by Woog
Each day, Mum used to drive my brother Blair and me to and from school in her pale-blue mini, which had a tendency to not start in the mornings (‘Get in kids and cross your fingers she starts today!’), while Dad drove the school excursion jackpot—a station wagon, which was a recent addition to our household.
In Year 4, or Standard Two as it was known in New Zealand in 1981, there was much excitement among our class of twenty-seven students when our teacher Mrs Hill announced we would be going on our very first excursion to inspect an aeroplane hangar of all things. Parent volunteers were required to assist getting us all to and from the venue, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to go, and could you please put your hand up if any of your parents drive a station wagon?
Now up until this point, I had spent a vast amount of the lesson daydreaming about bean bags. You see my friend Diane, who lived up the road from me, had just had a bean bag made for her bedroom. It was quite an odd shape but it was made from the most luxurious purple fabric I’d ever felt.
‘It’s corduroy,’ Diane informed me, as I gently ran my hands across the softly woven fabric. ‘Most people use it to make overalls but Mum said it would make a terrific bean bag. It’s filled with tiny little balls of foam. You can sit on it if you like.’
I stopped touching the fabric and stared at the purple corduroy-covered bean bag sitting on the thick brown shag-pile carpet in the corner of Diane’s bedroom. ‘Diane, you are so lucky. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It would be so good to sit in one of these after rollerskating every Saturday!’
I tried to sit down gracefully on the bean bag—but graceful isn’t really a word that springs to mind when describing my athletic abilities—so instead I slipped on the one-inch thick shag-pile carpet, fell backwards onto the bean bag and accidentally let out a fart at the exact moment my butt hit the soft foam-filled fabric.
This was followed by a few seconds of awkward silence before Diane yelled, ‘Did you just fart on my bean bag?’ Her face all twisted into an unusual look of horror and disgust.
I started laughing, which didn’t exactly help the situation, while Diane shouted, ‘Mum! Kirsten just farted on my bean bag!’
Diane’s Mum entered the room and calmly assessed the situation. She took one look at a red-faced Diane, then one look at me laughing hysterically on the bean bag, and very politely suggested that it might be best for all concerned if I made my way back home.
Probably a fair call. I mean it was corduroy and I did just fart on it. I thanked Diane’s Mum for having me, apologised to Diane, put my pink jelly shoes on and walked home.
On my way home I decided that I was really lucky Diane didn’t go to my school because, if she did, there was a fairly high chance I would be known as the girl who farted on a bean bag for the rest of my life. I also decided that I really, really wanted a bean bag of my own.
The only problem was that Mum didn’t have a sewing machine and I’d already put in a request for a Cabbage Patch Kid, a game of Guess Who? and a View-Master for Christmas, so I thought adding a corduroy bean bag to the list might’ve been pushing things a bit.
However—back to the classroom—upon hearing Mrs Hill say the words ‘excursion’ and ‘station wagon’ snapped me right out of my bean bag daydream and my hand went up quicker than a contestant on The Price Is Right!
‘Mrs Hill! Mrs Hill! My dad has a station wagon!’ I shouted excitedly, while frantically waving my hand around.
‘It’s a red one. He just got it. Although it’s not really his. I think his boss is lending it to him? I’m not sure. Dad told us about it while we were eating tea last night but I wasn’t really listening because Mum had cooked schnitzel and it’s my favourite and she hardly ever makes it and—’
‘Thank you, Kirsten—’ Mrs Hill interrupted (that used to happen to me a lot during primary school)—‘for yet another very in-depth answer to a fairly simple question. I think your father might have what is known as a company car,’ continued Mrs Hill, while no doubt wondering how quickly a cigarette lighter works in a new station wagon and if those new beige vinyl seats everyone keeps talking about really are as slippery to sit on as they say they are. ‘I’ll give your dad a call at lunch time and see if he is allowed to use it for a school excursion.’
Turns out Dad was allowed to use the work station wagon for school excursions and, while we were all in the playground inhaling peanut butter sandwiches and playing Red Rover on the concrete, Mrs Hill was working hard in the staffroom, calling other parents to ask if they too had a station wagon and would they like to join us on an excursion?
By the time we all filed back into our classroom at the end of lunch, Mrs Hill had successfully managed to rope two other parents into using their station wagons, so the excursion was happening!
‘Right,’ said Mrs Hill as she whipped out a piece of chalk from her hair. ‘It’s time for a quick maths lesson. Eyes on the board!’
We all stared straight ahead as Mrs Hill proceeded to write the following sum in longhand on the large blackboard on the wall:
If there are twenty-seven students in a class who are going on an excursion and there are three station wagons to take them to and from the venue, how many children will fit in each car?
I was never any good at maths, so I watched on as hands shot up around me and someone yelled out, ‘Nine! There will be nine of us in each car!’
‘That’s right, Mark,’ said Mrs Hill. ‘Well done. There will be nine of you in each car. One in the front seat, three in the back seat and five in the boot.’
‘Where will you be, Mrs Hill?’ asked Kelly.
‘Oh, I will be driving in my own car behind you all, keeping an eye on things and making sure everyone is safe. Now if you could pass these notes around and make sure your parents read them, please. It explains everything they need to know about the excursion. Oh, and if you’re short, you’re in luck. You’ll be riding in the boot of the station wagons to and from the excursion because it will be easier for you sit on your bottom and cross your legs in such a cramped space!’
If you don’t count the day I received a free Wombles poster with my book club order, this was the most exciting day of my primary school life. Not only was my dad coming with me on my very first excursion but, thanks to being one of the shortest members of the class, I was going to ride in the boot of a station wagon with four of my vertically challenged friends! If only I had a corduroy bean bag to sit on to make the ride more comfortable . . .
Visit Kirsten at her blog @ kirstenandco.com.
3
THE PRIDE OF ERIN
Of all the things I learned in primary school, the one thing I remember most clearly to this day is how to dance the Pride of Erin. I cannot recall the capital of Peru, and I still can’t work out the symbols for ‘less than’ and ‘more than’, but if you need to know the steps to the Pride of Erin—or even the Heel and Toe Polka, for that matter—I’m your gal.
Dancing lessons at school. Do you know that they were actually part of the curriculum back then? Depending on your vintage, you may have learnt anything from the Bullockies Ball to the Jubilee Jig, the Prince of Wales Schottische to the Waterfall Waltz.
Our dancing lesson, if memory serves me correct (and it does seem to favour days of yore), was on a Thursday afternoon. We all filed into the hall, with the boys lined up on one side and the girls on the other. It was like a Mexican stand-off.
The teacher would then ask the boys to choose a partner. (CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT DOES TO A GIRL WITH COKE-BOTTLE GLASSES AND TEETH THAT PROTRUDE FROM HER MOUTH AT A NINETY-DEGREE ANGLE?) All the boys would rush to the pretty girls and grab them by the hand. And I stood there, like a lonely sausage in the meat display window of a butcher’s shop at the end of the day.
So I ended up dancing with the strange girl who wouldn’t talk to anyone, but just picked at her scabs and ate them.
Thankfully, the Pride of Erin was a progressive dance, and I got to have actual
physical contact with the male species. Which was all very well and good until you ended up dancing with the cool, cute boy who refused to touch you because someone spread a rumour that you had warts.
You then moved on to Stanley, whom you refused to touch because back in kindergarten he shat his pants and sat in it all day and was referred to as Stinky Stanley ever since. Oh, the politics of progressive dance!
Then, after all the formal dancing, the teachers let you go apeshit by blaring ‘Nutbush City Limits’, which was when your creativity could finally be unleashed—but not really, as you had to do the correct moves or were made to go and sit on the stage, alone, like a renegade disco diva who had lost her way.
But disco was an exotic byway; the main game was the good old Aussie bush dance, and in the 1980s our bible was The Bushwhackers Band Dance Book. It was from this much-loved and well-thumbed resource that Mr Ellis or Mr Lewis taught us how to dance the Waves of Bondi. Looking back on that experience, it must have been as fun for them as it is to try to bathe a cat. Apparently, when the dance is done correctly, it resembles waves crashing onto Bondi Beach.
Apparently.
It was somewhat creepy to watch your teacher dance with Mrs Hunt on the stage, pleading with you to watch on and learn each little step. The truth of the fact was that we thought these dances were daggy, and we would much rather learn the steps to ‘Thriller’.
My fondness for the art of dance saw me and my two best friends, Penny and Audra, start our own little dance trio. We were awfully exclusive and practised a lot each afternoon after school.
There were two stand-out numbers that we concentrated on. The first was a mysterious and exotic song and dance performed to the tune of ‘Magic’, sung by Olivia Newton-John in the wonderful movie Xanadu.
Penny’s mum, Mrs Riley, was very encouraging, and she proved to be quite nifty with a sewing machine. For this dance, we wore pink and purple dresses that had handkerchief hems—the glamour! They looked very floaty and dramatic when we held the bottoms of our dresses and swirled suggestively around the stage.
We debuted our act at the school’s quarterly talent quest, and came a respectable second place behind the boy who did the Frank Carpenter impersonation. (However, the principal did tell us that our performance was a little too adult.) Buoyed by our success, we immediately began work on a new number in preparation for the following term’s quest.
‘Walking on Sunshine’ by Katrina and the Waves had just been released. It was upbeat, catchy and definitely less creepy than ‘Magic’. Mrs Riley made us costumes again, and they too were much less controversial. We wore sunny yellow halterneck dresses with sensible knee-length hems.
We were positively giddy with excitement at the prospect of winning the school talent quest and, if the reaction of the enraptured crowd was anything to go by, our victory was assured.
But while we’d been feverishly rehearsing our dance number, a rival had been equally busy at the piano. Susie Jarski took to the stage and stole the limelight, playing Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ without a single mistake.
And so, to the victor went the spoils. Susie won a $2 voucher to the canteen. (It was probably for the best, as it would have been hard to split that two bucks between three people. Although, I suppose we could have bought 200 carob buds and divvied them up that way . . .)
But the thing was, for all the effort we put into our dance trio—the time, the rehearsals, the choreography, the costume fittings, the drama, the disagreements about who got to be in the middle—it was never about the prize. We just wanted to be known throughout the school as talented.
Through all my primary school years—and I am ready to admit this now—I never won a thing. Oh, sure, I got a merit award here and there, but that doesn’t really count. (Insider secret: everyone in the class has to get one over the course of the year; it is an unwritten rule.)
But if I never won, there was a time when I came second—and it was fucking marvellous.
I was in Year 1, and Easter was approaching—and with it the annual hat parade. Most of my schoolmates had stay-at-home mums who probably relished the chance to pit their creative skills against each other. But my mother was time-poor. She was working her ring off trying to build her new business, Christine Murphy’s Indoor Plant Hire. Basically she was, and still is, excellent with plants, and she established the first indoor plant-hire business in Australia. For a couple of dollars a week, she would supply and tend to plants in businesses and restaurants.
I knew Mum didn’t have the time to create a fancy hat for the parade but, undeterred, I entered the ‘I Made It Myself’ category, designed for those children who would be responsible for making their own bonnets.
Looking around our house, it was fairly evident that we were not a crafty family. We had no magical cupboard full of pipe cleaners, special tape and glue. We had a few textas and that was about it. So I had to be quite experimental. I waited patiently until the pink ice-cream was finally eaten from the Neopolitan ice-cream selection, and then I swiped the plastic container. I covered it in tin foil, then pasted on a few hand-drawn pictures of rabbits.
Stick a fork in me . . . I was DONE.
The big day arrived and I proudly wore my hat to school. I was surprised to find that many of the other kids weren’t wearing hats. When I asked why, they explained that their mothers were bringing them in at recess because they were too intricate and fragile to be used as everyday wear.
After recess the parade began, and to give credit where it is due, the mothers at North Richmond Public School that year had completely outdone themselves. Parading around the grass were wonderful examples of just what you can do with a glue gun.
Mine was the last category to be called on. Me and another boy walked around for a little bit, then he was given a blue ribbon and I was given a red one.
Sweet rapturous joy flooded through me. I was a winner! And I did it myself!
It totally made up for the fact that, as it turned out later, I couldn’t dance for shit.
4
PRETTY IN FLUORO PINK
Like most girls of my age, my first interest in fashion and appearance can be traced back to one person: Madonna.
When she burst onto the world stage in the early 1980s, she redefined fashion for me. Want to wear some bike pants under a miniskirt with a ripped t-shirt over another ripped t-shirt under a mesh singlet? Be my guest. Better still, pile on every single bracelet and bangle in your house and you were really good to go. Even if it was just a trip to Coles with your mum to do the grocery shopping, you were going to rock those aisles.
There was just one problem: my parents had no intention of allowing their pre-teen daughter to parade around town dressed like some sort of hooker. And so I was an oppressed child stuck in sensible shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of a pony on it.
Meanwhile, my sister, who was three years older and worked after school at Marie’s Record Magic, earned her own money and was able to spend it as she pleased. She bought super-cool things like blue eyeliner, blue eyeshadow, frosted pink lipstick and mesh singlets. She was a bitch about sharing, too. Not to worry. As soon as she left the house to do whatever horrendous teenage girls do (i.e. smoke cigarettes in the park with the other juvenile delinquents), I would make a beeline straight for her room.
Armed with the latest issue of Smash Hits for reference, I would use all of my sister’s makeup to emulate either Madonna or Cyndi Lauper, another style icon of mine. And I didn’t bother with subtlety, no way. I stacked it on. I’d start with two big swipes of hot pink blush that ran from the corners of my mouth, up and over my cheekbones to end at my earlobes. My eyes were lined with electric-blue pencil while the lids were liberally dusted with a matching powder and my eyelashes caked in mascara in the same shade. To counterbalance the look, I painted my lips with Revlon’s Pink in the Afternoon, a shimmery pale pink that I believe is still available today.
Next it was time for hair and wardrobe. I’d tip my head upside do
wn and tease my hair until it resembled a halo around my head. Clipped to my ears were a pair of huge white hoops. My sister had an impressive wardrobe, and I would put on basically everything she owned, for layering was de rigueur. Finally, with my feet swimming around in her Doc Martens, the concert would commence.
I used my pink tape deck to record my favourite songs from the American Top 40. I would grab my hairbrush, hit play, and imagine myself standing on a stage, singing and dancing in front of thousands of screaming fans.
Because I was a professional, there was light and shade to my performance. I might start out with Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance . . . What a Feeling’, which was always a crowd pleaser. Then I’d slow things with a heart-felt rendition of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. I’d then change the tempo with a series of upbeat numbers like ‘Beat It’, ‘Holiday’ and ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ until, finally, I was discovered. Not by a recording agent keen to listen to my demo, but by my sister. And she was not in the mood for fun.
Down the stairs I’d race, her hot on my heels. If I was lucky, I’d make it to wherever my mother was and thus be saved. If I was unlucky, I’d cop a generous beating and a spray of language so foul it would have made a bikie blush.
By the time I hit Year 6, my interest in couture was stronger than ever. So Mum eventually relented to my pleas and took me on a shopping trip to Grace Bros at Penrith Plaza. Until then, all my clothes shopping had been done in the children’s wear department, but not anymore. Mum took me to the Miss Shop and I was in heaven.
The racks were crammed with fluorescent clothing and I wanted to play a big part in this trend. I wanted to own this trend. I could not get enough of the fluorescent stuff so we pulled an outfit together that would let the general public know that I fully endorsed this fashion moment.
