Tonight's photo: Taken last Sunday at the Lane Cove street fair.I realised today there is something rather remarkable about me. To save you all the trouble of scratching your heads and muttering, "oh yeah - like what?" I will tell you.
I am fifty years of age and so far I have not turned into an axe murderer, Jihad Mike, sexual deviant, wife-beater or suffered any broken bones.
According to many experts, gurus, and others with more letters after their names than a United Nations aid program, at least one of the above should have happened. My childhood, (and that of many of my peers) was tailor made to set me on a course to being a social outcast or habitual hospital attendee.
Take a simple thing such as going to school.
I used to cycle to school without looking like a left-over from an American grid-iron team. Heck, I didn't even bother wearing my school cap, (the last time I saw it, it was floating down a river).
In my school bag I would have a penknife, catapult and sometimes a spud gun. On rare occasions I even had school books. If for some reason I forgot to pack my arsenal, school itself provided plenty of suitable weapons of class destruction. By the age of eleven, I could use a school ruler to flick an ink-soaked piece of blotting paper straight at the smart-arsed, goody-two-shoes girl two desks in front of me.
Of course she would always start crying and put her hand up to say, "Miss! Miss! Michael's shooting pellets at me." The teacher would then turn round and throw a blackboard duster in my direction. Ducking flying blackboard dusters at least taught me timing and coordination!
By ten past nine, I had experienced or participated in enough anti-social or life-threatening behaviour, to have a flock of counsellors seeking to set me on the path to enlightenment.
Most of us kids knew how to make stink bombs and how to make what I suppose would now be called a "pipe-bomb." I wont mention the ingredients we used or how we did it, but suffice to say that if I did it today, my house would have been raided by elite British anti-terror squads.
Actually the house next door would have been raided because as mentioned in a previous post, they were Muslims. Of course they wouldn't have found any evidence there but British police have never been ones to let trivial things such as evidence worry them.
Then there was the issue of social interaction with my fellow pupils. During the course of the mornings I often had difference of opinions with class mates. Our idea of conflict resolution was simple, effective and took place behind the bicycle sheds.
Sleeves rolled up and egged on by our mates, we would flay our arms wildly in mortal combat. Often the male teachers would watch, only stepping in when things got too one sided. Female teachers however tended to take a different view - they would step in at the first sight of a clenched fist.
Female teachers from my era were often contradictory in their approach to their charges - which at least made me realise at an early age, that women needed a bit more thinking about than I originally thought!.
They were, (1) the first to step in to stop a fight between two consenting school boys (2) Frequently the strictest teachers and hardest caners in the school. The marks they left would often linger long after those of their mere male counterparts, enabling us kids to show off our, "badge of honour" for a little while longer.
Let's fast-forward a few years to 1970 and sex education. At my school sex education largely fell to Susan Hanson in Form Four, who would charge two Woodbines for a basic no-frills course. The Woodbines were easy to get as the local corner shop would sell us one or two cigarettes instead of making us buy the whole packet.
If the cigarettes weren't being used as tuition fees, we would often smoke them in the side annexe of the Wyndham Hotel pub, (owned by one of the pupil's parents) who would let us buy meat pies and beer shandy at lunch-time.
I think it would be fair to say that neither myself nor my fellow classmates were the stuff many Mommy Blogs are made off.
And for that - I am eternally thankful.
Wherever you may be - be safe!
