Radical amplification and acceleration of the hear and now
The Monster Called 'Can't': Battling Self-Doubt and Fear
Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t quite ready…for life, that is? That you need more time to prepare before you take on the great thing that you feel would make all the difference, if only, I don’t know, you could do something different or better. It’s sort of like rolling all your fears of success, all your fears of failure and bundling them up with your, “I’m not good enough”, I”’m not strong enough”, in fact all you “I’m not enoughs” and giving them over to the monster called, “Can’t”, and accepting in return a pile of excuses that you can pick over and savour as your wish box gets fuller and fuller. Oh, wait on, sorry, that was me! But may you have it too, the tension between deep longing and belief in your personal ineffectiveness. I guess that today’s word would be “looser”. Yikes.
A Prank and a Professor: Lessons in Perseverance
For along time I struggled not to feel like a looser, it was my greatest fear and even thinking about it brought a rush of adrenaline, a dead feeling in my gut and a frantic search for a distraction, any distraction. In my first year of uni in Sydney, actually it was the first year of my second go at tertiary education, no,my third go, I had a number of false starts, I was the butt of a practical joke by my fellow students. They told me that the dean of the school wanted to see me. It’s like that gag where you give someone the phone number of the zoo and tell you that a Mr Lyon rang and left a message for you asking to call him back urgently. It a scam like the myriads of scam like we see on the internet today, the phishing (with a ‘ph’), trojan horses, malware, viruses etc, etc.
Anyway I discovered, gullibility and hapless naivety were a powerful combination that made me an easy target and created a good deal of frivolity. There’s a fine line between playing the fool and being a fool and I was prone to getting them mixed up. Anyway, these guys told me that the dean wanted to see me, which made sense given my abysmal academic record that year. So I go up to the professor’s office and make an appointment with his secretary. “What’s it about?” “I don’t know, he wants to see me.” I swear at the time nobody would have been able to convince me it was anything than above board. I had failed organic chemistry and something else that I can’t remember and in a spot of bother to put it mildly. That’s to say nothing of my chaotic personal life at the time. It didn’t occur to me that they might be connected. So I went in to see the professor, ironically by the name of Passmore and said, “I’m David Salomon” and braced myself. He looked at me blankly. I had already decided to not leave without some sort of solution to this mess that I was in. No matter what, I’d take it on the chin.
A Moment of Transformation: Finding Hope in Academic Struggles
Silence, then, “Why are you here?” “I don’t know.” More silence. “How can I help?” Now I was really confused. He got my file and had a look through my exam records. He was an astute man, his field was the philosophy of science and he could tell that something was amiss. Then it happened. He looked at me, I could feel his gaze as I stared down at my sweaty hands and he said, ”Just because you’ve failed a few subjects, doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata,” “What?” I parroted back, with all my skill in idiomatic Latin translation vacating me. He repeated himself, “Just because you’ve failed a couple of subjects doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata.” And as I looked up at him the black cloud I had carried around for the past seven years broke open. And I kid you not, the clouds parted and the sun shone through, you know that special sunlight that comes as rays through the clouds, poets refer to it as the grace of God. I felt buoyant as my heart kept into life. You see I knew that I was smart enough, I had won a university scholarship on merit. There was something else wrong with me that had nothing to do with my studies but I had no way of articulating and now it had lifted and I felt that the moment deserved a full orchestral score with a long camera shot of me receiving a full quotient of grace, permeating, saturating, drinking it in long thirsty draughts. I felt like dancing, and singing and telling everyone the good news, the fantastic news that there was a chance that I might be OK after all, because somebody saw me.
By the time I left the room the euphoria had passed. I just felt my load had been lightened. Though I continued to stumble my way through life for a long time the absolute blessing of that moment has never left me. Nothing had changed in my outer world but everything in my inner world was different.
Seeking a Blessed Childhood: Rediscovering Inner Potential
Years later, one of my teachers talked about how she had had a blessed childhood. It was curious to me because from the stories she told, yes, she had been fortunate in meeting many talented and gifted people growing up. Yes, she clearly had a close relationship with her father, but it was clear problematic. His humour was ruthless. Then a sense of disappointment came over me as I realised that I wanted to have had a blessed childhood too. That the antagonism I felt toward my father for not understanding me, that the love I felt from my mother didn’t come free with anticipation and expectation that I didn’t feel able to fulfil, that the alienation from my extended family that I had brought about to shield me from being judged and ridiculed, even though there was scant evidence that was true.
Then just like that black cloud lifting I realised that I too was a candidate for a blessed childhood, a blessed life in fact, yes, there was some cleaning up to do, but at its core I could have the kind of blessed childhood that would set me to fulfil my life purpose. And that would happen, not by reliving the past, but by a radical appreciation of the now.
Storytelling for Change Makers: Embracing Life's Energizing Moments
Storytelling for Change Makers is about amplifying the moments that carry life energy for us. It’s about accelerating our inner growth by rediscovering and reflecting on those primary moments and transforming our outlook by paying our unique gifts and talents forward centred in who we really are.
Foundation Garments
Morning Routines and Creative Thinking
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
The Boarding School Experience
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
The Power of the Bell
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
A Midnight Adventure
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.
In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.
Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.
Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.
On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.
So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”
On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.
Unraveling a Life-Changing Event
That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.
We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.
The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.
A Tearful Injury and Lost Opportunity
Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.
Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.
A Painful Discovery
In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.
Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.
Questioning Authority and Finding One's Path
But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”
That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.
