My Life and Other Failed Experiments

by Tristan Bancks

  But at least every morning I wake up inside a video store. There are tall towers of movies teetering on every flat surface, and I get to play ‘Seen It, Haven’t Seen It’ without even getting out of bed.

  I don’t think my mother has ever truly relaxed in her life. She’s always DOING something. And that means that she always expects me to be DOING something.

  And after a hard week at school, I want to do nothing. (By nothing I mean play video games, eat chips and re-organise my scab collection.) But if she catches me:

  a) relaxing for more than 30 seconds, or

  b) enjoying myself in any way,

  she starts to get ideas. She looks at me like I’m an untapped resource – like coal or natural gas(I have plenty of the latter) – and she will mine me for everything I’ve got. This is how adults think. They fill every single minute with mindless jobs, like cleaning toilets, vacuuming floors and removing empty chip packets from my undies drawer.

  I worry that all this crazy doing-ness is setting me up for a poor work–life balance. What about a little ‘me’ time? So, I’ve developed this cut-out-and-keep list of handy tips on ways you can save time, energy, money and, possibly, your life. Now you can do more by doing less.

  It’s a proven fact that bed bugs and dust mites prefer a bed that’s been made. An unmade bed dries out bugs and exposes them to light, frying them in their sleep. So, let’s win this war on bed bugs, people.

  Is it really necessary to take all the dishes out of the dishwasher and put them in the cupboard, only to dirty them all up again and put them back in the dishwasher? Let’s just call the dishwasher a cupboard with an interesting door and skip the extra workload. And if you’re in need of an ‘express wash’, there’s nothing faster than a hungry dog’s tongue.

  Why scrub the toilet? In my almost 12 years on the planet, it has never occurred to me to clean the toilet. Just keep the lid down and everyone’s a winner. See no evil, smell no evil.

  Soap. Who needs it? Not me. It’s made from rendered beef fat and sodium laureth sulphate and sodium benzoate and trisodium ethylenediamine disuccinate and methylisothiazolinone and coca-midopropyl betaine and cl 42051. Soap is way scarier than dirt.

  It takes so much time to remove empty bottles and out-of-date cheese from the fridge. Why not just leave them in there? When the fridge is so full of empty packaging and manky, mouldy food that nothing else will fit, simply tip the fridge forward and the empties will slide out. Voila! Fresh fridge. Let’s go shopping.

  Wet towels on the bedroom floor? Let’s be at peace with this. They soak up dust, stop the floor from getting dirty and save money on new rugs. They can also be used as handy mops if you stand on them and rotate your feet in a circular motion. Let’s start to think of the floor as a slightly lower towel rack.

  My studies show that children who don’t do homework are 73 per cent happier than those who do. Are we really, as a society, prepared to put work ahead of our children’s wellbeing?

  Vacuuming? A noisy time-suck that adds at least five bucks a year to the electricity bill and costs me thousands of precious Lego bits. How about we all just agree not to look at the floor?

  Why wheel the garbage bins out every week? Why not leave them on the kerb permanently? You’ll never miss bin day again! And if you keep a window of the house open, you can throw banana peels, empty tuna cans and other junk directly from the house into the wheelie bin. Your basketball skills will improve and you’ll cut down on plastic bags, potentially saving the world from destruction.

  Do boys really need to lift the toilet seat when they pee? It’s so tiring and time-consuming, and then we have to go to the trouble of washing our hands. Can’t we just glue the seat into a permanently open position and hover for number twos?

  When it’s your turn to set the table, try telling your brother or sister that it’s their turn, and then go back and forth arguing until your mum or dad finally sets it themselves. Problem solved.

  If you have any other handy life hacks, drop me a line at thetomweekly@gmail.com

  I open my bedroom door, look both ways and creep out into the lounge room. My head thumps and my eyes bulge from my skull after a sleepless night. I look up and a little scream escapes my throat. Mum and my sister, Tanya, are sitting at the breakfast table on the far side of the room. They look terrifying. You know how people say, ‘I feel like a zombie,’ when they haven’t had much sleep? Well, Mum and Tanya look like actual zombies – red eyes, blotchy skin and a flesh-eating look. My flesh, I fear. They’re wearing dressing gowns and sipping mega-mugs of coffee. The steam rising in front of their faces makes them look even more sinister.

  ‘You didn’t fix the roof, did you?’ Mum hisses.

  ‘Well …’ I say.

  ‘I told you to fix the roof.’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘This afternoon. Do you understand me?’ She points a crooked zombie finger at me.

  I nod and gulp hard.

  Roof. This afternoon. Possums. I make a mental note and underline it three times.

  On Saturday my tennis ball got stuck in the gutter, up underneath the edge of the roof at the back of the house. To get it out, I had to lift a roof tile. I guess I didn’t put it back in place. Jack and I were pegging the ball at one another, so I was a bit distracted. Last night, a possum got in – a hundred possums, by the sound of it.

  I hate possums. I know that most people find them cute and it sounds a bit un-Australian of me. I hope the government doesn’t find out. I might get deported. I don’t like dive-bombing magpies either. I’m not mad on deadly snakes. And as for emus … don’t even get me started on emus. I’m glad we don’t have an emu in the roof. That’d be bad.

  If you’re a possum-lover, you clearly don’t have one in your roof. Possums in the roof don’t just sniff around a bit, find a comfy place to rest their weary possum heads and go to sleep. Roof possums are lunatics. They are pint-sized monsters who threaten our way of life. They wrestle and rumble and fight and growl. They bowl themselves up and down from the front of the house to the back. They invite their friends over and party till dawn. No matter how much you scream or bash on the ceiling with the end of a broom or threaten to make them into a fur jacket with matching hat, they don’t stop.

  We’re just finishing dinner tonight when Mum asks, ‘Did you fix that roof this afternoon?’

  ‘Yep,’ I say.

  ‘Good. Another night like that and I’ll throttle you.’

  ‘I’ll do worse than that,’ Tanya says.

  ‘Just as well you won’t have to,’ I say with a smile, and Mum ruffles my hair.

  ‘Good boy. You know what we’re having for dessert?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Homemade apple crumble. Your favourite.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ I take my dinner plate to the kitchen and put it in the sink. I go to the back door and peer through the glass into the cold darkness. There’s almost no moon tonight, and I really wish I’d actually fixed the roof this afternoon. I can’t go out there now. I’d freeze to death. And probably be attacked by an axe-wielding maniac, or a rogue emu. But I feel kinda bad for lying to Mum.

  ‘Crumble’s ready,’ she says. ‘C’mon, my little fix-it man.’

  Later, as I drift off to sleep, belly full of crumble, I pray that the possums find some other poor, unsuspecting, almost-perfect child to terrorise tonight. My dreams are restless and rowdy, full of thuds and bangs and skraarks. I wake at 11.59 pm and sit bolt upright in bed. In the dream I was having a possum just fell through the ceiling and landed on my head. I swipe madly at my face. There doesn’t seem to be a possum on it. This is positive.

  The house is dead quiet. I listen hard, waiting for the rumble to begin, but there’s nothing.

  I’m sweaty and thirsty from all the possum-infested dreams. I stumble frommy room and out to the kitchen for a glass of water. I take a long sip and stare out the window. I can see my reflection, and I notice two little red lights. And another two. And another
. Then it hits me. They’re not lights. They’re eyes.

  There are ten or twelve possums staring at me from a tree. A posse of possums. I’m pretty sure one of them is picking his teeth with a long knife. One looks like it has only one eye. Another has tattoos on its pink, hairless snout and bears its sharp teeth, growling in a low, demonic hiss.

  I scream but try to swallow it, scared of waking Mum and Tanya.

  I have to get to the roof hole at the back of the house before the possums do. I’ll fix it and Mum will never know I lied. I carefully place my glass in the sink and slowly edge my way towards the back door, trying to keep their eyes on me so that I can make a run for it before they do. But suddenly they scatter along the branches of the tree. I pull open the door, leap down the steps, run to the corner of the house and clamber up the ladder that I used to get my ball.

  I can hear them scurrying along the branch towards me, growling and hissing like something out of a horror movie. I make it to the top of the ladder and reach for the loose roof tile. I slide it back into place and bang down hard on it with my fist to make sure it’s fixed firmly. And I’ve done it. Mission accomplished. Mum will never know.

  I’m feeling so relieved, until I hear that demonic hiss once more and look over my shoulder to find a dark shadow falling through the air towards me. Smack! Bristly fur hits my face. Sharp claws rake the back of my scalp. I grab the possum’s wrists, trying to pry the claws from my skin before they reach my brain. Another possum lands on my shoulder. Another on my arm. They rip and tear at my skin. Before I can say ‘Possum Magic’ there’s one on my chest, my belly and each thigh and calf. I’m covered head to toe in possums. I’m wearing a possum suit.

  I scream and start to fall off the ladder. I’m tumbling towards certain death under a scrum of killer possums. This is no way for a man to die. I can see tomorrow’s news headlines: ‘Boy Meets Furry Fate at Paws of Possums’.

  BAM! I hit the ground and, all at once, the wild things leap into the air. I see their silhouettes above me – the black shapes of nine possums flying across the Milky Way. They land and scatter. Within seconds they have scampered up the ladder and on to the roof. One of them slides the rooftile aside. I think it’s the one who was using a machete as a toothpick.

  ‘Hey!’ I call.

  But it’s no use. They form a conga line and disappear into the hole, one after the other, and I’m left lying on the damp grass, my body and head aching from the fall, my skin howling with scratches and nips.

  The wild rumpus begins in the roof just as the last tail disappears into the hole.

  ‘Tom!’ Mum calls from her bedroom.

  I wonder if I’m too young to leave home?

  There’s a rumble, a tumble and a skraark in the roof.

  ‘Tom?’ she calls again, closer this time.

  Or maybe I’ll just take a long, well-deserved holiday. I hear Alaska’s nice this time of year.

  Thud, boom, bang.

  A dark Mum-ish shape fills the back door.

  I decide to just play dead. Surely if I’m dead she’ll forgive me for not fixing the roof.

  Crash, blam, growl.

  ‘TO-O-O-OM! Ohhhhhh, how cute!’ she says.

  Huh? I know I’m cute but it seems an unusual time for her to notice. I open one eye and see Mum coming down the steps towards me. I start to sit up.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she whispers. ‘You’ll scare it.’

  I feel something nuzzle against my armpit. Mum is moving in slowly. She takes a sharp breath. ‘It has a babyyyyy,’ she whispers.

  I raise my head ever so slightly to see that one of the possums is snuggling into me. And it has a tiny possum clinging to its back.

  ‘Did you save them?’ Mum whispers. ‘They love you. You’re a hero.’

  I hadn’t wanted to mention it, but if she says so …

  Mum kneels down and reaches in slowly to give the possum a pat. I can see the soft, moonlit smile on her face.

  Then SKRAAAAARK! The possum lashes out and bites her on the finger. Mum screams and the possum bolts off, up the ladder and squeezes beneath the roof tile.

  We watch it go. Mum, holding her finger, growls low and husky, kind of like an angry possum. ‘I gave you crumble and you didn’t fix the roof, did you?’

  The possum’s tail disappears and I’m wondering if they have space in the roof for one more. Sounds like they’re having fun up there.

  What they say …

  ‘Sugar is bad for you. It rots your teeth. You’ve eaten too many lollies today. No more.’

  What they do the minute you go to bed …

  Bust out the world’s largest block of chocolate and stuff their faces with it. When you getup to go to the bathroom and catch them, they tell you to ‘mind your own business’ and continue to scoff the block.

  What they say …

  ‘No more screen-time. You spend your whole life staring at a screen. When I was a kid we climbed trees and caught tadpoles.’

  What they do …

  Continue checking social media and ‘work’ emails on their phone while they say this to you.

  What they say …

  ‘I’m putting your device away FOREVER for what you’ve just done. You are NEVER having it back. I’m throwing it in the bin!’

  What they do …

  Secretly watch Netflix on it at night in bed because it’s way better than their own iPad.

  What they say …

  ‘Stop shouting!’

  What they do …

  Shout this at you.

  What they say …

  ‘I’m vegetarian.’

  What they do …

  Eat fish and eggs and when you ask them what’s the difference between eating a cow and eating a fish or an unborn chicken they mutter something about cows being man’s best friend and chickens being stupid.

  What they say …

  ‘No, you can’t have lemonade! You’ve had enough sugar. It’s a “sometimes” drink.’

  What they do …

  Take another sip of their own ‘sometimes’ drink.

  What they say …

  ‘I expect you to get an A in that maths exam this morning!’

  What they do …

  Hide their own dodgy school reports and exam marks in a lockable vault in the back of the shed, claiming they must have lost them when they moved house.

  What they say …

  ‘Eat your breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.’

  What they do …

  Drink coffee for breakfast and tell their friends, ‘I just can’t face food in the morning.’

  What they say …

  ‘You should read a book. Reading is good for you.’

  What they do …

  Turn the page on their Bunnings tool catalogue or trashy celebrity magazine.

  What they say …

  ‘It’s important to speak to people respectfully, with kindness and understanding.’

  What they do …

  Reach up to the top shelf of the pantry and scream, ‘I’m going to murder whoever ate all the Tim Tams!’

  ‘It’s going to be the best Christmas ever,’ Mum says.

  She puts the white beard over my head and I feel the elastic snap tight to the back of my scalp. She pulls my red hat with the furry white trim down over my brow. ‘You look great. Now, get out there and impress those judges.’

  I take another bite of candy cane. (I’ve already eaten 12 tonight, a personal record.)

  ‘This is so embarrassing.’

  ‘You have nothing to worry about. We’ve practised the dismount a dozen times. You’ll do great,’ Mum says. ‘C’mon, off we go.’

  She opens the front door and I peer through the fly screen. I can see the big Christmas tree lit up in the middle of the yard. There’s a neon Santa and snowmen. Strings of lights outline the front porch, trees and bushes. Six white boomers are frozen in mid-leap over the front fence, and there are hundreds of plastic candles, toy sold
iers and snowflakes all over the yard.

  It’s Christmas Eve and, somehow, Mum has tricked me into helping her try to win the Kings Bay Festival of Christmas Light contest. She’s always wanted to enter. The judges are down on the front lawn near the road with about 50 other people.

  I can see my best friend Jack down there next to the family of penguins with top hats. And Mum’s friend Andy, the Kings Bay Echo newspaper photographer, is standing next to them. He’s come to take a shot of Santa arriving. Most importantly, I can see my wife-to-be, Sasha – the whole reason I agreed to do this humiliating stunt.

  Sasha’s obsessed with Christmas, too. When I told her that Mum wanted me to dress up as Santa and deliver candy canes and Christmas puddings to everyone on our front lawn on Christmas Eve, she thought it was the greatest idea ever. I told her there was no way I was doing it, and you know what she said?‘If you do it, I’ll kiss you.’ My jaw dropped. ‘On the cheek,’ she added. But I was in no position to make demands. Sasha. Kiss. Deal.

  So, here I am, putting my reputation on the line for the woman I love.

  I pat my fat pillow belly, and a little bit of candy-cane-flavoured stomach acid shoots up and burns the back of my throat. Mum shoves open the screen door and ushers me outside. ‘Off we go.’

  ‘Hey, look! Santa!’ a little kid yells. A couple of camera flashes go off.

  ‘Oh, yeah, Santa!’

  More flashes.

  Mum guides me to the balcony railing where the zipline starts. It runs down past the Christmas tree, over the neon Santa and six white boomers, over the front fence laced with fairy lights and onto the strip of grass next to the road where the crowd is gathered.

  It’s a warm night and I realise I’m sweating up my Santa suit. My belly doesn’t feel too good either with Mum’s lasagne, a bucket of fear and 12 candy canes swirling around in it.