Size 8....

While vacuuming the lounge room, regretting the comment I’d made about her having been a size 8 when we married, I starting looking at the photos we have around the place. I use an upright Hoover vacuum, beats as it cleans the carpet but more importantly, it has a rubber bumper, you can push the thing around without really looking at what you’re doing.

The photos on the walls are mostly of the kids, at the ages when they were still human, five, six years old. Young enough to be cute but old enough to know when to sit on the pot and poo. It’s funny, I’ve always said to people, jokingly I thought at the time, “I believe in the barrel method of raising children, put em in a barrel when they turn six, feed em through the bung hole, and hammer in the bung when they turn sixteen". Now I know the truth, damn good method, it’s a shame I didn’t really believe it myself back then.

Those photos certainly bring back memories, number one son when he started in scouts, number two, catching his first fish. I never thought to keep taking photos of things like the second fish, or the big one he caught one day, or the first scout camp parents day. The memories of those times are still there, only sometimes it takes a photo to breath them back to life. This wasn’t the first time I’ve looked at a photo of the kids at that age and said, “where did I go wrong”, meaning “I wish I could go back”. As they say, you can’t go back, but with a selective memory and a good imagination you can relive the good times, just as you might have wanted them to happen.

That’s where the little photos tucked away on the back of the sideboard come into their own. There I am, 19 years old, strong as an ox and bronzed from hours of surfing, the future wife in her size 8 bikini, she couldn’t have looked better, even if she had a beer in her hand, offering it to me of course. The old Hillman Hunter GT in the background, God that was a great car, took us everywhere and cost me a fortune in maintenance, loved it anyway.

The early 70s’, wow, if the radio wasn’t blaring we were asleep, and we didn’t sleep much. At about 16, you feel as if your life has finally started, you’ve discovered the opposite sex and know pretty much all you’re going to need to know. Until you reach the end of your teens though, you really don’t stand on your own two feet. I moved out of my parents home at 19, into a flat with three other people, that would have taken a lot of stupid, or courage, didn’t take me any of that, I was in love.

I won’t digress onto that memory here, the end of this piece of paper is too close, I’ll come back to that story another time. The photo of my future wife and I, mentioned above, stands alongside another photo from the same time in our lives. I don’t just think, I know our lives would not have been such a pleasure to live in those days, without the other two couples beside us in the second photo. At that age, all having started our first real jobs around the same time, all having met each other and become friends within a brief six month period, well, it's an absolute wonder, at least to me.

The six of us, three bronzed supermen and three sexy size 8s', for a few years there, we were inseparable. We all had other friends of course, but every weekend we found ourselves as a group, going somewhere doing something fun. That brings me back to the start of my story, when we married, my wife was a size 8, when they each married, my two bronzed friends also married size 8 beauties, the same ones from our little group. After we all married, we grew even closer.  Fridays were dinner nights at one or the other couples flat. Of course I had to do the cooking when it was our turn, knew that before the marriage, can’t blame anyone else.  We played cards, danced, talked and danced again, we often watched the sun rise together. We also learned to deal with noise complaints.  All that dancing, perhaps that's where the size 8s' began.

This whole size 8 thing came up today, figurativly, simply because I noticed that the size 10 jeans she wears are looking a little loose, in a rather sexy way...... Those were the days, who says you can’t take them with you?

JAWhite
April 2011                                                          Return to Main Page

Haven't You Heard?

I wrote this short piece long ago and can’t remember what gave me the idea, I must be getting old.

The funeral I attended yesterday was for an elderly gentleman who was well known in the local community. He had spent the later years of his life, his retirement years, involved with activities in and around the district. He did some charity work and volunteering, things like making tea at the local seniors group, I think he just liked being with the ladies. Always a curious person, wanting to know what was happening in the lives of those around him, he asked questions, lots of questions. He wasn’t a nuisance, people really liked speaking with him, I guess they received as much information as they gave.

He would often start a conversation with something like, “Did you hear about Bess? Her car broke down on the expressway, she got a truck driver to stop by showing a bit of her good leg! Proves you can still have it at 69!” This of course always led into other stories, or as some call it, just plain gossip.

Age hadn’t slowed him at all, it was as though his imagination and storytelling kept him young, at least in spirit. No one seemed to be bothered that he gossiped, if you could call it that, he referred to himself an ISP, not an Internet Service Provider, but Information service provider. He would walk for blocks to hear a firsthand account of anything interesting, and of course ask his questions just like a reporter. Forever on top of the latest news, there was only the one time when he wasn’t the first to know what was going on.

He had moved into his little one bedroom house about three years ago, about the same time he got his hearing aid in fact. It had not taken much persuasion for the doctor to talk him into getting the aid, he didn’t want to miss anything, so instead of just getting one for the ear he had trouble hearing in, he also got one for the totally deaf ear. His theory was that if one is good two must be better. The one thing the aids didn’t change was his way of speaking in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, he said some of these oldies were hard of hearing and he didn’t want anyone to miss the news.

I guess his loud voice and the fact that he did most of the talking didn’t alert him to the need for new batteries that particular day. He went to bed that night sleeping with one aid in as usual, and woke next mid-morning to no sound at all. Not wanting to speak of the incident he wouldn’t say so, but we can assume he didn’t discovered the battery problem before noon. Having replacement batteries in a drawer he put them in and went about his usual activities annoyed at having overslept. Leaving the house after lunch, he noticed a piece of paper on the front lawn, it was a letter, addressed to him, burnt around the edge and soaking wet. Looking up he noticed the mailbox, or rather where the box had been, it was gone, only a broken wooden post was left. A neighbour walked by, stopped and said to him, “Good day Joe, what a day! Didn’t see you out here earlier, been gone all morning?”

Some initial discussion led to the explanation, he shook his head not believing he had missed the biggest news ever in this street, and maybe the whole town. Ben the postman had nearly died. That morning during the thunderstorm that had passed through, the postman had been placing mail in the box outside Joes house when a bolt of lightning had struck. It hit near the box, knocking the postman off his feet and blasting the box into pieces. The ambulance, police, and fire brigade had all arrived and spent some time there, the postman was taken to the hospital, shaken up but in good spirits. Joes place had been a busy center of activity for a couple of hours, and he had not known a thing.


It took a week or so for the talk around town to drift to subjects other than “The lightning strike at Joes”, a subject he wouldn’t talk about much in spite of it happening in his front yard. What hurt Joe though, was not missing the action, it was when people started referring to him, with a smile, as “Last to know Joe”. He did take some pride in the incident though, at least he got a mention, that’s almost as good as a “By” line....

JAWhite
April 2011                                                         Return to main page  
               

The name Joe in this instance and circumstance are fictitious, but I did know one man....

ESPN, You’ve done it again!

Busy doing my usual never-ending housework, I almost missed a great event on the Foxtel ESPN channel today. Not that I ever have time to sit and watch television, the show just happened to be on while I was cleaning the microwave shelf in the sink, which overlooks the lounge room, which happens to have a television in it,....on.

Being a man, I don’t wear gloves while washing the dishes, I jump in au natural just as the good Lord intended. I was picking up the bits of broken glass when the.. wait for it... UCA National All-Star Cheerleading Championship Worlds came on. It came on after that great old movie “Earth Girls Are Easy” with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, only caught the end of that while the sink was filling up, that’s how I broke the glass, flicking through channels with the left hand while the right was stacking stuff. Househusbands are ambidextrous, or so I thought.

Cheerleading has always been one of the world’s greatest motivating and inspirational sporting movements, surpassing even golf in its ability to reach every human emotion at all levels. Drama, romance, action, conflict and even sex have been part of this ever unfolding tapestry of human endeavour. Young girls, and guys, striving to reach the ultimate goal, the dizzying heights of schooldays youth,... popularity and fame. There, I’ve offended all those young athletes who spend hundreds of hours perfecting every move, miles of jogging and tons of weight training to maintain a level of fitness surpassed only by those who specialise in say, jogging or, weight lifting.

These dedicated high school and college students must realise that their predecessors didn’t always have their motives in mind. Helping your team to win by shouting encouragement bears little resemblance to the mass entertainment and visual delights we see today.

Way back then, I mean the late 1800s’ when colleges in the American north had few female students, cheers, or yells as they were known, were led by male students, I think Princeton was the first. Horrible thought isn’t it? Today of course, the male members of the cheer squads know to hide behind the young ladies we all love to watch. During the competition shown on the programme I was almost watching, they did have some trouble hiding, those girls uniforms are great, small but great.

While watching the show I begin to think, if you could call it that, about cheerleading even earlier than the 1800s’. Jousting came to mind, having recently watched some of “A Knight’s Tale” with the late Heath Ledger, didn’t have time to watch all of it course. Although this movie used a little “creative license” in its portrayal of those days, surely there were cheerleaders, and crowds giving their team, or man, encouragement. Even back in the Roman days there were gladiatorial “groupies” as it were. I’ve seen documentaries where the evidence is clear, graffiti on walls obviously proclaiming “Go Attilus” or along the lines of “ Flash rules” no.. that’s a modern gladiator name.

The point I’m trying to make is, back in those days, the cheerleaders were not trying to get themselves noticed, gain an audition for a commercial, or just get to flash those huge white teeth at the camera in hope of... getting a part in a cheerleader movie. They were there to help, help their team succeeded, help their town to win, they were there for the group effort.

Having said that, the cheerleaders on TV this day did help me, those dishes almost washed themselves. Now, hide the broken glass.


JAWhite                                              Return to main page
April 2011