Listen More. Mumble Less.

I often mishear people. Mostly, this is not my fault. It is the fault of people who mumble. But through some annoying quirk of society, somehow the onus is on ME to understand these people who don’t know how to enunciate. When I don’t hear what someone says I will generally respond with “I beg your pardon?” When they repeat themselves and again, and again I haven’t been able to understand them I will ask “sorry, could you tell me once more?” and if, on the third attempt, I don’t hear them I give up and chuckle and nod. Sometimes I repeat key words I did understand and chuckle and nod. For twenty four years of my life this was a pretty harmless solution to this fairly common problem. Until a little while ago when this solution stopped working and just made me look like a bitch.

I was delivering coffee to a lady up the road from where I worked. I arrived, coffee in hand, and made some small talk – you know, the weekend bla bla bla, the weather bla bla bla, business bla bla bla bla. And then it all went to shit.

“My back hurts mumble mumble” she told me.

“That’s no good!” I replied. “What did you do to it?”

“I was mumble mumble lifting mumble mumble weighs one hundred kilos” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” came my response.

“I mumble mumble doing so much work mumble mumble lifting mumble one hundred mumble kilos!” she lamented (I assumed).

Forever the people pleaser that I am, I tried to sympathise with her. Despite the fact I wasn’t entirely sure what I was sympathising with – but I figured she’d hurt her back lifting something heavy.

“One hundred kilos?!” I exclaimed “That is heavy. No wonder your poor back is sore. Wow! Isn’t one hundred kilos, like, a ton?”

She gave me an odd look and I smiled broadly and sincerely, wished her a nice afternoon and left.

You know how you only think of fantastic comebacks after you’ve finished an argument with someone? Or when someone asks you the name of that character from Family Ties and you can’t think of it until a few hours later when you’re not with them anymore? And sometimes after you leave a conversation you realise retrospectively what someone was saying to you, when earlier you had misheard them. Well, this was one of those times. So of course, it was only after I had walked back to work that I realised what this lady had told me.  In my mind the “mumbles” left her sentences and it became very apparent that she’d just told me that it was difficult to lift things because she had put on weight and weighed one hundred kilos. She had hurt her back because it is harder lifting things when you WEIGH one hundred kilos.

So in real life our conversation had gone something like:

Her: “I weigh one hundred kilos”

Me: “Wow! That’s so heavy! Isn’t that like a ton? Geez your back must be sore!”

Moral of the story? Start. Using. Correct. Pronunciation. And. Diction. In. Your. Sentences. Or I will be accidentally cruel to you.

The Things Nick Says To Me: Part 1

On me telling him that when I was a misguided youth, my tag was "EXPLOSIVE".

Nick: My tag would be "DILIGENT". Or "RARELY LATE".

Bruce Almighty

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be funny. It's just about how much I love Bruce Springsteen.

 

The great thing about marriage is that you always have someone to go everywhere with you. When you say “we are going to see Hanson” for example, your spouse is legally obliged to respond “sure Pumpkin, here is my credit card.” So when my husband gleefully told me Bruce Springsteen was coming to Australia, I put on my married face and booked the tickets. I will freely admit that I was not a Bruce fan at this point in time. But BOY OH BOY am I one now. I read in an article “10 Reasons I Hate Bruce Springsteen” that any Bruce fan to whom you mention that you are not particularly fond of The Boss will respond that you can’t make this call unless you’ve seen him live. I have to whole-heartedly agree.

Last Monday night saw me arriving at the Allphones arena in Sydney and taking my B reserve seat. Hotdog and mid-strength beer in hand, I was fully prepared for the boredom which inevitably comes with seeing someone perform you don’t really care for. Shockingly, however, from the first strains of “American Land” I was enamoured. I literally had to hold back tears as the lights came up on Bruce and the E-Street band; it was just so damn stirring. I could feel the bass deep in my sternum, the brass section filling my ears and Bruce’s rugged, handsome face broadcasting a heart-warming smile to the stadium. Ah, Bruce. I now truly believe in the notion of love at first sight. His flavour-savour immediately made me regret all the times I had mocked Nick for his own stylish facial hair decisions, the deep crow’s feet etched into his face only giving more credence to the heart-wrenching, comical and stirring lyrics he sings. By the time he was crowd surfing the audience, he owned my Hungry Heart.

Looking around the stadium I could see that the feeling was well and truly not limited to my one little self. The audience, which was conspicuously sans-hipster and amazingly, missing the usual plethora of mobile phones – held high above the head recording the moment to be savoured at a later date – all appeared to be as smitten as I was. Even with the tiniest tilt of his head or wave of his hand, the crowd was under his control. And how could you not be? Bruce is like a god. The giant screens which hung high above the audience focused on Bruce’s face, making it all too easy to imagine I was sitting in a stadium somewhere in Middle America in 1983, not 2013. Either by design or just by some quirk of the lighting, the shadows which fell across The Boss’s face took years off him; the imperfection of his nose, the thickness of his hair and the glimmer of his eyes revealed him to be someone in their mid-thirties, not someone almost twice that. So I felt myself fall straight down the rabbit hole landing in a deep infatuation with a man who is forty years my senior. He moves around the stage staggering slightly, almost as if the legend that is “The Boss” weighs heavily upon him. Each time he lithely breaks into a dance or swings from his mic stand, he delivers on this legend, more beautifully and delicately than I could have imagined. I am occasionally distracted by what I think is the audience voicing their dissent – and then I realise they are simple saying “Bruce”. It must be difficult being a rock star with a name that is incredibly similar to the word “boo”.  

The kicker, though, is this. His inner beauty far surpasses his tight jeans-and-waistcoated-sexiness. Throughout his performance he constantly singles people out; giving a smile, a nod, a wave or a point, undoubtedly touching thousands of individual lives as he moves about the stadium. It is amazing to witness one individual having such reach, spreading unbridled joy throughout a stadium which holds 21,000 people. “Dancing in the Dark” became my new favourite song as he pulled an audience member onto the stage and held her tenderly in his arms; I have never been so overcome with jealousy. Every single woman in the audience swooned, those who didn’t were either lesbians or asexual.

Even writing this, I am still in some sort of shell-shocked state. Bruce turned a few of my fundamental beliefs on their head over the two nights we went to watch him. Upon returning home I knew we had to go back, “this can’t be the last I’ve seen of him” I thought “we had a connection!” So we purchased tickets for his final Sydney show and hopped back on the train to bask in the glory of his Friday performance. We were not disappointed. While he failed to play Born in the USA on Monday (a fact which I had lamented all week) he delivered right at the end of his epic final performance. Now, I usually loathe the type of Americana which makes those born in the States feel compelled to constantly remind us of this fact. However, this song is in a whole other dimension to even Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” or Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman”. Springsteen’s rendition of this iconic song encompasses some sort of stirring magic usually reserved for only the best national anthems. There’s something in the way he delivered this song, like it wasn’t his, like it was all of ours. And to be fair, it kind of is. A shared history of war; a camaraderie we forged in the jungles of Vietnam and the difficult and unrewarding return home shell-shocked and broken, ties the Australian people to this histrionic hymn almost as much as it does the Americans. Every intake of breath and soul-shaking note sung conveyed this to us and bonded us more closely, uniting every audience member. The fact that he so rarely plays this, the best known of his hits, only solidified the impression that we are as special and important to him as he is to us.

As his three hour performance drew to a close, I felt like my favourite character in a novel was dying. “Don’t go!” I silently screamed. In that moment I felt I would never be the same again, how could this man who I have so recently come to love be walking out of my life, just like that? The house lights came on and I urged Nick not to leave immediately. Maybe we could see him one last time? I desperately wanted just one more glimpse. And while these sorts of hopes are dashed more often than not, again the almighty Bruce refused to disappoint. He emerged from beneath the stage and stalked towards us, handing out picks and signing autographs along the way. One fan even dropped the pick he was thrown and Bruce made a point of picking it up and returning it to him, ahhh, what a hero. He stopped right in front of us, a look of glee gracing his strapping features as he spied a young boy immediately to my right. A brief word to the security guard and he returned with a harmonica for the lucky young’un. The goodness that is at his core continues to give me goose bumps. “See you later” I called as he strolled down the hallway that lead backstage and out of my life. And I pray to God that I do, because until I am in his presence again I really will feel like something is missing. That essence of Bruce. That Springsteen magic. Those very specific tingles which can only be evoked by THE BOSS.  

How To Succeed In Molestation Without Really Trying

A friend once told me a story about when she was backpacking in Europe. She met a girl whose boyfriend had been murdered. When my friend was told the story of the devastating incident, she burst into peals of laughter. This may sound horrendous, but I can totally relate, as I have NO IDEA how to act in awkward situations. Generally, I cast aside all simple, sensible and obvious reactions and respond in the worst way possible – as was the case one day on the way home from university.

I hopped onto the bus, eager to get home and not do any of my assignments. I sat in my favourite seat, immediately behind the back door of the bus. I like this seat because it has a Perspex partition directly in front of it in which I can admire myself and I am also able to check out the people behind me. Sometimes this is directly above the motor of the bus which means there is a warm little platform on the floor –a total coup for me, because my feet never reach the ground. When I am in my favourite bus seat they do, and I feel like a normal sized person. So on this fateful day I sat down, rested my head on the window with my hand, palm up, on the seat beside me. This was peak hour and at the very next stop a large group of people boarded the bus. A business woman came to sit beside me in the empty seat. Before I knew what had happened she had plonked herself down.

Onto my hand.

I am that incredibly awkward that I said nothing. I was so paralysed by the feeling of her arse being cupped by my hand that I didn’t immediately pull it away either. I sat there unsure what to do for a whole minute. Meanwhile, she was completely oblivious to the whole “me-molesting-her” situation. And you know once a minute has passed, you change from being an innocent girl with your hand on the spare seat to some incredibly creepy letch who has let this woman sit on your hand for a minute without saying anything. Because it’s not like you’ve been sitting there completely unaware that you are feeling up a stranger. In my mind’s eye I could see her recoiling in horror as I withdrew my hand from below her derriere. So I made no movement at all and remained in the same position with my head against the window, hoping my eyes would not betray me to my new companion.

As the bus made its way along the 470 route, dropping off passengers, I began to hope she would move into one of the newly empty seats and this problem would be solved; no harm, no foul. Even in the depths of my dilemma though, this was conflicting for me. I never know if it is rude to leave the person you have been sharing a seat with. I usually feel a little offended when people launch themselves at the nearest free seat as soon as it becomes available, suggesting that sitting beside me was anything less than a pleasure. But on this day I silently told Business Lady that I would not be offended at all if she wanted to stretch out, sit nearer the front or just have room for her bag to sit beside her. But alas, she didn’t move.

As my stop approached, my concern grew. What if she went all the way to the end of the line? Would I forever be captive to her bottom? Or worse, what if I was discovered and she told the bus driver? Would I be banned from the bus forever? I watched with bated breath as we pulled into my stop. No movement. Four stops later she finally relinquished her hold on my hand and alighted. She was never aware of what had transpired between us. I waited until the next stop before I finally got off (I didn’t want to look like I was following her) and walked the kilometre or so home. My hand felt weirdly warm for most of that walk and I washed it for a good ten minutes when I got in. Trying to cleanse myself of the whole incident more than anything else.

When People Say Foxes Are Cunning, It's Not Just A Figurative Thing.

Oh lord, I am thoroughly Gen Y! Apart from my all-encompassing LOVE of all things Real Housewives and Dr Phil and the fact that I always have at least three devices running, I’d have to say my worst generation Y trait is my constant need to find the quickest way to do something.

It started out innocently, probably about three or four years ago, when I began saying ‘LOL’. I swear I meant it in an ironic way (I know, that’s what they all say), it was mocking – witty even. But you know how these things are, it all starts as a joke and before you know it you’re watching Everybody Loves Raymond, he calls Deborah “smelly tramp” and you look at the person you’re with and exclaim “OMG LOL!” And actually mean it. Oh, dear.

So now, logically, I am going to discuss my love of audio books.

I thought I was a genius when I downloaded Tina Fey’s book ‘Bossy Pants’ and put it onto my iPhone. I listened to it every day on the way to work, had a good chuckle and then told everyone that I had read it. I’m still unsure whether or not this is a lie, although given my history (see here and here) I’m going to go ahead and say that it is probably some sort of untruth. Anyway, on the back of my one-whole-book-read-in-a-single-week-while-driving, I thought “let’s branch out and try some serious literature”. So I went ahead and downloaded all thirty of the little six minute chapters of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men’. I love violence and I love good prose, so this book had been on my list for ages. And so began the most confusing few days of driving to work I have ever experienced.

I need to preface this anecdote with the fact that at this point in my life I was leaving home at 5.09am to drive 25 kilometres from my house in the inner city to Sydney’s north shore. This was a dark and quiet drive to work which could sometimes be a little strange. Once I got literally every one of the red lights between my house and Hunters Hill (probably about thirty sets in all) and was punching my steering wheel in fury when I arrived at one of those sets of lights which can only be triggered by someone pressing the cross walk button. Of course the lights went red, and as I looked around for a culprit whom I could silently hate for the rest of my drive to work, a fox walked across the road. How he pressed the button I never found out, but it was a weird moment in my life none the less. Anyway, I digress.

It was on this long and quiet drive to work that I began to listen to McCarthy’s tale of Llewelyn and his accidental involvement in an illicit drug deal gone wrong. The setting and people were painted beautifully in my mind, but I couldn’t get past how little regard McCarthy had for an even remotely linear story line. Just when I would start to understand what was happening, the whole story would be shaken up and I would be utterly lost again. One moment a character would be dead, the next he was walking and talking, he’d be crossing a plane and suddenly he was in a motel. After five days of listening to this almost nonsensical story as I drove through the silent streets of Sydney (which were thankfully sans-fox) I started to wonder if I was going mad. Why couldn’t I understand this acclaimed novel? Had I lost my smarts? Had I sustained some sort of head injury? NONE of the reviews spoke of difficulty simply understanding the transition between scenes and situations. Finally the novel came to an end. I picked up my phone (slightly relieved at the silence) and went to play a song. It was then that I realised my iPhone had been set to SHUFFLE the whole time.  

So now I’m back to reading books like a normal person – with my eyes. Yep, totes a Gen Y epic fail. LOL.

Just Because My Middle Name Is Carmel Doesn't Mean I Had Bad Parents

I’m pretty sure my parents’ motto while raising my brother and I was “no child will ever control how I live”. These are parents who thought overprotective meant having a baby monitor; but I’m not dead so their philosophy has to hold some water. Fair enough I say, but I have to tell you that your parents going about their lives as they would if you weren’t there (not in a neglectful way, but in an empowered parent way) can result in some pretty embarrassing moments.

One particular incident, or should I say “recurring item of nightwear”, comes to mind in regard to this credo. My dad had a favourite night dress, he’d probably say it was a nightshirt, but that’s just semantics. Anyway, this nightdress was short and made of a thin fabric – I guess you would call it a summer night gown, it looked like something Kim Kardashian would be wearing in a sexy photo shoot where her hair was all tousled and her bra was showing. My dad was a teacher at my school so anything he would do in front of my friends meant that the shame factor was immediately squared. One summer’s eve I had a sleepover with some girlfriends and, in true dad style, my father stomped up the stairs at about 10’o’clock to tell us to shut up. Fine, it was his house and his rules. But of course he was clad in aforementioned gown. No one said a thing, we promised to keep it down and that was the end of that, until a week later at school when one of the girl’s asked in front of the rest of our group why my dad wore a dress at home. No one ever let me live that down and I’m pretty sure everyone kept an eye out when they stayed over for their favourite science teacher in his house dress. I breathed a sigh of relief when the worn out old nightie ripped up the side, “the end of an era” I lulled. And it was, until dad returned from the shed, gaffa tape in hand and gave that puppy a whole new lease on life. Believe it or not that motherfucking dress lasted until I finished high school.

The Biggest Lie I Ever Told

I used to have this cat called Jeffrey. I know this is an abnormal cat name but I feel it is important to give cats names that have dignity; they are elegant creatures and should be labelled as such. Jeffrey was however, neither elegant nor dignified. He was actually, for lack of a better word, a total retard of a cat. He would sit nose to nose with the fridge for hours hoping it would feed him, was completely afraid of the wind and he once went missing for a few days only to be found sitting at the bottom of the garden, completely unharmed, with some type of moss growing on his back. He was also thoroughly unpleasant, so of course I loved the shit out of him.

You know when you have a pet, you often feel like it has certain things it wants to say to you? Jeffrey had a permanently angry look on his face, like he was dying to yell abuse at us, and so my family would voice his inner monologue; giving words to his misgivings about his food, his surroundings and his dislike of the world in general. The dialogue we had on his behalf revealed him to be a well-spoken but cranky old man of a cat. I still worry about the times when people would walk in on us talking from the cat’s perspective, but that’s ok because my family wasn’t particularly normal and I guess no one expected any better from us.

For a few years when I was quite young I had this concern that I may be possessed, like the main character from The Exorcism of Emily Rose, as I would often get up of a morning covered in scratches with no idea where they had come from. One night I woke up to discover that it had been Jeffrey all along; he had been sneaking into my room after I was asleep and settling on my bed; whenever I moved he would attack my legs leaving them bloody and battered. Another time he pooed on my history text book and I had to explain it to my teacher. Yes, Jeffrey was not a pleasant cat at all, but he had character and to me that is the most important thing any animal or object can have.

The following story is about the day that Jeffrey died. I am aware that this anecdote paints me as a liar and I guess I was a bit of a liar in this situation, but you will come to see that I only told one lie. Except it was a massive lie. Probably the biggest lie I have ever told actually. So if you have a problem with fibbing it is best that you stop reading now.

One hot January day I was on a train on the way home from the city. My phone rang and when I answered it, I heard my very concerned mother on the other end – I immediately knew someone had died. Upon realising I was on the train my mum told me she would call me later, but as they say – curiosity killed the cat (har har har) – and I pushed her to tell me what was wrong. She informed me that Jeffrey had been found in the neighbour’s yard where he had died after his kidneys gave out. To say I was inconsolable was an understatement. I hung up the phone and burst into tears. Now, I am by no means a pretty crier. I am frowny, blotchy, and above all, a snotty crier. I cry hard and loud until big slimy ropes of snot pour from my nose. So I sat there, in the most crowded carriage of the train, forty minutes away from home and sobbed. And so OF COURSE this was one of those rare train journeys when the State Rail guards boarded and checked that everyone had paid for their journeys. I handed over my ticket, still whimpering and covered in snot, which they checked and walked away. Relieved, I returned my face to the nook between the window and the seat and recommenced my howling.

BUT OF COURSE THEY CAME BACK. Because nothing is ever that simple in my life.

When they returned they silently escorted me to that small portion of the train which you initially step onto, the part which is neither up nor down. They had cleared this section specifically for me. Oh, the shame. So, they sat me down and asked me what had happened. I didn’t feel quite like I was able to say that my cat had died (how embarrassing to be wailing at that decibel level about a cat) and so I told them that I had lost a family member. I silently congratulated myself on something which wasn’t really a lie and continued to hiccup. Oh, how I wish they were your run-of-the-mill uncaring, bastards and left it at that. But they didn’t.

“Who was it, darling?” the extremely concerned, fatherly, train guard asked me.

This was really the moment that it all fell apart. Flanked by two burly men in uniform, devastated and embarrassed that I had been removed from the main population of the train I looked him in the eye and said “it was my brother.”

Just like that. Earnestly and honestly (except for the fact that it was an utter fabrication), and then shocked by this whopper of a lie I had just told, I burst into fresh tears.

He gently patted me on the back and continued to ask me questions, like any kind stranger would. Ugh.

“What was his name?”

“Jeffrey” I stuttered, my voice thick with tears. Thank god we hadn’t called him Mittens.

“How old was he, love?”

“He was fourteen.” He was. But he was a cat.

“How did he die?”

“Kidney failure.” It was kidney failure, but he was a fourteen year old cat.

“Where was he?”

“In the neighbour’s yard.” WHICH IS NOT THAT STRANGE WHEN YOU CONSIDER HE WAS A CAT.

The guard looked absolutely stricken and I swear to god, he wiped a tear from his eye. At this point, I was so shocked by the enormity of my lie that I stopped crying altogether and just sat silently, praying for time to speed up and my stop to arrive.

“I’m sorry to take up your time” I ventured. “I’m sure you come across things like this all the time.”

“It’s never anything this bad.” He told me, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

I am the worst person alive.

When we got to Hornsby (where I lived at the time) they escorted me off the train, into the lift and waited with me until someone came to collect me. I had to quickly call a friend to come get me, telling them through gritted teeth that “Jeffrey has died, please meet me at the station.” You’d better believe I high-tailed it right out of there – before any conversation between the guards-who-were-comforting-me-about-the-death-of-my-brother and my friend-who-was-there-to-comfort-me-about-the-death-of-my-cat could transpire.

Oh boy. If I wasn’t sure about it before this, I was after – I am definitely going to hell.

Hopefully I’ll see Jeffrey there.

Starburst Sucks Are Aptly Named

I had a fiery debate recently with some friends regarding veganism, the day before this there was a spat between two kids at work about whether coke or juice was a healthier option and finally I had a scare at a restaurant when a buddy with a nut allergy ingested some nuts. These three food related incidents got me thinking about the things we put into our bodies.

I like my body. I feel like we are fast friends. My body gets me through all sorts of situations and is yet to complain, no matter what I do to it. For example; last week I was rejoicing that I was only five minutes from the end of my shift and decided to let out a celebratory “woohoo” accompanied by a double fisted ‘yes’ gesture. You know the one, kind of like you’re doing a chin up without a bar, grasping at the air with both fists and pulling down hard and fast while ‘yes’ becomes ‘yesssssssssssssssss’. The only problem was, I had just been washing all of the steak knives and had placed them, blade side up, in a cutlery basket. This meant that instead of the celebratory gesture I intended it to be, I actually ended up stabbing myself in the elbow. The wound was a good centimetre deep. And no complaint from my body. It just puts up with the stupid shit I do, ah, my constant friend.

As was the case a little while ago when I accidentally ate something a little iffy.

A few months ago I stopped for petrol on the drive home and was offered a too-good-to-be-true offer of two Starburst Sucks lollipops for just forty cents which, of course, I snapped up immediately. Now, I love to eat in my car. It doesn’t have a cd player, any working windows, an interior light, an aerial, air conditioning and leaks when it rains, meaning it constantly smells like wet dog. So eating has to be the main form of entertainment on the forty minute drive home from work. I tucked right into the first of my two strawberry flavoured sweets and put the other in the centre console for the next return journey from work (or drive TO work at 5am if I was feeling crazy) and promptly forgot all about it.

Jump forward two weeks and on a hot, sticky afternoon I uncovered the remaining lollipop while crawling along in heavy traffic. What a coup. I said a silent thank you to past Maz for leaving it there for me and as we started moving I unwrapped it whacked it straight into my mouth. A few minutes later, it began to taste strange. I went to look at it just as traffic began to move again and noticed that it was flecked with black. I assumed I had simply bought one strawberry and one watermelon flavoured Starburst. That would explain the slightly more acrid taste of this second candy and the strange colouration. So I continued to happily suck away as I slowly made ground in the traffic. At the next lights I went to check the progress I was making on my lolly in order to ascertain how close I was to that point when it’s ok to chew the rest of it. Upon pulling the lollipop from my mouth I discovered that there were a few little black bits exposed and poking out of the walls of the lollipop. On even closer inspection they were ants. They had crawled up the hollow stick of the confection and had become entombed in the hard candy. Much like Han Solo frozen in his carbonite prison, their little legs reached forward lamenting their untimely deaths. So I decided the only way to honour the little suckers (you’re welcome for that delightful pun) was to finish eating that creepy crawly candy. And so I did just that. Whilst stopped amongst a hundred cars, I sat quietly and ate my lollipop of ants. I must have been the only person in at least a ten kilometre radius doing that exact thing.

I felt fine, not a trace of sickness was to be noted and I hadn’t even wasted my forty cents. Yep, that car ride home was a definite success.

Diet Has The Word "Die" In It For A Reason

I went to the States at the end of last year. And you better believe I ate out every meal, every day for a month. Not to mention the massive free-poured cocktails I consumed nightly and the candy which was so cheap and novel lining every convenient store shelf. I even bought an individually packaged pickle in New Orleans, amazing! Suffice to say, I came back a little chubbier that I was when I left. Whatever, I thought; the weight will come off once I go back to normal life – playing basketball, eating lots of veg… It’ll be fine. But it wasn’t. A month on and I was still more oompa loompa than impala. My favourite dresses didn’t sit in quite the same way, I started having to wear loose fitting t-shirts to work to cover my paunch and my confidence, wit and ability to flirt with tradies while serving them food and coffee faded a little. I even stopped cutting love hearts out of beetroot and placing them on plates beside sandwiches and pies. (This is a fun little addition I find amusing as it sends an odd mixed message; it’s cute but a little creepy, especially when it bleeds red juice everywhere.) Anyway, it was sad times in the world of Maz.

It appeared that drastic measures would have to be taken. So I did the worst thing a person could do and I googled free diet plans. Oh, the shame. I came across a diet which I had completed successfully back on ’04 – I won’t name it because it works and I want those of you carrying some extra weight to keep it on, so that we can all remain part of the same jiggly fraternity – but it basically involved only eating fruit, veg, vegetable soup and two steaks at the end of the week. I honestly thought that it would be a piece of cake to complete (pun intended).

By the evening of day two (soup and vegetables) my husband came home to find me sitting on the couch, knees up to my chest (I don’t want to say I was in the foetal position, but I was in the foetal position) a moment away from tears. We both decided that it was time to fuck that diet right off and go and get a pizza. My very best efforts and I lasted not even two days. I mean, I love being lazy, and surely going on a diet speaks to this desire to be a sloth; you are required to literally do nothing. You just don’t eat. That’s all there is to it. So I suppose I will just chalk that up as another thing which I fail abysmally at.

However, I did start to wonder if it was such a terrible thing to be a little imperfect. All my life I have been a trick monkey. Anything that would get a laugh, I would do. When I was fifteen and worked at McDonald’s I would serve people while pretending to have a lisp to make the days go quicker, I constantly black out my teeth with cake and icing when making cakes and the other day I literally high fived someone I didn’t know, who was standing on the median strip, while stopped at lights because I felt that maybe my friends needed some amusement on the way to the pub. The man ran away, into oncoming traffic once he had high fived me, it was hilarious – “job well done” I thought. So if my body can’t be “perfect” by conventional standards, why can’t it be comical? Personally, I think it is unfair if you are both beautiful, well-built AND a nice, funny person. For instance, I have started to really warm to a girl at work who has the most slamming body and a gorgeous face. She said something really funny to me the other day and I thought “if she gets any funnier, I am going to need her to get uglier somehow”. Go ahead; judge my character according to that statement and while you’re at it feel free to also judge me according to this list of things which are wrong with my body.

My thighs: I have larger than regular thighs. I think I am technically overweight according to that BMI thing, so of course I will always jump on board when people say that it is all a bunch of hooey. “Yes, it’s crap”, you’ll hear me yell “there is no one-size-fits-all way to determine whether someone is a healthy size” while inside I’m thinking “Geez Maz, we’d better start laying off those tubs of sour cream eaten with a spoon when alone in the house!” So while I definitely do NOT sport the “gap factor” what I can offer is, in my opinion, just as appealing. When dancing naked, my legs will literally clap together keeping the time of my jig. Not only is this humorous but it’s useful – I am like a one-lady band!

Unwanted hair: Now I know everyone has unwanted hair – legs, armpits, bikini line etc. But I have hair in two strange places which I refuse to get rid of. Firstly, I have this one hair on my cheek which just grows limitlessly. Occasionally when it gets in my line of vision I will try and pull it out with my fingers. Generally though, this will just curl it rather than remove it. So, basically, I have facial hair which I style. Secondly, I have hairy big toes. This doesn’t help with the long held theory that I may be part hobbit – I am quite short in stature and the hair that grows from my toes is long and dark. I keep it, because I feel it gives me character, plus it makes for a good conversation starter.

Chubby baby hands: While I am already quite a little person I sport smaller than average hands. They are also very plump. Thanks to them I will never be able to play acoustic guitar or hold a basketball single handed. I’m pretty sure people study photographs of me thinking that their camera has had some sort of malfunction, distorting the hands at the end of my arms to the point where they look like little Christmas hams. Never fear faithful Facebook friends, these are my real hands, your cameras and computer screens are in full working order.

Muffin top: I have what is commonly referred to as a “muffin top” (where your chub hangs over your pants or skirt resembling the muffin spilling from the top of its paper shell), but here’s the kicker: it is ever-present. Even when naked I have a muffin top. It is really quite remarkable. I am assuming that it is from wearing clothes which are too tight (I often underestimate my size, I am so gullible I believe the lies I tell myself!) Somehow I have actually smooshed all my fat above and below my hip line to the point where it permanently stays in place, now to figure a way to manipulate this further and increase the size of my boobs.

Circle head: I have a big round head. Once a drunken stranger on the train told me I had a head like a pumpkin and I have to admit, he was onto something. I have a big, round butternut-shaped noggin. When I smile my cheeks push into my eyes and make me look all squinty. It’s cool though, because the day they start casting for the movie of the Magic Faraway tree, you’d better believe I’ll be well in the running to get the part of Moonface.

So there you have it, the list of things that are wrong with me. If you can think of anything else that you’ve noticed and I haven’t, feel free to let me know. I’m also interested to find out if anyone else has deformities they are proud of. Regardless, the lesson for today is – if you are boring you’d better jump right onto that treadmill or go get a nose job. And if you are a bit of an uggo learn a joke or grow a monobrow – at least you’ll have something to talk about. Basically, I want you all to be either ugly and funny or boring and hot; just don’t be better than me – so we can remain friends.

 

 

How To Be The Coolest Kid On The Bus

I got my driver’s licence the day that I turned seventeen. Not for the usual reasons that people get their licence; I gained enough independence from catching the bus and trains on weekends and later had a boyfriend/chauffer to get me from A to B. I rushed to get my licence because the children on the bus genuinely hated me.

I do not intend this to be a sob story in any way, their torture was retrospectively hilarious and clever and I turned out fine in the end. Plus, I would have hated me if I were them. By all accounts I was a pretentious child who entered kindergarten telling everyone who would listen what a monotreme was. I am pretty sure I didn’t improve as I got older either. This tendency to be a smart ass, coupled with my extremely tiny stature – being only about four and half feet until I was sixteen – meant that I was a perfect target. I might just have gone un-noticed had my first bus trip home from my new school in year five not been such a debacle.

Back when I was ten you used to walk up steps onto the bus (nothing was as convenient as it is these days) and on this first day home from my new school I was the last person in the bus queue. The line grew shorter and shorter until everybody, except about two people, were seated waiting for the bus to depart. Due to my aforementioned height disadvantage, the bus driver couldn’t see past these last two people to tiny little Maz at the bottom of the steps. So unfortunately, while still waiting patiently to show the bus driver my bus pass, he shut the door and began to drive away. This meant I was wedged – one arm and leg in and one arm, leg and school bag out – of the door of the bus that was making its way rapidly down the road. I was literally half in and half out of the bus as it departed the curb. All the cool kids from their back seat bandit vantage point could see me flailing and yelling and were consequently flailing and yelling themselves – with uncontrollable laughter. The driver eventually noticed me, what felt like a kilometre (but was probably only twenty meters) down the road, and let me completely onto the bus. I was all red, sobbing with fear and sporting a grimy line right down the centre of my uniform from the bus doors. It was from this day forward that the cool kids from the local catholic school hated me. And to their credit, their hatred lasted for a good six years, right up until I got my driver’s licence and stopped getting that bus.                

One of the bullies I grew to have quite a crush on, he looked like Zac Hanson with dreadlocks and piercing blue eyes. One day I offered him five dollars to be my boyfriend and he spat on me. Properly spat on me, mind you. He hocked up a big loogie and spat it right onto my winter jumper. I took it off and washed it as soon as I got home, probably more heartbroken that he spat on my jumper and not in my mouth, than anything.

Another time, the ring leader; a chubby, pretty, blonde girl, threw my wallet out the window of the bus when we were about a kilometre from my house. I had to get off the bus, walk back and gather all of my coins and cards off the road and then walk the rest of the way home because my bus pass didn’t allow me to catch the bus from where I got off. That girl was an evil genius. I looked her up on Facebook hoping to find that she had become an ugly crone with a difficult life. She was stunning and seemed to be extremely successful. Go figure.

So I got my driver’s licence at 8.30am the day I turned seventeen, and wouldn’t you know, each one of those horrible children’s houses received a drive-by egging within the month. Call it vigilante justice.