remember the days of the high school yard

If high school was the happiest time of my life, I'd be dead by now.
fortunately, it wasn't. in fact, the year I was at high school was among the unhappiest I've had.

I only had one year of high school, thank God. I left at the end of year 7 (shortly before turning 13), because I loathed the place, and mum thought both my education and my sanity would be better served by “home-schooling”.

I put “home schooling” in inverted commas because we mostly just made up a curriculum and then I’d get on with reading all the fiction, history, travel, pop science, etc, that I wanted to anyway. I also was a volunteer at a child care centre, a women’s refuge, and as a Lifeline telephone counsellor, was a student then a tutor at the local Youth Theatre, and sat in on college classes (the same college where my mum worked, and where I later did my first degree).

this post started life as a Facebook questionnaire Notes thingy, so it's in Q & A form, and includes questions I probably wouldn't have thought to ask myself, and Americanisms, which I'll leave as they are cos it'd be a bit rude to change them, given I'm not even crediting the original (unknown to me) writer of the quiz.

So a) there’s not much material from one year (although it seemed an eternity of pain at the time), and b) it’s a bit traumatic remembering all that shit. So I’ve included some stuff from after I left high school, but while I was still in my early-to-mid teens.

1. What stereotype would you characterize yourself in high school? (Nerd, Jock, Artsy, Stoner etc)
nerd, then artsy nerd.

2. Who was your fave teacher and why?
my maths teacher (can’t remember his name), cos I liked maths and he gave me extra work when I’d finished stuff early. At college, when I was 14 or so, one of the English lecturers with whom I did Women in Lit – heaps of fun!

3.What was your worst high school moment?
too many to choose:
being asked on my first day if I was a virgin (I should bloody well hope so! I was 11 going on 12);
being pushed down a flight of stairs;
being told by an English teacher (who I’d previously respected) that my response to a poem was ‘wrong’;
being asked by a guy (who I wasn’t interested in, but still) if I’d ‘go with’ him (i.e. be his gf), then before I answered, he and his mates all laughed and said ‘sucked in’.

4.What was your best high school moment?
- HS: getting home at the end of each day.
- Best college-during-my-early-teens moment: talking about the Romantic poets (Shelley, Byron, Clare, Keats), and about Virginia Woolf, in a class of people who were actually interested and had read them.

5. What music most reminds you of high school?
ABBA might, but fortunately I have much more positive associations with ABBA now. Mamma Mia, here I go again - lovely Meryl Streep, and dancing to Dancing Queen at Conflux 2 - we had a great DJ at the masquerade ball!

6. What class would you like to take again if you had the chance?
none! Never want to go to a high school again, unless –
if I was the teacher, and the kids actually wanted to be there, then English, history, civics, drama – anything where I could rabbit on a bit, get them to do fun and challenging stuff and hopefully inspire them.
I would like to do high-school level maths and science, cos I missed most of that, but not at an actual high-school.


7. Who did you hang out with most in high school?
my sister, except we weren’t s’posed to talk to each other because year 7s and year 10s were s’posed to be in different parts of the playground. Stupid bureaucracy.

8. What is something you miss the most about high school?
absolutely nothing. Say it again – school – what is it good for? Huh! Absolutely nothing.

9. What do you miss the least?
Being bullied, rushing from one horrible stupid class to another carrying tons of heavy books (we didn’t have lockers - are there lockers in Australian high schools now?).

10. Who did you date or have a crush on?
- no one at school. Immature dickheads, most of them.
- at college while in early teens – lots of people, probably the earliest was a comms student called Jen (I think) who was in They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (or maybe she did lighting – I forget the details, just that I thought she was so cool, and wished I had the courage to talk with her)

11. What is something really funny that happened?
more eye-rollingly stupid, but I got into an argument with my science teacher about the ethics of Australia mining uranium and selling it to other countries, e.g France, who then used it in nuclear weapons that they tested, above ground, in the Pacific. My science teacher said that if we didn’t sell it to the French, another country would. I said that by that reasoning, it would be okay for him to sell me heroin because if he didn’t someone else would. His only answer was ‘but you’re not a heroin addict’, then ‘get back to work on identifying the sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks’. Blah.

Lots of funny things happened at college-before-I-enrolled. Can I remember a good anecdote? Sorry, nothing specific.

12. Did you ever get in trouble in high school?
ha! I was so 'good', until the last month of the last term, when I was so fed up, and after mostly getting As I failed a test – shock! horror! My form teacher (the science teacher, poor fool) had a Serious Talk with me. I just glowered at him.

13. What were you really into back then?
writing angst-filled poems, reading and watching SF and detective fiction, playing in the garden with our cats.

14. Where did you hang out?
- during HS: during the school day, wherever I hoped no one would find me; in my bedroom (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Buster Keaton and Elvis posters on the wall) while at home.
- during college-in-early-teens: in the college Union eating hot chips, at Youth Theatre, in the community radio’s student broadcasting studio…

15. What was your proudest accomplishment?
- HS: surviving
- in-mid-teens: getting a job as drama tutor; training as a Lifeline counsellor

16. If you could go back and change something, what would it be?
it’d be great to go back and tell myself “it will get better”, and to not internalise all the shit that the bullies told me


17. Who influenced you most?
- at HS: the bullies, probably
- at c-in-mid-ts: women at the refuge – workers and residents; English lecturers at college (before I enrolled, and a History lecturer afterwards); drama tutors at youth theatre; other volunteers at Lifeline (most of whom were practising Christians, and I was then an atheist).

18. What were some of your fave TV shows from that era?
Blake’s 7, Starksy & Hutch, Dr Who (depending on which Doctor), Countdown, Welcome Back Kotter

19. Fave movies?
Star Wars, Ordinary People, CE3K (Close Encounters), Gallipoli, Scanners, Mad Max 2, Gregory’s Girl

20. Is there anything you would like to say that you never had the chance to say to someone?
- to all the bullies: I hope you’ve grown up to be decent people
- to the lecturers at college-in-my-mid-teens: thanks for restoring my faith in adults and in formal education
- to my mum: thank you!
- to my sister: we made it out alive!

travelling in Europe with my older sister when we were in our teens was way better education than being at high school.

living and blogging

being fairly new to blogging, and also going through a health crisis, I'm not sure whether it's possible to do stuff and still have time & energy to blog about it. (half-joking here)
one possible solution would be to not do anything, and simply blog about what's going on in my mind, but that could get a bit stale, so I'll probably just do occasional posts, and in between the more detailed posts, give a summary of the interesting things I could've blogged about, if I hadn't been so busy doing them.

in the last week I've:
* read a fascinating YA novel called Beast, by Ally Kennen
* weeded some of my pot plants on the balcony
* shared thoughts with friends on FB - a great solace, joy and inspiration
* wondered what I'd be doing now if I'd had more self-confidence in my 20s and 30s
* and played I Spy with a couple of preschoolers while we (and many others of various ages and ethnic backgrounds) were all waiting for an hour or so to see a doctor at the medical centre

more about Beast later, and about the tantalising "what if"s that may even now be fulfilled by alternate versions of me in parallel universes...

amusing things to do indoors

pic of paired socks (with colour-coordinated pegs) taken on a sunny day, quite unlike today.








I was disgruntled by how chill, grey and overcast it was this morning, but pottering around at home can be so relaxing. I started out with no particular plans or expectations, and have had a lovely indoor day. have done a small load of washing & hung it on the balcony (the forecast showers haven't eventuated, but may yet), some vacuuming (!!), and some clothes- and paper-sorting.

matching socks is very satisfying - a dozen random single socks, some washed today, some previously, have now found their partners - yay! Not that there's anything wrong with being single, nor do I have anything against wearing odd socks, but it's nice to have the choice to wear matching socks - a choice that becomes difficult to put into action if the only socks available are lacking a partner. I also threw out (or rather, put into a bag) any socks or knickers that were holey or had dead elastic, and put into another bag a few nice, wearable clothes which I'd just washed but don't really fit into any more. the wearable clothes can go to one of the op shops nearby, but for the other bag I'll have to find a charity that accepts torn clothes and sells them for industrial rags.

Quentin Crisp said that after the first three years of letting it accumulate, you no longer notice the dust - it doesn't get any thicker and it drifts into areas that you don't use. I'm not game to leave it long enough to verify that theory, having a fear that I might get lost in the drifts and die of dust inhalation, like a poor little dessicated lizard curled up behind a bookcase. but I do tend to leave it a good while, so it was a thrill to do some vacuuming today. I used the little round brushy attachment to do papers on my desk (prior to uncovering and moving my 'in-tray'), my mediation shawl (sad to let something so precious get so dusty), the armchair that my dolls, bears, etc, sit on, and edges of bookcases. my poor bears and frog were a different colour once they'd been vacuumed. I didn't dare vacuum any of the dolls - they're too vulnerable, and have monetary or sentimental value.




Bambina, pictured here, was my maternal grandmother's doll, and I lovingly wipe her with a soft, dry cloth, never vacuum.












I also sorted through papers in the living room, mostly in hopes of finding an address I'd jotted on something a day or two ago, and also to make sure there weren't any of mum's bills lying around waiting for me to pay them (there was one that needed paying, down the side of the armchair that I use, and one that my sister had paid, in a pile of 'to do' papers). still haven't found the address, but tossed out some bits of newspaper I'd been keeping for the crosswords (now done) or the pretty pictures (which I probably won't use, specially now I'm doing more with digital images than paper), and put all current 'to do' documents for me & mum into the in-tray recovered from my desk.

being on Facebook and photoblog has inspired me to go through lots of old photo albums and scan pictures to post online, and in some cases I want to go through & scan all the photos in an album so I can save them on my desktop's hard drive, on a data stick, and eventually in an online storage service. both seeing other people's beautiful old photos in their blogs, and seeing how many people on FB answered 'photo albums & negatives' to the question 'what would I grab if my house was on fire?', prompted me to scan & save, scan, resize & post.

and in between all this, just mucking around on Facebook - doing quizzes, posting status updates, sending congratulations and commiserations to friends, looking at photos - and playing music and talks through iTunes and YouTube.

hope you're having a good week/end.

an actual entry in my blog

don't remember exactly when I created this blog, or why - did I intend to witter on about nothing? share profound thoughts? just have an ID so I wouldn't be 'anonymous' when commenting on my friends' blogs?

when I created it, I was writing a journal regularly and writing fiction sporadically, and didn't really have any urge to put words into a blog, talking to an unknown (and possibly non-existent) audience, when I had an eager audience for my journal (me, especially when bored or avoiding something - and it was in convenient form to re-read) and a supportive audience for my fiction (my writing group, particularly my buddies with whom I had a mutual pact to be an honest, constructive and committed reader).

but now I rarely get to my writing group, write tiny amounts of fiction once in a blue moon, and think about writing in my (paper) journal occasionally but don't often do it. most of my writing now occurs on Facebook, so I could just as well blether on here as on FB. except that I have a bunch of very interesting FB friends, who start their own discussion threads, contribute to others', and comment on mine - very stimulating.

hmm, maybe I can make some bloggy friends, too.

hello?

so anyway, I was just looking for a video cassette* which has my film school video You Can't Find Me on it (based on a story I wrote, script by Michelle Harrison with input by me, directed by Pauline Chan, 'produced' by me - but it was Pauline's student budget that funded it), mostly to see if there were any other bits of video on it, like my student piece from Theatre/Media at Mitchell C.A.E., that I could upload to YouTube. Not sure if I have the right to upload You Can't Find Me to YouTube, cos it's copyright AFTRS. (must ring and ask)

despite the title, I did find the video cassette, so will shortly check and see what else is on it.

while hunting for said cassette, I sorted through other videos and DVDs that are stored in the unit (which used to be my bedside table/nightstand). My lovely widescreen telly sits on top (usually covered by a nice leaf-green on cream batik cloth, so it doesn't get dusty), the VCR/DVD player is in the top shelf, and the dvds and video cassettes are underneath (they don't get covered with a cloth, and are thus rather dusty). fascinating what I had in there: videos of movies that I now have on dvd (and so will sell or give away); videos of films that I don't have on dvd and wouldn't mind watching some time, but had totally forgotten I had (like Buster Keaton's The General, Gill Armstrong's Last Days of Chez Nous, a doco about 60s Girl Groups and Motown...); and time-shifted tv on tapes so old they're probably disintegrating (but at least time-shifting is legal now. although there may be a limit on how long is considered 'time-shifting'. 15 years sounds okay to me).

now I've rearranged the videos, and resorted the dvds that were in front of them (my dvd bookcase is overfull, so the TV-on-DVD SF or fantasy dvds are on the nightstand instead of alphabetically shelved with the feature films, docos and non-SF/fantasy TV-on-DVD on the bookcase). and I might even watch some of the videos. after I finish this blog entry, and check my AFTRS tape, and see what's happening on Facebook, and maybe go and buy some groceries, cos I'm out of milk and bananas (two of my staple foods).

nice chatting to you folk/s, and I'll let you know what I find on the AFTRS tape (and whether I can upload my student video to YouTube).

cheers

*for the info of anyone born after 1990: you may have seen them, they're like a dvd, only not a flat disk - more like an audio cassette, but with pictures. an encased reel-to-reel magnetic tape, with sound and image track. playable in a VCR. there used to be two formats, but the Beta one died.