So the story goes something like this...
I was top of the class for Spelling in third class. That's no large boast, given how utterly useless I was at everything else. Miss Kearney was a twenty something dark haired siren and every cell of my eight year old body was disturbingly in love with her laughing eyes. So when she announced that I, together with Barbara McLeod (Nth. Ryde primary kids: disambiguation needed, please), was to receive a gift of our own choosing, little old me was over the moon. Not only had this temptress from the grown-up world genuinely been paying attention to my valiant, slobbering efforts throughout the year, but she was about to reward me for something that seemed kind of dumb.
So far, so rosy.
The rub arose, however, due to me being poorly or carted off to other states and kept out of school for much of that year (1971 for all you budding museum curators). In those days, textbooks were leased from the school and in North Ryde Public School, they were the inviolate and impenetrable domain of a World War Two veteran with a perpetual scowl and glasspaper rasp of a voice, who had lost two fingers in some far-flung soldiering hell: Mister Doyle. Better known to staff and students alike as Deserthead due to his bald pate.
In one of my prolonged absences, some of the classroom thugs had removed my textbooks from my flip top desk. What became of the books? That timeless Gallic utterance, "Who can say?", springs to mind. All I know is they were never to be seen again.
All things conspiring deathwards, Blind Freddie should just about be able to see where all of this is heading by now...
The day we were to receive the prizes was also the day I was to receive six of the best from Deserthead's favourite lead tipped cane for so cravenly pilfering his textbooks.
"But I didn't -
Well, where are they? -
They were -
They ARE NO LONGER in your desk (pause to let the unspeakable implications sink in). And you tell me they're not at home. And, by law, I must believe you. Ergo you stole them for a purpose or purposes unknown that to my eyes WILL have dire consequences for this entire nation - nay PLANET!"
Should I go to school and receive the prize as well as the cuts?
No.
No, I should not. It all seemed just too cruel and unjust. Existential at eight.
And there my love affair with wagging began. My illustrious times spent shirking responsibility of any kind can be sourced back to that fateful overcast day in mid October all those years ago and to this very minute I feel absolutely no compunction for having done what I did that day.
Some time ago, I relayed this long and tedious anecdote to a friend here at work who is moving on to greener pastures and a living wage today. We've shared many fine engineering-type adventures and he has saved my bacon and made my moribund skillset shine (or at the very least, toned back the patina of tarnish) more times than I care to remember.
So Jason Terante, thank you. For your friendship, your good and mindful counsel, for your great and ever-growing engineering skills and for this wonderful gift of a model.
Today, you have made me the happiest eight year old in the world.
Those were the days, my friend.
