I saw this on a t-shirt a few days ago and it first of all made me laugh then second it yanked me back a century or two to when I was a teenager. As I travelled in reverse through time, to a period when I was more awkward than what I am today, when I was half child, half woman, with small breasts and puppy fat. When school was my life, my parents a cross to bear and what was hot and what was not was more important than being true to who I am on the inside.
I remembered being 15 and the friend I had who epitomised this t-shirt’s copy. She had older siblings who were at university and because they were infinitely cooler than we were, she spent much of her time loitering around them. They kept her informed about what was happening on the music scene, using multi-syllabled words they had just learnt from a text book or dictionary to describe the complexities, subtleties of the depths of musical awareness they were embracing. So between these informed uni students and Triple J, she liked to pretend she knew what was going on.
“Oh have you heard blah blah,” she’d say casually – lording her musical superiority over me.
“Nope, not yet,” I’d say, feeling ashamed at being such a musical pariah.
“Oh, really, you haven't heard them? How strange? They’re really cool. They’re like, defining the whole social-music paradigm, writing post-modern elliptical lyrics that, like, are mobilising whole tribes of people to find their higher self. The beats are practically telling people to move away from capitalism and towards a shared consciousness of enlightenment. You know? ”
Did I mention they were doing Arts Degrees?
Anyway - in addition to knowing everything about the music business, or at least as it applied to 19 year olds, she also decided that she knew everyone in our age group throughout the district.
Each week, we were subjected to an inter-school sports day, where we would climb onto a stinking, rotten bus that rattled and clunked with every wheel rotation. These buses are likely to be accountable for the entire denigration of the ozone layer. For the privilege of getting high on Co2 that was pipped, like elevator music into the bus carriage, we paid $3.50 for the ride 20 minutes down the road to another school. Once off the bus, the first person who could nonchalantly tip their head in the direction of another student native to the school, and have the nod reciprocated was, for a fleeting moment, completely cool.
Before getting on the bus my friend would always talk about the person she knew, loudly, “I am so looking forward to seeing William. He’s, like, totally into art and stuff and I just adore him. I can’t wait to see him again”. I’d nod and smile, while quietly wondering why I’d never heard of William before this day or hung out with him at parties or during the holidays.
“Oh, I only see him sometimes, and he doesn’t like new people or else, I’d introduce you,” she say when asked.
When we’d arrive, jump off the bus and look around, she’d say, “oh I think he must be sick today.” Your friends are sick at every sodding school we visit? Are they all afflicted with the same disease? Are you the carrier? Am I at risk?
Basically, this was the high school equivalent of the girl I went to primary school with who, when bored, would place one hand over her nose and mouth and put the other hand up her nose. When confronted, she would say, “I was just flicking my front teeth with my thumb nail.” I thought the same response at six as I did at 15: Bullshit.
While I knew she had no friends at other schools I didn’t have the ability to catch her out, simply because I didn’t know anyone at the other schools, either. Until one day before our next sports outing, I asked if she knew Paul Wallace. “Yeah, totally, I know him,” she said.
“You know Paul, tall, brown hair, plays soccer and is on the debating team?” I asked again to be sure we were talking about the same guy.
“Yes, I know Paul, his mum knows my mum.”
Oh the mum defence. That’s a game changer. We can’t question anything when you throw “my mum...” into a sentence. I smiled and nodded then turned my head away as I muffled a snigger. I’d completely made him up. There was no Paul Wallace in Grade 10 at that school. Pure fiction. Ha. Bam. Caught you out. Little pants on fire.
Oddly, from that day on she never did rave on about how many people she knew from everywhere so on some level, she must have realised I’d busted her. It didn’t stop her being a complete pain in the ass about music though. I’m still considering sending her the t-shirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment