by Woog
Yet despite my tomboy antics and desire to be a professional footballer when I grew up, I still—like so many young girls—coveted pretty costumes and shiny crowns. But I’m afraid my unprepossessing appearance led to my first experience of public humiliation.
It was coming up to the end of the year, and everyone’s attention had turned to the nativity play—a Christmas school tradition that has long since died out thanks to the controversy that surrounds religion in schools. Hell, my mum was an atheist, and then a Buddhist, but she didn’t give a damn about the fact that I was going to be the head angel, come hell or high water. That was my dream, you see; my goal. Not only did the head angel get the most stage time and the prettiest costume, complete with silver, sparkly wings—she alone got to wear a halo, a magnificent headpiece draped in silver tinsel.
I spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror practising standing still and looking celestial, and just as well I did because the audition process was fairly brutal. To begin with, all those who wanted to play Joseph or Mary were asked to stand. I stayed seated; there was no way I wanted to wear the dull brown sack that was Mary’s costume. Yuck!
Then everyone who wanted a shot at being the head angel was asked to stand. I leapt up and assumed the position I had been practising so diligently. My still and celestial bearing immediately caught Miss Babos’s eye.
She told me to sit down.
It turned out the decision had already been made, and Natalie Brown took the crown (well, halo). Natalie Brown, with her big blue eyes and tiny physique. She had the sort of curly, white-blonde hair that would be an American kiddie-pageant stage mom’s dream come true. I vowed to hate Natalie Brown for the rest of my life.
Later, at home, I wept big tears into my mother’s bosom. She soothed me with her kind words, assuring me that one day I would grow up to become Miss Australia. This title was a very big deal back in 1979, and was used as a yardstick for women who desired to achieve great things. Mum often used to tell me that I would be Miss Australia one day, until her best mate Lois took her aside and warned her that she should stop telling me such lies as clearly I was not Miss Australia material.
But back to the nativity play . . . I didn’t even get the roll of a lesser angel. Instead, I was the donkey. As I was steered across the stage alongside Mary and Joseph, my head completely covered by my costume, I didn’t have a very good view of the angels. But I heard the cheers and gasps of admiration for Natalie Brown as she led the chorus in a squeaky rendition of ‘Silent Night’.
Bitch.
If I wasn’t a star of the kindergarten stage, at least I nailed the lot of them when it came to academia. According to my progress report, by April of that first year I was able to recognise the colours red, yellow, blue and green, and I had mastered the use of scissors. There was, however, no tick in that box in the social adjustment section, indicating a pupil who ‘sulks, cries easily, anxious, tantrums or shy’.
At the end of the year, I received 100 per cent in reading and 100 per cent in mathematics. Under the section Interested in books and the written word, Miss Babos had written: Kayte shows a great deal of interest in books—her enthusiasm in reading and writing is to be commended.
I positively glowed when Mum read out this comment to me, despite the fact that—my aforementioned interest notwithstanding—I had absolutely no idea what it meant. Enthusiasm? Commended?
So, all in all, kindergarten was a huge year for me. And, despite the hiccup of the nativity play, a successful one. Miss Babos’s final report certainly seemed to imply a bright future:
Kayte’s achievements in all subject areas are of an excellent standard! Her results in Reading and Mathematics reflect the concentrated effort she makes and the keen interest she shows in all that she undertakes.
Who was to know that I had already reached my academic peak?
It was to be all downhill from there.
2
SMURFS, SWATCHES AND STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
Growing up, there were certain things that you had to possess or risk being cast into social purgatory. These things were the status symbols of the playground. If you were lucky, you had parents who understood the importance of fads and made sure you were furnished with the correct equipment in a timely fashion, meaning you would always be considered cool.
But if, like me, you were one of three kids being brought up by a single working mum who had no time to concern herself with collecting Smurf statuettes from the BP, you would quite often find yourself on the fringes of society, hoping desperately that one of your friends would condescend to let you wear their calculator watch for the second half of lunch.
Oh, don’t pity me—I had something that nobody else did. I had a pony. I was a lucky, spoilt girl with a horse. This was thanks to my Poppa, who was famous for breeding slow thoroughbreds. Of course, this meant jack shit in the playground, but I was reminded of the fact each time I requested some new bauble that was all the rage in the playground that week.
The earliest triumph of my superior nagging skills that I can recall was when Mum caved in and wallpapered one wall of my bedroom with Holly Hobbie wallpaper. I was rapt, loving myself sick and inviting all the kids from the neighbourhood to come and bask in the glory that was Holly. (Now, a million years later, it occurs to me that Holly Hobbie was really a very insipid character; she didn’t seem to do much other than say naff things and pat her cat while wearing rags. Who knows? Perhaps she was the original crazy cat lady.)
However, at the exact same moment that I had my wall decorated with Holly Hobbie wallpaper, it became socially unacceptable to have even a sniff of anything Holly Hobbie in your possession. It was a good lesson for a six-year-old to learn: you should follow your heart, not follow the pack, and if you loved Holly Hobbie then . . .
Oh, bullshit to that. The pack had moved on and it was all about Strawberry Shortcake. Like Holly Hobbie before her, Strawberry Shortcake stemmed from a character who first made her appearance via greeting cards. And, like Holly, Strawberry Shortcake also had a cat, appropriately named Custard.
In 1980 the doll was launched to much hysteria because she came with the scent of strawberry shortcake. Little girls the world over pestered their parents to buy them this new doll, and then spent hours and hours sniffing them. The company clearly realised they were onto a winner, and soon Strawberry Shortcake was joined by a gaggle of friends, all named after desserts: there was Raspberry Tart, Apple Dumpling and Huckleberry Pie, just to name a few.
My friend Elizabeth was given each new doll by her doting parents as soon as they were released. So, after school, I would come home, get changed out of my uniform and tell my mum: ‘I’m just going over to Elizabeth’s to smell her dolls, okay?’
And off I would go, cutting through the empty paddock, past the scary man’s house, down another suburban street, until I reached her place. Her mum would let me in, make me a Milo and off I would go with Elizabeth, into her room to sniff her doll collection. Lemon Meringue Pie was easily my favourite, and Elizabeth was generous with her fumes, letting me take long, long sniffs of that sickly, synthetic smell.
Soon it was my birthday and I was promised that I would be on the receiving end of a Strawberry Shortcake doll, or at least one of her friends. Naturally, I started bragging about it at school. But to my unspeakable horror, on the day of my birthday I was presented with the most reviled character of the dessert-doll world: the evil and strange Purple Pieman. My stock, which had risen on the promise of entree into the exclusive Shortcake world, abruptly plunged. The Purple Pieman and I were left swinging at the bottom of the social spectrum.
Hey, but at least I had a horse!
That birthday I also received a much-longed-for Western Suburbs Magpies jersey. It went well with my Holly Hobbie wallpaper. I was quite a fucked-up kid, now that I think about it.
But then one day my dad, fresh from an overseas trip, came for a visit and presented me with something new . . . something different . . . something tha
t would blow the other kids’ minds. It was a watch, but not just any old watch. It was a Swatch watch. Now, Swatch is said to be a contraction of ‘second watch’—but not for me! It was my first-ever watch. It was red, plastic and I was finally an early adapter of a new fad!
I would wear it to school and allow people to admire it. Sometimes, if I was feeling particularly generous, I would let one of the popular kids wear it for the day. But as fads and trends tend to spread like syphilis, it wasn’t long until my red watch lost its gloss. Soon, everyone had one.
So, it was back to square one.
Enter . . . Ramona Alvarez.
The Cabbage Patch Kid, a much-hyped and memorable object of desire, came onto the market in 1983 and resulted in parents the world over exhibiting undesirable behaviours in toy stores as they fought to get their hands on one of the precious dolls. By this stage, Mum had met husband number two, a kind and generous fellow who took on Mum, her three kids, two horses, a cat and a geriatric labrador called Sam. They, too, returned from an overseas holiday and presented me and my newly acquired younger step sister with a Cabbage Patch Kid each.
You never really owned a Cabbage Patch Kid; you adopted one. According to the inventor, one Xavier Roberts, each doll was unique and came with an adoption certificate stating that particular doll’s name. My doll’s name was Ramona Alvarez.
I found it hard to bond with Ramona for a few reasons. One was the ridiculously strange name. Another was that she had red hair. A third reason was that my brother took to using her as a weapon for whacking me and, man, that plastic head was large and hard. Like concrete.
Fucking Ramona Alvarez. Everyone else had blue-eyed, blonde-haired Cabbage Patch Kids with names like Stephanie Joy or Belinda Grace, but not me. Red hair, green eyes and freckles, and a middle name that took me at least a year to learn how to pronounce.
But I had a horse.
Anyway, it was around this time a little-known company called Nintendo introduced something called Game and Watch. Cabbage Patch who?
Game and Watch lived up to its prosaic name. It was a game and a watch. They started popping up in the playground and I can still remember the bright orange of the Donkey Kong game. Through the mists of time (or, rather, from the depths of my booze-soaked brain), I dimly recall that the object of the game was to assist the hero get to the top of the construction site, all the while avoiding the barrels that are being chucked at you by an increasingly angry monkey.
I played Donkey Kong so much that I dreamt about it. Jump. Jump. SPACE SPACE SPACE, up the ladder. Space. Jump. The sequence was the same with every new game. It was the height of technological sophistication at the time.
One craze that was very inclusive—being both cheap and locally available—was the Scanlens football trading cards. You bought them at Gazza’s Northo Takeaway (which I believe has since been replaced by Yummy Noodle Bar). They came in packs of three with a stick of gum thrown in for good measure. I was forever searching for the elusive Terry Lamb card to complete my set and have the entire Magpies team represented. It was a cheap hobby, coming in at about twenty cents per pack. And if you had pinched an extra twenty cents from your mum’s handbag, you could also avail yourself of a packet of Fags, which were lollies packaged to resemble cigarettes.
I could often be found out the front of Gazza’s Northo Takeaway, ‘smoking’ my fags and trading my cards with other delinquents. And then my older sister would arrive on her bike, telling me that I had to go home and that I was in a ton of trouble because Mrs Brannigan had driven past and seen me standing on the street corner smoking, and she’d rung Mum.
While I was innocent of the alleged crime, it might well have been my penchant for Fags and trading cards that led me down the slippery slope to organised crime . . . And my enabler was an elderly family friend by the name of Judy McGuinness. I liked visiting Judy; she spoilt me rotten and I did not have to compete for her attention with any of my siblings. Judy would let me watch TV whenever I wanted and would give me plates of Iced VoVos and never seemed to get irritated when I followed her around asking question after question, all of which she answered patiently.
Judy used to take me to the local shops with her when she ran errands. We would pick up some groceries, select a cupcake from the bakery and we always visited the chemist to fill prescriptions for Judy’s ailing husband, John.
And it was in the chemist that I first stole a hairclip with a ladybird on it.
Later that week, I sold the ladybird hairclip to a girl at school for five cents.
And so began my descent into the world of organised crime. I quickly developed a taste for the good life, and I wanted more. Over the next few months, I continued to visit with Judy, we would go on her errands and I would stuff my pockets with hairclips at the chemist.
One afternoon while Mum was putting away the washing, she came across my latest collection of hair accessories, which were due to hit the market over the next few days. She asked me where I got them from. So I told her that Judy McGuinness had bought them for me.
I was horrified when I saw Mum heading to the telephone and almost died when I heard her say: ‘Hi, Judy. I just wanted to thank you . . .’
I ran away. THE JIG WAS UP!
I cautiously entered the kitchen again a few minutes later and heard Mum giving Judy a gentle but firm lecture on how she should not be spending so much money on hair clips for me.
The next time I visited Judy McGuinness, I confessed everything. How could I not? The guilt was overwhelming. She just gave me a hug and told me that we all do stupid things. It made me love her even more. In the meantime, I sold the last of my stock to a cashed-up and willing market and spent the lot on Galaga and Icees, which were the latest fad . . .
THE BENEFITS OF A STATION WAGON
I asked a friend of mine, fellow blogger Kirsten Smith, if she had a stand-out memory from her primary school days. And she did.
I absolutely loved school as a kid, which was just as well because I went to six of them: four primary schools and two high schools. I wish there was an exciting story to tell about the reason behind the rather large number of school enrolment forms my parents, Pam and Errol Woolcott, have completed over the years but, unfortunately, there’s not.
I’d love to be able to tell you that at 2 pm on a cold winter’s day in 1984, Pam and Errol were summoned to the principal’s office to discuss my behaviour where the imaginary conversation went a little something like this:
‘Mr and Mrs Woolcott, please have a seat. Let me just move this ashtray out of the way and I’ll be able to find your daughter’s file.’ Principal picks up brown glass ashtray and places it next to typewriter. Looks down at desk. ‘Ah, yes. Here it is,’ he says, picking up a thick manila folder and wiping cigarette ash from the front of it.
‘I keep telling my secretary to get me one of those new ashtrays on a stand that traps the ash inside. Have you seen them? Such a clever contraption. The mind boggles at what they will invent next!’ Sits down and opens file. ‘Now, as you’re aware, our resident Anglican nun, Sister Bridget, teaches the children Religious Education once a week.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Pam might answer. ‘Lovely lady. Has the perfect skin tone for someone who has to wear black all day long!’
Principal raises eyebrows, looks up over glasses and clears throat. ‘Mrs Woolcott, this is not the time or the place to be discussing a nun’s skin tone. I have called you and Mr Woolcott here today because your daughter, Kirsten, has done something very serious that will more than likely see her expelled from this school.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. What did she do this time?’ Errol might reply. ‘Please tell me she didn’t sneak her pet rabbit into her backpack again. Pam, I thought you were checking her bag in the mornings?’
Cue a hefty glare thrown at Errol from Pam and a loud sigh from the principal, followed by the words, ‘No, she did not bring the rabbit to school again. She did however call Sister Bridget, Sister Birdshit, not once but T
WICE during Religious Education this morning.’
‘OH MY GOD. Where the bloody hell would she have gotten language like that from?! Jesus Christ. I’ll kill her when I get my hands on her. Sister Birdshit. I’ll give her bloody birdshit. She’s a nun forchristsakes. You can’t talk like that to a nun!’
‘Fairly sure you can’t talk like that in a principal’s office either, Pam,’ Errol might say as he stands up and eyeballs Pam to do the same. ‘Thank you, Mr Walker, for your time. We will collect Kirsten and her belongings on our way out.’
Mr Walker stands up from behind his desk, ‘Thank you, Mr Woolcott. I would appreciate that. Oh, there’s just one last thing before you go.’
‘Yes?’ Pam might ask as she smooths out the wrinkles on her high-waisted polyester slacks.
‘My wife was admiring your hair the other day when our boys were playing soccer and she asked me to enquire, if I may, where you get it permed?’
But, no, there were never any phone calls from the school to my parents or suspensions or expulsions, although I did have a pet rabbit and was, on occasion, taught by a nun whose name was Sister Bridget. She was known in the playground as Sister Birdshit, although I can neither confirm nor deny that the person responsible for coming up with that nickname was in fact a ten-year-old me.
The real, slightly boring reason for attending six schools in twelve years of education was because my parents liked to move a lot. That’s it. Which isn’t quite as exciting as an imaginary conversation in the principal’s office about swearing at a nun, but it does make for several actual interesting stories, including the time our class went on an excursion.
The primary school I was a student at the longest was a lovely little inner city one in Christchurch, New Zealand. It had a beautiful old stone building that housed the classrooms, a timber church next door and approximately no grass to play on.
