SHORT STORIES - 'AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT'

AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT

Teaching brings many highlights and unfortunately it also brings some embarrassing moments. My very first prac teaching session was at the illustrious Sydney Boys' High School no less. Its reputation was second to none in Sydney unless you included Sydney Girls' High. Both had always been at the apex of public education in the state and as selective secondary schools, their pupils were of the highest order intellectually and academically (mostly!).

On our first day, we were greeted by the Principal (at the time the 'Headmaster') and he had 'chewed out' one of my prac teaching colleagues for turning up without a coat. He was told not to bother coming back if he could not dress appropriately in future. Standards set upon entry!

I was directed to my staffroom that housed the Language teaching staff. One of the teachers to whom I was assigned asked me straight up: "How's your French? Reckon you could cope with Year 9 French?" "Yep," I volunteered, "I think so". "Good," he said, "we have a class Period 1, they're doing a reader lesson, here it is, starting story No. 3, see how you go, have a quick look at it beforehand and it's just down the corridor, Room 34." I figured this was all a bit sudden thinking that it might have been nice to observe the class for at last one lesson and get to know where the students were at and how they behaved. So, with French reader tucked under the arm, a stick of chalk and a duster in hand, I marched off to Room 34.

The classroom was configured in much the same way as most high schools in those days - desks and seats bolted to the floor, four rows of ten all neatly lined up behind each other. The blackboard was on the wall at the front and a bench stood in front of it on a dais raised about 15 centimetres above floor level. The raised platform did not extend right across the width of the room but covered about half of the area.

I introduced myself to the class and proceeded to write my name on the board. Mindful that my writing might well not end up being level in a straight line - it was my first attempt at writing on a blackboard with chalk after all - I stepped back to see how my name looked and forgetting about the dais, I suddenly half fell backwards off the platform.

Well, we all know what it's like when we try to avoid a fall ... you have to basically 'run' to stay on your feet. I did run and crashed straight into the door with my shoulder. So ... how did the class react, you ask? They were, after all, Year 9 boys with clearly a prac teacher on board who couldn't even stay upright for 2 minutes. The laughter did eventually subside after about five minutes with my encouragement but let's face it, I would have laughed too if I had been one of the students. I never did get on top of that class. Year 9 boys are often a rowdy and unruly lot at the best of times and they didn't need an entrée like mine to set them off.

So, when I was first appointed to South Sydney Boys' High as a permanent teacher, I was determined not to make a similar mistake. All sorts of disciplinary measures acquired at college and in subsequent pracs armed me with some kind of mental attitude about how to get any Year 9 classes heading in the right direction. I had two of them, one German and one French.

Things panned out pretty well for the first couple of weeks. "Friendly but firm" was one of the catchcries for beginning teachers back in those days and it stood me in relatively good stead at the time.

The Year 9 German class, however, was a little restless at times and I noticed it took them a little more time than most to settle down and get their materials out of their bags and ready to work. In the very front row, right in front of me was a boy we will call 'Paul'. He came from a German background, spoke Bavarian German at home with Mum and Dad and was always polite and well behaved. He did have, however, one disturbing habit. It did not matter at what time of the day Paul would come into class, early in the morning, after recess or lunch, the first thing he would do was to put his head down on the desk and almost drop off to sleep.

It had occurred to me that this was not setting a good example for the others to follow and I needed to do something about it ASAP. Knowing he spoke German at home, I told him to wake up in his mother tongue. When you read the phrase, it seems innocent enough - "wach auf!" - but the pronunciation is at question here. We would say it approximates something like English 'var ch (the sound a cat makes when it hisses at a dog)  owf'  Well ... yes..., basically it sounded like I had told Paul to 'eff off!'

Well you should have seen the looks on their face - they were like stunned mullet! For the first time I truly had their immediate attention including Paul's. "Now, boys, hold on a minute, I didn't say what you think I said, I merely told him to 'wake up' in German.

"You mean, sir, if you want to tell people to wake up in German, you tell them to 'eff off'??? asked one of the more confident students.

"Ahh, sort of, that's the way it works in Germany, boys"

"Aw, you beauty, reckon I'll remember that one," said one of the other bolder lads.

I must add at this stage I could have compounded the problem by telling Paul to 'wake up and pay attention'. It would have sounded like 'varch owf oohnt pus owf!' Fortunately I had only faultered at the first hurdle.

After this little stumble and certainly one of my more embarrassing moments as a young teacher, I would occasionally come across one of my German boys in the playground who would dare to tell me I was looking a little tired that day and I should 'wach auf!' Hmm, the traps a foreign language can cause the unwitting apprentice teacher.

SHORT STORIES - 'BLACK!'

Black

Brian was a real bushie, a no-nonsense, quiet but strong teenager who lived on his parents' farm out Sweetman's Creek way. He was very dark, tall and thickset. Living out in the 'donga' probably helped to shape his personality - he was easy-going and friendly but AT 14 very independent. The bush was his domain and he spent many hours walking the tracks around the farm and he knew most of its dark secrets, its beauty and its pitfalls. He carried a 22 rifle with him from the age of 12 and he knew how to use it if necessary. If you had to sum him up in one brief phrase, 'the strong silent type' was as close as you could get.

His mate Bruce was not a 'bushie'. It is funny how friendships spring up, even perhaps more so in marriages where one partner is quite different in nature to the other. Bruce was talkative, somewhat insecure in his early adolescence although not exactly a 'city slicker', he was nonetheless not of the land.

To break the humdrum life on the farm, Brian occasionally invited a friend to spend a weekend with him. Sometimes they would camp out in the hills overnight, simply fool about on the horses or chance a dip in the murky waters of the local stream.

On Bruce's second visit to the farm, the two mates decided to take a walk through the bush along one of the many paths leading to and from the homestead. It was mid-morning and late summer and they thought they might just pick up a rabbit or two so their guns came along for the ride.

At about 11 o'clock the temperature had started to climb rapidly despite the tree cover in the bush. It became really steamy and the heat haze shimmered from the track. The shrill singing of the cicadas added to the general confusion as the two youths rounded a bend in the track, Bruce in the lead.

As Bruce wiped the sweat from his forehead and winced at the sting in his eyes, he suddenly caught sight of a branch standing upright in the middle of the path ahead. He froze dead in his tracks. The flickering tongue near the top of the branch told him that this branch was no ordinary piece of timber.

"Brian," he called, fear almost stifling the words in his mouth. "Snake, snake!"  Brian, ambling along behind and relaxed in his local habitat, was surprised by his mate's sudden frenzy.

Pointing feverishly at the rearing red-bellied black snake a mere five metres down the track, Bruce called out a frantic second warning: "snake, snake!" The 'bushie' quickly summed up the situation, snapped his rifle to his shoulder and peeled off two shots. One of them - it was all too quick to discern - ripped through the throat of the menacing reptile and catapulted its head into the nearby shrub.

A relieved young 'city slicker' turned gratefully to his mate and said: "great shooting, Brian!"

"Yeah, not bad, eh?" he answered. "but why did you say that?"

"Say what? Snake, snake?" Bruce enquired. "To tell you of the danger up ahead, of course!"

Brian looked at him as only a 'bushie' can at a city kid in such situations and revealed the reason for his confusion. "Mate, you didn't say: 'snake, snake!' You said: 'black, black'!"

SHORT STORIES - 'DADDY'

DADDY

In May 1978 a little boy came into the world and in normal circumstances this would have been an occasion for much celebration but recent events had tinged his arrival with sadness. Some six months beforehand Robert's father, Peter, along with two other close relatives, had become victims of a senseless and untimely road accident. Miraculously the unborn child, mother Robyn, 2 years old Robert and the family dog survived the crash. Incredibly Robert, completely unharmed, had managed to extricate himself from the carnage by opening and lifting the rear door of the family camper van and then climbing down onto the road. Fortunately Robert was swept up into the arms of two elderly people from the car that had been following.

The first time I met Robyn and the two boys, Scott was just four months old, a babe in arms. Robert, on the other hand, was an active three year old besotted by the love of horses. He could whip up a corral with a piece of rope in three shakes of a pony's tail and because of his penchant for lassoing the legs of all available furniture, he soon acquired the nickname of "Booby Trap Bob". Given my relative inexperience with young children, I was told that Scott had 'the most perfect shaped head of any baby ever born'. It was very clear that he was a very cherished bundle of happiness and when one of my parents suggested at the end of the day that I carry him down the front stairs, I baulked at the hurdle much to the amazement of all. An event from the past came flooding back to me ... As an impressionable eight year old, I had seen my brother drop one of my grandfather's prize pups which managed to wriggle free and fall awkwardly head first onto a rock. The pup subsequently died in my grandfather's arms. My grandfather was upset, albeit forgiving, but my brother and I were devastated. If I had dropped Scott on the stairs that day, my life would not have been worth living!

Fifteen months after first meeting Robyn, Robert, Scott and Toni (my new dog) and I officially became one big happy family. Robert was soon to go to school and after much deliberation, it was decided that the boys would use a combined name. "Robert Clifton Faraday-Bensley'. It had a certain ring to it we thought - definitely Prime Minister material! When working for a law firm later in life he claimed the name sounded like 'the whole bloody law firm'.

In the mind of a young boy unfairly deprived of his dad who loved him like nothing on Earth, coping with a new dad came relatively easily. Having met him as 'Gra' though, 'Gra' I remained, although to his mates he would nonetheless refer to me as his 'dad'.  Scott, on the other hand, had grown up knowing his dad as 'Gra'. Fate, indifferently, had deprived him of ever meeting his biological father and so for him there was less confusion than for his older brother.

Uncle Don and Peter's sister Aunty Helen were something else. After illustrious academic careers, they had made their lives in the United States and were reaping the rewards of their years of study. Their collective reputations were fearsome. Aunty Helen, who had been dux of the local selective girls' high school, had gone on to win a University Medal in Mathematics and gained a PhD to boot. She took delight from the fact that tradesmen calling on her for the first time would quickly change their chauvinist attitude when she told them she was not just the good little housewife but was a doctor no less.

Helen's first encounter with Don at New England University was memorable. During her first year at the time of the half yearly exams in Maths, Don came into the second year Maths exam half an hour late and sat down in the row next to Helen. He reputedly 'scratched around' for an hour or so whilst emitting the occasional chortle and then left the exam half an hour early.

"He must have been upset at arriving late for his exam and left early," Helen volunteered to the girl sitting next to her and behind Don's table. "No, don't worry about him," the student replied, "that's Don Adams. He always comes first in the year!" Don subsequently went on to win the University Medal the year before Helen and gained his PhD a few years later too. After spending some time lecturing at Melbourne University, he decided he'd really like to try his hand in the world of business and what better place than in the United States. After gaining first place in his course at the school of business administration, he turned up for an interview at the McGraw-Hill publishing company, solved an economic model problem on the spot and was immediately hired for the position.  Over a ten year period he quickly rose to a senior executive position in the firm which entitled him to an office overlooking Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Helen in the meantime had carved out a niche for herself lecturing at Smith College, one of the most prestigious colleges for women in the States.

Robyn and the boys had visited Don and Helen in New York just prior to our decision to marry. A year and a half after our wedding, Don and Helen decided to come out to Australia for Christmas to see the family and meet Robyn's new husband for the first time. I was anxious, to say the least, not quite in awe, but almost.

Don and Helen arrived in town on the Saturday while I was playing cricket. The plan was for me to go in after the match to meet them at Helen's parents' place.

On the way into Hamilton from the university, I became quite nervous. How would these strangers find me, their nephews' new father? What do you say to people of their pedigree and background? 'Bet I'll say something goofy, for sure ... better not to say too much and leave most of the talking to Robyn.' I mused. I walked down the drive, up the stairs of the porch and rang the doorbell. "Come in," came Gram's voice from down the end of the long dark hallway. 'Ah', I thought, 'they're in the back room and not in the lounge room.'

Just as I turned the corner and walked down the hallway, I was nearly bowled over by an excited three year old boy who jumped into my arms while calling out excited: "Daddy, Daddy!"  Swinging around in my arms and with a grin all over his face, Scott announced to the visitors: "Here's my Dad!" Robert joined him straight after: "Dad, where have you been? We've been waiting ages to go out and kick the footie?"

Neither of the boys have ever called me 'Gra' from that day on.

SHORT STORIES - 'IT'S OK NOW'

It's OK Now

As Yvonne switched off her bedside lamp for the night, her troubled mind could not turn from thoughts of her younger brother who lay seriously ill in a Manly hospice, his body wracked with cancer. She knew Fred was in the last stage of his physical and mental struggle. He had lasted six months longer than the doctors had predicted and in the last few weeks with the aid of morphine, he could feel no more pain. He had requested some months ago that nobody come to see him. His sister, living some 150 kilometres away, could hardly bear to stay away but had respected his wishes. Yvonne's sole communion with her brother now lay in her heart and mind.

She tossed and turned that night. Her thoughts cast back to her brother's first day at kindergarten and how they had walked some distance to school hand in hand at their mother's insistence. No sooner had they turned the corner than Fred had torn his hand from his sister's grasp and he raced off ahead up the street. This set the pattern for the rest of his life, the headstrong child later becoming the single-minded adolescent.

At seventeen when Fred came to announce over dinner one night that he had enlisted in the army to go and fight the Japanese, Yvonne well remembered the look on her father's ashen face. Fred cautioned his father that if he dobbed him in for being under-age, he would go as soon as he turned eighteen anyway. No stranger to human conflict himself, Yvonne's father had fought in the 'The Great War' in Egypt and France. He had been riding on a horse and carriage with two mates in France when his two companions rendez-voused with a mortar shell. All things considered, Pop got off rather lightly. For the rest of his life, much of which was spent with a nervous condition and deafness in military hospitals, nights turned to nightmares where he saw his two mates paying the ultimate sacrifice while he managed to escape.

A curious thing happened just prior to Fred's departure for the Pacific. He had been expecting his call-up notice while waiting at his Manly home and on the day it finally arrived Fred was told to report to the military command in the city immediately. Yvonne at the time was on the other side of the city at Sydney Teachers' College. After her last class, she caught the ferry from Circular Quay as usual and walked almost all of the three kilometres to home. About 200 metres from the front door, however, she was suddenly overcome by an urge to run back to the Manly Wharf to search for her brother. At the gates she pleaded with a security guard to allow her onto the ferry to see her brother one last time before he went off to war because she was sure he was somewhere on the ferry. The guard relented and a tearful sister met up with an excited brother in an emotional farewell. Yvonne to her dying day never knew how she could tell Fred was on that

boat - she often maintained she had a sixth sense when it came to her brother. She always seemed to know when things were troubling him or he was upset.

Eventually sleep, albeit a fitful affair, overwhelmed her. Her mind drifted again and Fred returned. This time he appeared as she had known him most of his adult life. The hair was a little greyer but his body bore no sign of the curse that had tormented him during the previous eighteen months.

"Yvonne", he said, "come with me!" He called her by the name she rarely heard these days. Her husband and friends called her 'Von' now but Fred and her parents had continued to use the fuller version of the name her father had brought back from the war in France. Her mother, on the other hand, had resisted her only daughter having 'Yvette' as a second given name. 'Yvonne Yvette' was a little too close for comfort for her! "Come with me, I'm frightened!" Fred repeated.

Yvonne had walked down that road before. As an eleven year old child at the old Manly Harbourside Pool, she had been swimming leisurely with friends in the warm summer waters when a boy jumped from the diving tower and knocked her unconscious. Yvonne almost drowned. As her rescuers brought her back to life, she could remember not wanting to leave the temporary serenity of her subconscious state and she actively resisted all attempts to resuscitate her. Nevertheless she slowly drifted back to the land of the living but after that experience in her later life she now strongly insisted that she held no fear of death.

Yvonne's brush with the supernatural extended to her mother as well. After her mum had died, probate on her will took some six months to be granted. In this time, work on her mother's gravesite could not proceed for want of the necessary funds. One morning while driving to work along the old Recession-built concrete road linking Cessnock and Abermain, Yvonne had a rather unpleasant experience. As she turned a gentle bend in the road, she felt another hand being placed on top of  hers. She reacted instantly snatching her hand from the steering wheel, a movement that caused the car to veer temporarily from its path. Just as quickly the hand withdrew. That afternoon Yvonne told her husband, Ron,  about the incident and she maintained vehemently that the hand had belonged to her mother. A week later a letter arrived telling her that the headstone on her mother's grave had finally been put in place on the morning of her recent encounter in the car.

Yvonne took Fred's hand and they walked some little distance down the road. After a time she turned to her brother and said: "I can't go with you all the way Fred, you know." "It's okay now, I'm not frightened any more", he replied and with that he released her hand. As Fred walked off down the road alone, she watched him for a while and her mind skipped back to his first day in kindergarten.

Yvonne woke with a start and looked at the clock. It was 2:16 a.m. When she sat bolt upright in bed, the sudden movement woke her husband lying beside her. "What's up?" Ron asked.

"Fred just died", she murmured and slumped back on the pillow.

At 6:30 a.m. that morning the phone rang. It was Trixie, Fred's wife....