by Susan Berran
Gee, they were that dumb, even back then; the few houses on either side of the hill were less than a couple of hundred metres apart.
“He was killed in the Great War. Well actually, he was killed when he fell from his horse because he forgot to tighten the saddle, in the Great War of Agnath. That was when the people who lived on both sides of the hill were fighting over who really lived in Agnath and who were the ‘outsiders’,” he finally finished.
WOW, I couldn’t believe how much I wanted to rip off my own ears and flush them down the loo.
For some strange reason these dim wits all thought their great-great-rellies were interesting … AND THEY’RE NOT! And Miss Forest doesn’t shut them up! Why? It was almost as if the moment these turkeys started waffling on, they bored Miss Forest into some strange sort of hypnotic trance or something. Suddenly she’d just be sitting there nodding her head.
“OK, thanks Mitch. Ummm, where were we? Ah yes … ” she went on. Miss Forest then started to explain how so many of these brave men never made it back. But even then they still discovered so much and taught us so mu …
“My dad’s uncle’s brother’s son knew this guy whose postman’s dog never came back,” Dopey Sophie announced loudly.
“Mmmmm,” Miss Forest said quietly.
“And he never got over it … never! He reckons his dog had to be the bravest dog in the whole entire world and taught him heaps. Like how you shouldn’t drink yellow water, and how if you use the creek as a dunny you shouldn’t then swim down-stream,” Dopey continued.
OMG. I wanted to stick my head in an ELECTRIC BLENDER! Why wasn’t Miss Forest stopping this? My brains were going to explode through my ears like over-cooked porridge.
“Did he die helping the discoverers find and explore new lands and dangerous places?” Miss Forest said with tears beginning to fill her eyes.
“No … he ran away last week,” Dopey said with her usual blank look.
AARRRHHH! THUD THUD THUD THUD …
I started to smack my head on my desk trying to make the PAIN go away. But when I looked up, she was still there.
Miss Forest had quickly wiped away the tears from her eyes and cleared her throat. Why didn’t she shut them up? She again tried to continue with the lesson … “Some of the lost heroes of our nation are … ”
“My great-great-great-great-great- grandfather, THOMAS MUTTON, was a lost hero of Agnath,” came an annoying nasally voice.
OH NO! Now TofFeE thomas was up and began rambling on. AARRRHHH! Why is it that a meteor from deep space never strikes you dead when you want it too!?
“Yes but we’re talking abou … ” Miss Forest whispered.
“Yep. He was a true blue, one-of-a-kind, explorer, discoverer and hero. He was the whole lot. My dad told me,” TofFeE continued.
Yeah, I thought. This ougtta be good … NOT!
“He came to Agnath when they thought there was gold here. But he was a slow walker, so by the time he got to Agnath everyone else was already leaving. He decided to stay and explore the countryside and discover if there was anything that would make Agnath great.
So with only what he was wearing and a week’s worth of food and water, he waved his family farewell and set off up the hill in the centre of Agnath and disappeared. Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and months turned to years. Every now and then a stranger would arrive in Agnath and the family would all rush to talk to them, desperate for any news or even just a sighting of their loved one. But no news ever came. The family figured that he must have discovered far off places with riches that he was gathering to bring back. Or that he was being held captive by some wild lost tribe he’d discovered and that it was only a matter of time before he would befriend them and become their king and then once again return to Agnath and his family.
“They waited … and waited … and waited … until a few years later when Itchy’S great-great-great-cousin’s best friend’s neighbour climbed the hill in the centre of Agnath and discovered the people living on the other side. On the way back over he also discovered something else. A weathered, yellowing skeleton, not more than a few years old, lying on a really well worn foot track. The track was a perfect circle that went completely around the hill, about two-thirds of the way up. A tattered old weather-beaten leather bag lay beside the bones. And amongst the few tattered belongings inside the bag was a diary with a name still clearly visible on the inside cover, THOMAS MUTTON … it was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s.”
“Oh, how heartbreaking,” Miss Forest suddenly cut in, tears once more rolling down her face. “To think that he came so close to getting home. He almost made it back to his loved ones,” she cried.
I couldn’t stand it! Please shoot me now, I thought. This was a BIGGER load of crap than a truck full of Melly’s smelliest, sloppiest nappies when she’s got diarrhoea. I knew crap when I heard it and this was a HUMONGOUS TRUCKLOAD!
“Do they know what happened?” Miss Forest asked desperately.
“Oh yeah. They were able to save most of his diary. Apparently he got to the top of the hill in the centre of Agnath two days after he said goodbye to the family. But by the time he got there he was already exhausted so he had a sleep. When he woke up he headed off down the other side. But by that time it was dark and he got lost. So he decided to just head in a straight line and keep going until he discovered something. He walked for days, weeks, months, years, never seeing any sign of civilisation again. But he did come across a track that he believed to be made by people, so he decided to follow it. His diary tells how the track became more and more worn, so he knew someone had to be out there. So he just kept going and going, but never caught up with them. Finally, out of food, water and completely exhausted he couldn’t go any further. He sat down on the worn track and just never got back up.
Of course with his skeleton lying about for everyone to see, it didn’t take long to figure out that, unfortunately, one of his legs was shorter than the other … so when he thought he was walking in a straight line, he was actually walking in a circle. A very big circle. Going around and around the hill in the middle of Agnath and creating his very own track to follow …which naturally became more and more worn each and every time he walked over it.
“He’d never even made it over the hill, or anywhere else.”
Suddenly, Miss Forest sat up and dried her eyes. “Uh huh! I see,” was all she said.
I, on the other hand, was ready to roll around on the floor and wet myself with lAUGHTER! OMG, what a total DUNDERHEAD!
“See that goat track up there?” TofFeE said, pointing out the window at the dirt track that circled the hill near the top, only a few hundred metres away. “That’s why it’s called ‘Muttons Track’, because that’s the track made by my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. And we all get our legs measured every four years … just to make sure. Otherwise, if we ever go bushwalking we might get lost just like he did.”
Well, that did clear up one mystery, for me and Jared anyway. Every time we’d ever heard someone talking about the track up there, they always called it ‘Goat TRACK’ and then they’d always laugh heaps and make jokes about it being on ‘Goat HILL’ with the ‘Goat WELL’ at the end of ‘Goat ROAD’. ‘Goat’ was obviously the code word for ‘MUTTON’. Because you’d have to be a ‘Goat’ to be so dopey to get lost on a little hill in the middle of town and walk around and around and around it for years.
AWESOME! What a loser. And now we knew why TofFeE thomas was such a nose-pickin’ wuss. It’s in his MUTTON genes.
DING DING DING …
Thank gawd for that. I raced out the door and flew straight up to the dunnies. I reckon I was about a millisecond away from peeing myself. It was sooo funny. And the absolute, hands down funniest thing was that TofFeE was serious. He was actually boasting! Proud of his forefathers! Which just proved that he really is a MUTTON-HEAD.
I was totally CRACKING-UP inside. Thank goodness I only had to survive anot
her two hours with these wallies. After lunch, we had Phys’ Ed’ with Mr Haych, which usually me and Jared really liked because we could always stick together and KICK BUTT. You know, ‘accidentally’ throwing the ball just a bit too hard in dodge ball. “Oops, sooo sorry about that.” We always made sure that it looked like an accident so that we wouldn’t get into trouble. Or ‘accidentally’ bouncing the ball off the girls’ heads in basketball. “Sorry!” and bouncing the ball under the guys’ legs, but not quite making it, so that it ‘accidentally’ SLAMS them in the crutch. “Oooo sorry.” Yeah, stuff like that. But today was going to be so boring. Jared wasn’t there to help me make any ‘accidents’. But I figured I could still give it a go. I was sure I could still cause a few tears, even if I only got TofFeE. He’s such a SOOKY LAH LAH.
Everyone got dressed into their Phys’ Ed’ gear, and after lunch headed down to the basketball court. I didn’t really care what we did; the whole day had been a huge SUCKFEST of boredom.
Mr Haych called our names and lined everyone up into two lines. “We’re doing fitness tests!” he declared happily.
He had to be kidding. Where was the ball in that? How could I ‘accidentally’ hit anyone if we were just doing stuff on our own? This was the one thing that might have saved my week from being a total suckfest! And now it was ruined, too. DAMN!
“OK, your partner is behind you … we’re doing sit-ups first!”
What? Was he kidding?
“Rear person on the ground, front person holding their feet. Twenty sit-ups. Go! ”
I turned as I bent down to grab onto the feet of … Booga Boris! OHHH, NO!
I gingerly took hold of his huge ankles and watched as my hands were slowly sucked into the folds of flesh and swallowed by his huge ankles. It felt warm and sweaty under there … YUUUK!
While everyone else was pumping out sit-up after sit-up, Booga was still trying to pull himself up for the first one. It was tiny and barely a movement, definitely not a sit-up, more a micro-movement, but finally … “One!” I said loudly. Mr Haych walked by and told him to pump out nineteen more of those before we swapped.
“Two.” PFFFT! YUK, he farted and my face was way too close to his butt to be doing that.
“Three.” Pffft! He did it again!
“Booga!”
“Sorry I can’t help it,” he said, but I saw him smiling.
“Four.” PFFFT!
“Yuk!” I tried to pull back but my hands were suctioned into his ankle-flab.
“Five.” PFFFT!
“EEWWWW!!”
“Six … seven… eight … nine … twenty! SWAP!” I shouted, wrenching my hands from beneath his skin and diving away from his backside to gasp for fresh air.
I rolled onto my back ready to show him how it was really done.
“One – one – one – one,” Booga called.
“Can’t you count! That’s four, DUFAS!”
“Na! They weren’t done right, so it’s still only one.”
“Bull! It’s four! I can’t do them properly because every time I sit up I hit the disgusting brick wall of smell from your gross farts. And anyway, you barely moved your butt so you can’t talk,” I spat back at him.
“Mr Haych said mine were fine, so nerrr!”
That’s so unfair. I pumped out about a ZILLION sit-ups while everyone else was resting, before Booga finally counted to nine. Then, before I even had time to complain, we were being yelled at to run around the court three times and line up for heaves.
That’s where you have to stand below a bar, jump up and grab hold of it with both hands. Then you pull yourself up till your chin’s above the bar, lower yourself down to the hanging position up to the chin again, then down, over and over. It’s REALLY HARD … for the others, not me. I can do heaps of them. I just didn’t want to show off, so I thought I might just sweat and GROAN a bit to make it look really hard when it was my turn.
“Go!” Mr Haych yelled.
Person by person, everyone had their go. No one else had done more than five or six in the allotted time. But I decided I’d just whack out only about a hundred so they weren’t too embarrassed. In front of me TofFeE thomas was just doing his fifth heave when the whistle blew to change. I strode up to the bar, stood directly below it, flexed my AWESOME MANLY muscles and eyed the bar seriously. tweet! went the whistle. I leapt up … my hands grabbed for the bar … “Errr yuk!” They slipped straight back off! THUD! I hit the ground landing heavily right on my butt bone. #@*# that HURT!
What the hell happened? That had never happened to me before, EVER! I threw my hands up and grasped my face in annoyance. But when I tried to pull my hands back away from my face a split-second later, they suddenly sprang back and I instantly slapped myself in the face, SLAPPP! I pulled them out again … SLAPPP! … and again, slappp! It was if they were attached to my face with some sort of green rubbery SLIMY strands of … of “EEEWWWWWW!! TofFeE! ”TofFeE had gone right before me. And the stuff all over my hands and face was the stuff that was supposed to be still in his nose! I was gonna KILL HIM!
I desperately scraped my hands across my backside trying to drag off every bit of his gross, disgusting nasal elastic SLIME.
tweet! “Move on!” Mr Haych demanded.
“Hang on! I didn’t get to … ”
“Nil.” Mr Haych began to write on his sheet beside my name.
“But … ”
tweet!
“Hurdles!” yelled Mr Haych.
FINE! I was good at hurdles, no, I was great at hurdles. This would be easy. I was against three of the other guys … no problem. This was all mine.
tweet!
I took off like a leopard. I ran like a cheetah. I leapt like a kanga…
RRRRIPP! My shorts split right in the middle of my butt. I heard the girls scream and the guys laugh. I shoved both hands down there in a split second, my front foot clipped the top of the hurdle … CRASH … my back leg tangled in the flipping and tumbling hurdle,that was now strangling me as it rolled over and over with me wrapped around it like some sort of human pretzel until we stopped, THUD! … against a tree, a very big tree.
I should’ve known.
I should’ve just hidden in the dunnies all day, every day until this week was over.
Typical girls though, screaming about nothing. I felt around my butt for the tear but it was so tiny you wouldn’t even be able to see it.
tweet!
Oh what now? Wasn’t my day BAD enough? I had the disgustingly gross body smell of Booga all over me, TofFeE’s sticky nostril SLIME bits still stuck to my hands, forehead and in my hair and a split in my pants. What else could Mr Haych do to me?
“Last one for the day – monkey-bars!”
Great. That wasn’t too bad I suppose. A step up, then hand over hand swinging across the monkey-bars. Yep, that was OK. A quick swing and then I could finally go home. My sucky week was almost over … thank goodness.
Everyone lined up. I shoved my way to the front because I wanted to get this over and then I’d be out of there. And I definitely didn’t want to get stuck behind TofFeE again. It was getting really cold too, so I just wanted it done. I stepped up onto the platform. I reached for the bars above my head. I jumped … got it!
The girls squealed. Gee, I guess I was really impressing them with my BULGING muscles.
Hand over hand I swung, making my way across the bars. The girls squealed even louder. WOW, maybe I should stop and do a few heaves while I’m crossing … they were sooo loving me, I could tell. I hung in the middle of the bars and pumped out a couple of heaves. Yeah, that really showed my muscles BULGING.
“Hurry up, Sam,” Mr Haych called after me, “and next week wear some undies to class will you?”
“AARRHHH!” I dropped to the ground instantlylike a lead fart and took off, heading straight for my bike. Feeling around I found where the breeze was from – the stitching on my shorts had come undone another couple of inches. My butt was right out there, smiling for every
one to see.
I wanted to crawl into a deep hole and die.
The last thing I heard as I rode away from school was Crabby yelling out with a snicker in her voice, “You better not have an accident on the way home. When the ambulance guys realise you haven’t got any undies on, they’ll just leave you there for sure”.
Yeah yeah, very funny … NOT! But I did ride home a lot slower and a lot more carefully.
Crabby sucks so much. She’s the suckiest girl I know … except for maybe TofFeE thomas.
Yep, it was Friday … and it had totally sucked!!
SATURDAY: 9:00am.
BEEP BEEP BEEP …
What the? Who set my alarm clock? It’s Saturday, what happened to my sleep-in!?
“Sam! Time to get up, ” Mum’s voice came echoing down the hallway.
“Uuhhh.” Didn’t she know it was Saturday?
“Sam! Get up! ”
“Yeaahhh … uhhh.”
“SAM! GET UP NOW! ”
“Sam! If I have to come in there … ” Mum said, now thundering down the hallway towards my room.
“I’m up! I’m up!” I yelled as I tumbled onto the floor.
When I eventually dragged myself to the kitchen Mum was standing over the sink.
“I hope you haven’t woken Melly up. She needs her sleep,” Mum said anxiously.
“But I didn’t …”
“If you got up when I asked you to then I wouldn’t have to yell. Would I? ”
“But I didn’t …”
“Would I?”
“No, Mum.”
Uhhh, I just wanted to crawl back into bed, dive under my doona and go back to sleep. I headed back into my room to chuck some gear on when I heard the crackling sound of my WALKIE-TALKIE coming to life.
