phone, and what is more for someone who works with technology, I am a luddite when it comes to improving upon my "what the heck" artistic style thus what you get is what you get.  On top of that, the 37 year old photo is indeed looking its age - although hiding between the gradually drying cardboard and plastic it has faded and seems worn.  Apt.

 

But we are in shirt-sleeves, somehow the height of 1984 fashion had laid a lighter hand on our haircuts and look like a likely bunch of misfits.

I scan the names from back row left to front row right.

When I had gone through the 10A list, my reactions were "oh, her" and "her" whereas the 10B list it was "oh, that's right" and "her?"  (you probably have to be inside my head to hear the nuances).

Another of my intriguing life skills, in addition to the lack of being able to put "A" form on my CV, is the ability to ALWAYS be in the front row of school photos.  Some might call it "below average height", but I think it is worth more.  (Yes, okay - or less.  Happy now?)

 

 

So when I get to my own name, there is a addition that I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT until this moment.

It said (in parenthesis) "(Vice-Captain)".

I know, right?!

That part of my history I had somehow completely erased.  

I wonder why?  (and was the "O" week photo a clue to where it went?)

So there you have it - I was chosen.  Well, chosen second.

I wonder how big a race it was?  And how I did it?  And if it formed any part of a lesson that I learned? 

Or maybe my memory got enticed by the wicked fairy "feels like a fraud" which we didn't have a diagnosis for (or a magazine article covering) and went down a rabbit hole.

So 

• have you ever held a position of power?
• how much do you remember?
• have you ever felt a fraud? and
• what were you doing in 1984?
  

School Set Readers

Do you remember the books that you HAD to read at school?

Some were cool.  I know that we did The Crucible, The Merchant of Venice and The Great Gatsby. 

 I always tried to read the set texts the holidays before so I had read it with pleasure without the pressure of "needing to study it".

However all delicious recall of such titles and joy is completely quashed by my memory of the Year 9 English book that I didn't get forewarning of as I was moved from the English class that I thought I had (that had some cool and wonderful book) to Miss C- (I think - or was she a different teacher? - they all blur after a few decades).

Miss C (or whoever she was) had set some woeful book about a girl turning 14, finding drugs when she was babysitting and dabbling and then becoming a full addict, broken home, mental institution and postage-sized Pyrrhic hope on offer on the last page if you are willing to take the "at least she didn't die" approach. 

I can't remember the title - Unhinged or Unraveling or Jesus Wept (not the last one, I would have remembered) and the author was some bint who had an unspellable last name.

My goodness, if "Year Nine is the worst year of your life" needed a mascot, that was the book for it.

So - what were your highlights?  (or lowlights?)

the double-tape deck blues...

Mine was a red one too.

Remember when this was just the most awesome accessory to a teenager's life?  It would enrich the most popular child's status, and offer the more socially-challenged a golden-ticket to making a friend or two.

I do so feel sorry for the teenagers of today.  Imagine never having the headspace that contemplated the possibilities of such a beastie.  They will never have the discussion over lunch at school regarding who had one and what material was at our disposal to create new and exciting mix tapes.

And there were those who had amazing talents on creating a mix tape.  Perhaps it was only a cultural phenomenon available in all girls' boarding schools, but mix tapes had heritage and reputation.

They don't know what they are missing, with their NBNs of Youtube tube feeding, plugged in to their tunes and throughputting their lives.

Which got me wondering...  my parents were of a generation of teenagers who aspired to life without war and the possibility of television, my grandparents motorised transport and dodging Depression (the sort that isn't cured by modern medicine).  I wonder what it is my girls will wonder of with their own decendants when comes their time.

Did you have an adolescent dream unseen through today's lens?

Pegging Out...

It is another gorgeous day here in Paradise.

V is getting to celebrate Father's Day by taking the girls to get some potting mix and a visit to the Dump Shop.

I am celebrating by pegging out.

---

Now, before you get all "oh my goodness, but you call yourself a feminist and we live in the 21st" (or is it 22nd - that is one part of history or maths or wherever that fit in the curriculum where you learn the wherefores and whys - or is that whies - of centuries that was explained on one of the days that I missed school.  One of the very very few days, no doubt.  That is the downside of living at the school - wagging is that much more complicated) "century and hello! technology and skin cancer rates and global warming" on me, there is a method in my madness.

I. Have a thing.  For pegging out.

Not a good thing.  Not a bad thing.  But a thing.  Well, several things.

Hear me out.

---

Thing number 1.  My family made me.

Always best to start with an excuse, and my excuse is that my Uncle Stu (who was an artist with the welding rod) made us a clothesline.

(Or maybe he didn't.  Maybe he only made the awesome billy-cart created from a tractor seat and pram that had steering, primitive brakes and went like a rocket down the hill to the loading ramp and I have transferred the memory of that with a bog standard picked-one-up-at-Ostwalds children's sized clothesline.  Enough with the interrogation, okay?)

Can you imagine?  A clothesline that you could borrow your mum's pegs and clip up your doll's clothes (or even your own if Mum let you) and have them dry JUST LIKE REAL?

That young innocent's loveeeeeeeeeee (thanks keyboard for that little addendum) has rarely dwindled, and no matter how much it has been rumoured that I have been known to shirk on housework, the inner bask given by pegging out has (nearly) never been bemoaned.

Ahem.

---

Thing number 2.  Smells like Teen Spirit.

I have read - in magazines, on blogs, on forums - that the teen years are cesspits for rebellion, gremlins and stomping on the rules.

Don't get me wrong, I was no angel.

But my teen years were defined by boarding school (and therefore studiously creating arguments for broken rules that would result in me being exonerated of any wrongdoing - and the search for just the right rules to apply my torch to), double-church detention (perhaps resultant of the smart-assery displayed above), "holidays" at home, stints of truly dramatic and cringe-worthy self-loathing and Paul Young.

However - pegging out often soothed nerves rasped by parental "advice", being in the sunshine (or fighting biting winds or burning rays - this is life, after all) choosing clothing, choosing pegs, chosing patterns or pairs or colour combinations, bending and stretching, bending and stretching - well, let me just say that if more therapists embraced peg therapy, the happier (and drier and greener) the world would be.

Ahem.

---

Thing number 3.  The Sydney Effect.

1990 I moved states, I started my brilliant career and I moved into an awesome share house in Leichhardt.  Life was sweet.  I had spent two months in this city of promise the Winter prior but now I was THERE  and it was REAL and the possibilities of life were within my grasp.

Picture this.  Hand-made or second hand-clothing, generally quaint, BRIGHT or brown.  Thin for the second time in my "adult" life (the first time had been an abject failure - but its amazing what jaw surgery can do for a girl's figure), my hair funky and orange (often with nails to match) and feeling rich as I was actually receiving a wage!  Watch out Sydney!

And Sydney - that sneaky city - did.  She turned on a record number of wet weekends IN A ROW to welcome me.

She alerted me to the fact that, just because I was receiving a wage (if you could call it that, with a twist to her lips), there is NOTHING to do in the bask of her glory when it is raining and you are broke.

She put pizza shops within walking distance and awakened my workaholism which meant that my clothes were oft washed and pegged in the dark.

(She allowed me to be lured to a home with fantastic new friends, a huge kitchen and a taste for red wine and backgammon, so no matter how much of a bitch she can be, she has her upsides)

She made that home with marble conglomerate floors (and yes, apparently concussion can occur if one bangs one's head against it whether one is inebriated or not.  It hurts far, far more if not), a pebblecrete front deck and a concrete rear garden.

Did you know concrete can (and does) grow moss if left moist - nay, even drenched?  Which meant that my clothes were oft washed and pegged in the dark with an additional degree of difficulty.

The Sydney Effect- hung across whole stretches of time, getting tighter, getting bleachlines across the peg-line and advising you to just GET OVER yourself.

Ahem.

---

Thing Number 4.  Focus, Ladies, FOCUS.

Once upon a time, I was a young mother.  Well, okay, a younger mother than the old mother that I am today.

But anyway, once upon a time I was a mother for the first time in my life to a baby who was a baby for the first time in her life.  I was suddenly economically reliant on factors other than myself and had another being suddenly completely reliant on me.  Let me let you in on a little secret.

That.  Freaked.  The.  Heck.  Out of me.

But there was one thing that my mother taught me, throughout my childhood and reiterated when I first brought that baby home.  And that thing was - no matter what, there is always the washing.

With a degree of difficulty of being your average hippy mother of the day complete with terry nappies and a partner supporting the nappy nest method, I have a belief that, while pegging therapy may not have pulled me back from the abyss of insanity, it gave me something to focus on while going bonkers.

---

So.  Me.  Alone.  Pegging.  Happy Father's Day, Vince.  Thanks ;)

---

(I was meant to be doing a Garden Update blog for the Garden Share Collective hosted by Liz at Strayed From the Table with this time, but the photos have been downloaded to another computer and the pegging out needed doing and one thing led to another...  So my Garden Update this month will be late.  Oops.)

---

Over to you.  Pegging - have you done any lately?  And was it good?

Steamy Saturday Afternoon Storytime

Oh yum - V just gave me a taste of his latest salsa - we have a bumper crop of chillies here (thai, cerrano, jalopeno, anaheim, banana and habernero) and we are constantly looking for ways to make the masses we harvest into edible, lastable impressions. This one is fantastic!!

Anyhow, thanks for all your very wonderful suggestions as to how frogs were not the most scary things to find in a bathroom - it brought to mind a trip to a school camp when I was younger, and as it is a very wet and steamy Saturday afternoon with only a few games of cards and zucchini to prepare for dinner ahead of me, I thought I might take you with me to visit the scariest toilet scene in my memory bank.

The year was 1985. The destination was the annual Year 11 camp at Blackdown Tableland, where we were to spend time learning all manner of things natural and beautiful - but the lasting impression that we came away with was that of the local fauna and their ability to mess with the minds of 16 year-old girls.

Imagine this - 160km on buses with 60 other girls and several long-suffering teachers. The campgrounds are primitive even now, with the dirt for your tent, the stone rings for your fire and the composting toilets. It was roughing it - and roughing it, on this scale, was not often afforded to 16 year old girls more used to the privations of boarding school.

Imagine this - food barbecued over open fires and the swoops of native birdlife attacking your sustenance on its travel from fire to plate.

Imagine this - bushwalks every day through pristine wilderness (complete with pristine spider webs and the potential of snakes at every corner), washing up in waterholes (with frogs and eels), complete lack of sanitation and privacy, mud, rain, tents - isn't it all so romantic?

And then there were the toilets. Composting toilets give the impression of all things organic - in all senses. Add 60 odd sixteen year old girls and the ablutions of a few days, heavy rain and mud surroundings and you might get part of an idea.

And then add the myth idea of the mad magpie living in the pit.

Oh yes, never were we so glad to see civilisation - and the throne of respectability available.

Good thing I wasn't into chillies so much then.

It hasn't (totally) ruined me for camping. But it has made my standards include showers and bird-free toilets. Its not too much to ask.

So come on - one-ups welcome!

Predictababble

Every so often, I see posts linking to Painted Maypole and her Monday Missions.

Of course, I always see them on a Tuesday because we are well into Tuesday by the time many of my worldwide blog-siblings are Mondaying.

But she must have been up with the birds, because I saw her latest Mission AND it is still Monday here - sweet!!!

Today's mission is to "write a post in the style of a prediction".

Back in the days when I was on the brink of being released from my Red Roof Jail incarceration, there was a quaint trend where you got your cellmates classmates to write something witty or deep in your friends' exercise books for them to keep for all time.

I would dig mine out, but I think it has long gone the way of the bonfire.

Anyhow, then, as now, I had a habit of using lots of words very messily in the space only a few should do, and punctuating like (a) crazy (woman) - and I gained a reputation.

You see, I tranced into my alter-ego, Madame Zelda Factaire Extraordinare (there were a few other names in the full title, but without the records to hand we have to rely on my memory - very chancy) and wrote swathes of fortunes for my friends.

As word of my generous predictions spread, girls who I barely knew in my year were requesting these tomes in their books also. If Madame Zelda could conjure futures for these strangers, surely she can blog?

Today, I shall attempt to channel Madame again for the purposes of many links across the blogiverse finally getting to put together a Monday Mission.

---

Jeanie.

By years end, you will be older. Tread carefully into the new decade. Try not to cry as you admit your age, and if you do, put the tissues directly into the rubbish bin.

If you are too lazy fail to find a rubbish bin in couching distance, put your tissue into a pocket rather than on the coffee table. This warning is brought to you by the letter V.

I see great things before you. Great things. Great big things that could either help you or hinder you in your quest. Or maybe little things. Little insignificant things dancing like confetti on the winds of your fortune.

Question these things. Start with the question "what the expletive deleted are you?" because it is always best to define before making any choices.

Do not fail to check all pockets, for the moment this task is failed it is guaranteed a miasma will spread throughout your wash. Either a miasma or tissues.

When you see this sign, you will hear the voice of your mother from your past advocating this sage wisdom.

There is money in your future. I cannot see whether it ebbs or flows. Just be prepared for tides and batten down for gales and earthquakes. It could be the money is in the pocket with the tissues.

The cards will fall, and as often as they fall they will be incorporated into your hand. Be gracious whether they be spades or diamonds, for both have their uses. Do not put in pockets but lay on the deck for most advantageous gain. If your gain be not of a positive nature allow grace and humility to colour your reaction.

From the swirling of the mists I can see that you will hit the orange publish button, and as soon as it is pushed you will wish to revoke and edit.

---

lol - one of these predictions has already come true today!!

So - what does your future hold, and how can you channel it?

Kiss and Tell

Picture this - sweet sixteen.

1985. Sweet sixteen and an absolute dork. A witty dork, sure. A getting fitter (due to being in the up and coming 3rd IV rowing combination) dork, but still un-hourglass shaped, unsexy glasses-ed, un-stylish, uber-academic dork. Sweet sixteen, an absolute dork (checks around to see who is listening) never been kissed.

Now, you know and I know how truly dire such a state of affairs can be to the average sixteen year old girl. I mean I had kissed heaps - there were posters of Paul Young that I had plastered over my walls that will testify to that. But I dreamed of it being real - and without the real Paul Young to assuage my desire, I would have to find a stand-in - and fast.

Because we know there is only one thing worse than being sweet sixteen and never been kissed - and that is reaching seventeen in the same sad state.

Even though I was cloistered at the Red Roof Jail (aka boarding school) I was extremely lucky that the school was not above offering us chances of interaction with the opposite sex. Not many, mind, since so many boys boardings schools had gone co-ed and we weren't talking to them any more, the number of opportunities was exactly one. That one was St B's.

Now, St B's were not in such dire circumstances as us. There were two other girls boarding schools in the area, and they too were limited to St B's for male interaction. St B's had the sort of problems many teenage boys dreamed about (well, except for the being stuck in boarding school that sort of kyboshed a few fantasies, although if the rumours about the matron were true...)

Anyway, as I was saying, a school social was coming up, St B's were coming and I had an unkissed status to strip.

Here was my simple plan.

Exactly - I had none! What I knew about attracting boys would form white on black in a red lit room.

I knew they liked me being funny. I had been funny all my life and boys would flock around. Then they would go and get attractive girls and flock around getting me to make their girls giggle also.

So that ruled out my trump card really.

I knew they didn't like you to be too smart. Made the mistake once of telling one what subjects I was studying and it was instant repellant.

I knew they liked a well-formed figure (which I didn't have), blonde hair (ditto), plucked eyebrows, shaved legs and pits, a bit of bosom (yay - my one asset) and girls who knew what they were doing (I had no clue what that meant) - at least according to Dolly, the magazine aimed at my demographic.

Cleo, the magazine aimed at a few years older also advised that men knew just by the way a woman walked whether she was a virgin - I hoped their younger counterparts wouldn't notice the unkissed bit as easily!

So I did with what I had. I let a hairdresser streak my hair (and tell me, if you ever want to pay for pain, start there - back in the 80s with the cap and crochet hook).

I wore a brown, cream and gold drop-waisted dress that I thought was divine, hid my worst faults (in the way a cardboard box would have) and gave indications that my bosom was there, although not flashing the neons.

I shaved, plucked, made-up and blow-dried like mad to achieve something close to what the magazines advised was "sexy".

I took off my glasses and flew blind, with all of my friends on watch to advise if any boy I danced with were too ugly.

"I Want to Know What Love Is" blared from the speakers and the girls waited for the buses to arrive. Girls of all ages were hanging from dorm windows to catch glimpses of the elusive males, but we, the lucky grade 11s, lined the Hall anticipating 80 Prince Charmings to answer the song for us.

"Better Be Good to Me" belted out Tina, and our prayers were one below hers - let me not be left a wallflower as the phalanx of gorgeous, built 16 year old boys burst into the hall. Well, they were all gorgeous and built according to my unassisted eyesight.

"Say You, Say Me" stirred the boys into action and one by one we were peeled off the wall and enticed to dance.

"Don't You (Forget About Me)" as relevant questions were asked and answered between moves. Name. Where from. What subjects. I knew enough to mumble through that last one.

"Neutron Dance" by the Pointer Sisters. The standard dance for boys was shuffle, shuffle, shuffle from one leg to the other, while sort of shadow boxing with clenched fists - it didn't matter the music, tempo made their shuffle faster or slower but not one deviated.

"We Belong" clap clap. Unpicked girls danced together. Girls bored with the shuffle danced in front of the boys who had asked but with the girl beside them.

"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" - a great song but unable to maintain the shuffle, the boy would ask if you wanted a break, a drink, and chance to look around and see if there was anything better offering.

"We Built this City" in the background as I escaped to the bathrooms with a girl I knew slightly who was dancing with his friend. "What's he like" I asked. "Oh" she said. "Cute enough." Which, in girl speak is not exactly hot but unless there is an unclaimed gorgeous one wandering the hall, he will do.

"Take On Me" and every couple on the dance floors were exchanging meaningful glances - I assume. I prayed I was sending the right signals and being sent a few. It is very hard to read a face when you can only see a blurred outline.

"Like A Virgin" and now the night was coming to a close, there was no time to change our minds or partners - just a matter if all this spadework would result in a peck at the end.

"Everytime You Go Away" oh and Paul was playing. I melted into the music and the boy saw whatever signal said "you may touch me" and put his arms on my shoulders.

"Suddenly" and he moved in closer. Okay, close enough I could see he was "cute enough" and given enough detail that when I closed my eyes I would know what face to focus on. I could edit acne scars and make his eyes a little brighter, his brow a little less heavy, give him darker hair and an English accent - oh, who was I kidding, no-one would ever replace my ultimate fantasy.

"I'm On Fire" and the heat generated by Bruce and the boys in the hall brought the houselights up. It was time to say goodbye, to wave those boys off on buses and send us back to the dorms.

We gathered on the steps. Our hands remained entwined and we had the last few minutes without music under the eyes of the boarding misstresses and masters. Murmurs, last call and then I closed my eyes and leaned forward to accept the ultimate gift...

---

This was written in response to Scribbit's August Write-Away prompt "First Kiss".


Oh, this takes me back. Sigh.

The Sad Sad Saga of Miss Jeanie and her Middle Toe

Setting the Scene:

The year was 1982. The setting was Dorm C in the Year 8 Boarding House in the Red Roofed Jail. The victim was me.

Imagine this. I was still in my first term at boarding school. The room I slept in - the ominous Dorm C - also slept 9 other girls.



As you can see, I had extremely bad luck in having the worst positioned bed in the whole dorm, with everyone from 3 dorms traipsing past my head, with many showering and toileting right next to me - and with the notorious MsScam click-clacking her way past me on her rounds many times each evening, quelling dissent and "shushing" her charges.

Of course, dissent comes in many forms, and although my preferred form has always been to bend the rules and see how they stretched, occasionally I fell foul of peer pressure and got caught up in that most despicable of past-times, playing Truth, Dare and Double-Deadly Dare.

It was hard not to be a participant in this, as to not succumb to peer pressure in such an environment was to invite other ills upon your person - so lesson number one of boarding school dorm rules is "do as everybody else does and you even up the odds of getting in trouble from the authorities - and lessen the chances of being targetted by the mob".

After lights out the game got on. We had an edge over the authorities (MsScam) by virtue of her high heeled sirens and could pretend slumber when required, but until that moment the night was ours, and the stakes were high.

No-one ever called truth - what secrets were there in a 13 year old boarding school girl's mind that would warrant ferreting? And if there were, what 13 year old boarding school girl holding such a secret would want it to be ferretted? No-one ever called dare - dare was for wusses. Double-deadly dare was the call, and every call raised the bar a little bit higher.

Tuesday night, and the game had been in swing for 45 minutes when "It" moved to my space. "Double-deadly dare" said the fearless (if not slightly stupid) Jeanie and the challenge was issued.

"Streak three times around the dorm"...

This was indeed a challenge of the highest order.

Firstly, streaking was firmly frowned upon by the establishment. Something civilisations the world over frown upon is the lack of proper decorum and clothing, and our school had intentions to mould us into "young ladies". Not only did it cause frowning, but seen as a giant raspberry (if not brown eye) to the standards they aspired for us.

Secondly, to be out of bed after lights out was only condoned if excuses of ablutions or requirements to use the charley burner were offered. Anything else was punishable as an example to the rest of the flock.

Thirdly, running around the dorm was quite a distance, three times thrice that, and MsScam had not clopped by of late and was due...

But I was up for it. The first thing you learn at boarding school is nudity be buggered (really, no-one looked or got caught looking and no-one else gave a darn) and it would give me that bad-girl kudos that was scant in my repertoire.

I had made it 2 1/2 times around before the clicking alarm was raised. MsScam was heading in Dorm C's direction - and from the entrance that I was hurtling towards. Luckily the room was darkened - she would not be able to identify the runner if I could make the bed before she reached the light switch.

I sped up and dived for my bed. My body made it!! One leg made it! Unfortunately, my other leg was attached to a foot that failed. Two toes found one side of the bedleg. Two toes found the other side. The middle toe failed to chose and got sacrificed.

Not only was I CAUGHT, caught naked, and caught naked and screaming, I had the added embarrassment factors of having MsScam tug the toe to see if it REALLY hurt (it did), to visit the doctor in the morning and relive the tug (it was broken) and to limp around the school sans shoe for the next three weeks and 300 peers and older grade girls all laughing heartily at my plight.

But now I am a grown up. I no longer feel I have to accept truth, dare and double-deadly dare challenges. I no longer place myself in embarrassing positions to attain peer recognition.

Actually, shall we call bullshit on the last line. I blog - and I just told you this story.

And to the previous line - as usual on a Tuedsay, Bettina at Dances to the Beet of Her Own Drum has Screw Up Tuesday and I am putting this forward - ancient history, I know, but I am not good at timetabling my vagaries!


So now, your turn - how did the gangly limbs of adolescence trip you up?

Shoe Post Two

Why oh why, you ask, are we seeing Shoe Post Two when we haven't had the first post yet?

Well, my friends, I have to blame Bettina at Dances to the Beet of Her Own Drum (because I have to blame someone for every mess in my life, and if I can't point the finger firmly it ends up being my fault - and I have to resort to the middle child retort, which does nothing for the reputation of middle children - and there are more of us than you think.). Every Tuesday she hosts "Screw Up Tuesday" and see, I like being able to do two jobs with one stroke. It makes me feel efficient.

So not only is this post the second but the first of the three you have to choose for me to enter in Scribbit's May Writing Challenge on Shoes, but it is also now part of the phenomenon

Now, I am bending the rules slightly (as in completely disregarding the time frame required) to include a screw up from long, long ago...

---

Those of you playing at home recall that, as teenagers, our mother and father callously threw us to the wolves had to let go of their children and sentenced us to five years in the Red Roof Jail seek educational opportunities for us far, far away.

Thus, came the day when, aged thirteen, I joined my big sister in hell at boarding school.

There were very strict guidelines. Of course, with a little experience under your belt you KNEW how to bend them to your ends, but as a new boarder, as the younger sister of one who wanted her sister to endure the same pain she went through several years before, as the daughter of a rule observer and as a keen conformist myself I packed my ports with the "list" of required items.

The "uniform list" was four white uniform blouses (so perfect for the pubescent girl), three navy six-gore skirts, two navy gym slips and matching bloomers, one white gym slip and matching bloomers, navy tie, navy and gold panama hat, navy and gold blazer, gold beret, white church uniform, six pairs brown ankle socks, one pair white ankle socks, two pairs of beige stockings, navy one-piece racing togs, white volley sandshoes and brown school shoes.

You may wonder at my memory for such a list, given that I can barely remember milk at the shops, but if you, as a twelve-year old on your last moments of freedom last school holidays of childhood were required to hand-sew name-tags on to every item, I am sure that you too could recall the mantra.

I shan't give you the rest of what was packed, but be assured in the vast array of goods for your conformity comfort, advice was you should have "two casual outfits (no strapless) and one pair of casual shoes (no thongs)". Fair enough, they only gave you room for that amount of frivolity but imagine two hundred adolescent girls being reduced to a choice of two for outfits and them only to match one pair of shoes!!

Of course, if you had Shoe Post Part One before this one, you would not wonder at the fact that I really was lucky to have one option available for casual footwear - but we will have to unveil that at the prequel.

Anyway, there was one UNBREAKABLE rule as a new boarder, and that was that you were not allowed out for the first three weeks. Probably from some paper on torture and confinement or something - going cold turkey on freedom. And as a result, many malevolent children doting parents ensured that the third weekend would be a guaranteed leave weekend.

I am unsure of what my own mandatory weekly letters home recorded in those first three weeks - mainly due to the bonfire that I held annually to wipe any memory of school, but I would also like to lay some blame on my mother. She could have kept them all tied up in ribbon for research purposes but instead returned them to me with the spelling mistakes marked in red.

They may, however, have run along the lines of:

Week One: "Dear parents, it is so interesting being at school meeting lots of new friends. I will tell you all about them when I see you next (in three weeks?). Your dutiful and obedient daughter, Jeanie"

Week Two: "Mum and Dad, can I please have some more clothes? The two sets I have are inadequate for my social pretensions. You could take me shopping when you take us out (in a fortnight?). Your loving daughter, Jeanie"

Week Three: "Mummy! Daddy! Its horrible. You must come and save me. Not only do I miss you so much, but I am a social pariah and my one pair of casual shoes are beginning to stalk me. This weekend? Please? I love you and miss you soooo much. Jeanie XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

Well, the third weekend crept towards us. The matron read the "leave list" on Thursday night, and our names were on it!!! Oh bliss!!! Oh parents!! Oh, even baby brother!! Oh clothes and shoe shopping (which would be even more poignantly understood if I had Post One up and running)!!!

I packed. We were to be spending the weekend at the beach. In went the (navy racing) togs and towel. In went my two sorry casual outfits, pyjamas, toiletries and books and I closed the port with a sigh of sweet anticipation. I could almost taste the freedom only one short day away.

When our family came to collect us, we were ready (in full uniform including woolen tie and top button done up) with our ports on the terrace, eager and drunk on anticipation.

Mum and Dad splashed out for us - we had Chinese for dinner. We were staying at a Motel. And that, my friends, is where my luck ran out.

To give you a historic snapshot, while my parents were not skint times were hard in the cattle industry. The term was "dirt rich", and with the double expense of daughters at private boarding school (even if one of them saved them a little with a scholarship), lashing out on an extra 700km trip, dinners out and motel stays to indulge their princesses - well, let us just say that they preferred the free entertainment option of swimming at the beach to trawling the shops with an, up until this moment, reluctant middle child looking for fripperies.

As luck (and it was luck - do not assume there was ANY forethought at all, because I was truly that clueless) would have it, the ONE THING I had failed to do in packing so eagerly was to include that skanky pair of casual shoes.

Ha - surely my parental unit would indulge me with that little fact laid on the table!

So I laid it out - and got a "here is a life lesson in remembering" (that unfortunately I still haven't quite grasped) retort.

Nothing like sand in your brown school shoes at the beach for the next two days to create understanding of the necessity of such a life skill. (Well, to and from the beach over the prickly grass).

Ever "slipped" into your brown school shoes to go for a walk through a tourist village?

Try being a thirteen year-old nerdy, dorky girl suddenly noticing all those that were not nerdy, dorky or girls all around with those clodhoppers on your feet. It can really DRIVE a point like that home.

I am okay now. I have had therapy for instances such as this in my life. But I still shudder to remember that first weekend of freedom, and the true pain involved.

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For those of you who have suffered with me and got to the end of that dirge, leave a comment and this week, I will give away a poetry book (that actually includes two of my poems) to a random commenter - consider it my gift, not graft!

Exotic Teen Culture

Don't you hate it when the amazing blog you thought of at 1am Sunday morning does not come fully formed when you attempt to put it down at 1pm Sunday afternoon?

Anyhow, last night was another big Saturday night here, and the television offerings at Mummy-clock-off time were absolutely dismal.

I also hate it when you are anticipating a lovely night in at the flicks, and there is nothing worth flicking?

Luckily for us, we live in the modern era and V's mother did send him a lovely little number reminiscent of both the years of adolescence and Southern California school days - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and so we watched it.

Did we ever think some fashions and styles were cool?

When discussing it, I noticed that V and I approached it from very different angles - and it wasn't just the male/female thing at play.

V lived through such behaviour and agonies of the interpersonal dramas (well, not all of them) in real life high school and mall settings as shown on the screen.

I read about them, watched them, studied them - but the weirdness of being a boarder at an all girls school in the middle of Queensland meant that it was all very theoretical fodder.

As a matter of fact, being a boarder at an all girls school in the middle of Queensland was not weird at all, to me and all the girls around me - it was what we knew (didn't always love) and in most of our cases, what we knew we would be when we were teenagers.

So when I get comments about how quaint and Enid Blyton it must be, I laugh a little laugh to myself because it was not all that (I definitely don't remember many lashing of ginger beer) and what is quaint and Cameron Crowe for me was ordinary for so many of you.

We never did see the end of the movie, however. A toilet stop towards the end led to flicking around the offerings and discovering the last 3/4 of American Beauty - ah yes, it was a very cultural evening here.

How was yours?

In which Ms Salina is extremely cheeky (and regresses her mother)

Yesterday, after a wonderful afternoon of not annoying a migrainey (yes, AGAIN) Mummy while having a tea party with her new best friend from 2 doors down, 'Salina overfilled her indulgence quota and went scarily close to being in BIG TROUBLE.

See, the problem is that 'Salina has a tendency towards precociousness (I wonder where THAT came from) and, while it can be endearing and cute in small doses, it has a tendency to do certain adults heads in (especially migrainey heads) given in large quantities over extended periods - and the threshold was overreached yesterday afternoon.

"Stop being so cheeky" I screeched. However, even as I screeched, I remembered a certain incident 25 years ago that was scarily close to being re-enacted.

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I mentioned previously that I spent some time in boarding school.

Now, boarding school is one place where the threshold for cheek is quite low. Imagine the average cheek of the average teenage girl and multiply by 200 - that is what is designed to send boarding school mistresses over the precarious ledge tethering them in the belief they are in the sane realm.

In an attempt to restore sanity to the average boarding school mistress (easier said than done), draconian rules and regulations were installed and rigorously adhered to.

Eventually I did learn and worked out how to dole out my cheek in methods designed to slip through the cracks and fissures - but that was about my second year of boarding school. In my first year, I hit their sanity threshold on many an occasion.

There was the moment when I broke my toe playing truth, dare. There were the times when I broke music study regulations. There was many an instance when I had to stand through meals. And then there was church.

We were a non-denominational school - which meant that every Christian religion was offered to boarders every second Sunday. To keep costs down, the majority (Anglicans) were sent to early church, and the buses then took a second load of boarders to late church of their choice.

Drawing the short straw and being christened Anglican meant you had to be up earlier than your luckier Catholic, Uniting, Lutheran, Protestant, Presbyterian or Baptist sisters. It means you got the cold breakfast as the kitchen staff were not going to indulge at such an early hour. It meant being dressed in your "white with gold trim safari suits" (otherwise dubbed "Ten-Tonne-Tessie Dresses") and Panama hats before 6.30am to be bussed to the Anglican Cathedral.

I really feel for the good worshippers at that place, as their early morning crowd was well and truly outnumbered by the little heathens that we were. One good game in church was to see if you could get all around you scratching by tipping your Panama back and having a go - then there was the yawning contests and giggles and whispers as the poor mistresses attempted to put out fires.

But the really superior (?) thing about going to first church, was if you got up someone's nose enough, you could get detention - which meant double church.

And yours truly did some great nasal investigation during her first year.

It got to a point that Mrs L, the matron, would just look at me in the morning, find any detail to get me on and sentence me to save another mistress the hassle at a later stage.

By third term, I had spent the majority of Church Sundays in Anglican first church and then another denomination of their choice. I subsequently have absolutely no time for organised religion!

Mrs L greeted me this one morning about how messy I was. This was an ongoing banter we had going, earning me a special name from Mrs L of "Princess Grot".

Anyway, I think I may have grunted or not been quite humble enough in the face of her opinion, thus I received the usual "double church" admonishment. "Whatever" may have been my reply - it was definitely my attitude.

To put it into polite words, her threshold broke and she upped the ante. "Double church until the end of term!" Again, I failed to heed the flashing caution signs and may have replied something about whether that was the best she could come up with - don't quote me on it.

"DOUBLE CHURCH UNTIL THE END OF THE YEAR!!!" she thundered, turning a lovely shade of purple. Her only bolthole after this was until the end of time, so I shrugged, rolled my eyes and taunted her to use it. She saw that she had nothing left to offer and she was infuriated that such punishment no longer worked.

She did retire at the end of that year - I am sure I had nothing to do with it, as she was already 106 and had been threatening to retire for years.

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Anyhow, back to my own daughter, and her moments of driving Mummy (and V) mad.

Where was I?

Oh yes, "Stop being so cheeky" I screeched.

"What is cheeky?" said the monkey 'Salina. Word to the wise - not the phrase to employ if trying to defuse a situation.

"Cheeky is giving a smarty answer rather than just doing what you are asked. Do as you are ASKED" I valiantly attempted not to be drawn.

"Oh, what do you mean by smarty?" says Ms Smarty-Pants the endangered 'Salina.

"J-U-S-T D-O A-S Y-O-U A-R-E A-S-K-E-D-!-!-!"

Later, I explained how, when we were children, we learned the definition of cheek from our parents. Ah, the good old days, when the threat of a belting or wooden spoon helped us in our understanding of the world.

Whatever happened to fear as a tool for parental control? There are moments when it would make my job so much easier.

Either that, or we are going to have to start threatening a bit of religion around here.

A trip to the talkies

It was indeed Charly!! Thank you blogworld (and the uncommentable V). I had thought so last night when I the memory of it flickered past in reference to something or other was having an insightful conversation with my lovely V about states of consciousness.

Glad we all got that worked out - but man, how good was the school, eh? We also got to see such beauties as Romeo and Juliet - yes, the Olivia Hussey version of 1968 (must have got a job lot from that year) and The Car - a relatively recent bomb from 1977.

(Just to clue you in, I was not born when 2 of those 3 movies were made and was still a child for the other, so they were made several movie seasons before the school showed them as the weekend movie for the boarders).

Every Saturday night, we were compelled by the staff of the school to watch the weekly movie in the old chapel. This was to ensure that we let our parents know how well we were treated in Jail at boarding school and set their minds at rest as to their having left their little darlings (and large school fees) in good hands.

You know that the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet had a 15 year old playing Juliet? In the reel version shown at school, her voice was deeper than a grown man!

I went to boarding school in a town on the Tropic of Capricorn. You know, that ring around the world that says "mild weather" to the South of it, and "stinking hot" to the North?

The school year always kicked off in the heat of January, just as the cyclone season was starting to get a bit serious. Cyclones also knew the TOC line and respected it, always choosing to hover around it while it decided to create devastation to the North, or flooding to the South.

If far-flung boarders were lucky, one hit at the right time to delay their trip back to school for a few weeks - we were never quite far-flung enough to throw our timing.

Day girls could count on at least one good cyclone causing school to be cancelled and they could miss a day or so in the first few weeks - pity the plight of the boarder who was there. Stuck there.

Firstly, to fill the time, we had lots of "prep". Prep was when you had to sit in silence in a classroom with your school books and do whatever homework there was.

Of course, it mattered not to the boarding mistresses who presided over such torture that school had only been back a manner of days and we still had NFI what we were going to study that year, let alone do homework.

All that mattered to them was silence, it was bucketing down outside therefore they could not force us outside for a drenching (although they may have thought it well deserved), they could not leave us to our own devices in the boarding houses (because, OMG, consider adolescent girls cooped up in bedrooms for hours - and then multiply by 200) and maintaining silence - because

• (a) mistresses are badly paid women who should be able to do better jobwise, but life has dealt them a harsh blow and they are all recovering from breakdowns (okay, 90% of them) (and the other 10% will not be far off after dealing with boarders), and
  
• (b) far less rebellions succeed if conducted in silence.

Occasionally (like if it is the sixth straight day of cyclone warnings) the powers that be would rummage through the troves of movies available for hire in the reel version and take pity on us.

One such time was when providence sent the school such a title towards the end of one cyclone. Hurrah - the mistresses could stop haranguing us to do unset prep, they could coop us in one room with only one required to man the doors and the rest of the staff could take a well-earned tipple with the kitchen staff.

Unfortunately, the matron (who had been promoted to such a post due to her proximity and relative cheapness, not due to any aspirations to nursing) had thought Little Darlings must have been something like Seven Little Australians, which had met with such adult approval the decade previous.

It took about 20 minutes into the first reel before the sole mistress on duty discovered the mistake and raised the alarm - 20 minutes of such freedom had been unleashed onto very bored teenage girls, and then taken from our grasp as we were advised that the night's entertainment had been cancelled, and we could chose to do prep or watch a movie in the schools coffers (called The Turning Point).

But the disappointment was too great, really, and the moment of discovering teenage angst wrenched from our grip was too much for us. We chose prep over watching more grown women wrestle with theirs. We could do that anyway, any day - in prep.