A Letter to Anyone Booing Adam Goodes

Hello!  Thanks for coming back!  I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.  I wanted to wait till I felt ready to blog on the regular, rather than sporadically like I’d been doing in the lead up to the break.  So here’s hoping I stick to that goal!

If I was going to obey the laws of the internet-lists, I’d give this blog a running theme (like wellness- ha ha!) and stick to it.  But that would mean being super organised and also caring about page views, which I don’t, so instead I’ll just write about whatever I feel like.  I’m ready to write about the situation with my sister, as well as a few other things that have been going on, so all that will be divulged over the coming weeks. 

But today I want to write about Adam Goodes.  I’m doing it here rather than pitching an article because I realise that as a white non-sports type person, I am uniquely unqualified to comment on the matter (doesn’t stop the people at News Corp!).  I’m also aware that there is a literal sea of voices commenting, and my drop in that ocean will likely add little.  I just feel like I might as well be one more voice contributing to the non-racist side of the debate!  For anyone who is more educated on the subject than me- please forgive my ignorance.  Also trigger warning because racism.

A Letter to Anyone Booing Adam Goodes

You are a racist coward.  I’ll tell you why.

You are participating in the most vitriolic and relentless booing campaign in the history of the AFL, and that booing campaign just happens to be aimed at the game’s most proudly Indigenous player.  According to you, this is a coincidence.  You have plenty of reasons for booing Goodes, and not one of those reasons is race-related.  

Well, I’ve got news for you.  Just because you don’t think you’re racist, doesn’t mean you’re not.  Listed below are each of your justifications for booing Goodes, along with simple explanations as to why they are racist as shit.  

‘Adam Goodes stages for free kicks.’

Let’s just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is true.  Loads of players do this.  Yes, some of them get booed.  But not like this.  Not with the rancour and hate that has been directed toward Goodes.  That one was easy.

‘His singling out of the 13-year-old girl and his war dance were inappropriate and intimidating, and he didn’t deserve the Australian of the Year for that behaviour.’

The fact that Goodes himself encouraged the public to support, rather than vilify, the infamous 13-year-old, seems to have been lost to histrionics.  But no matter.  Either way, it is not up to you, a person privileged enough to be consistently regarded as human, to police how an Indigenous person should feel about and react to being called an ape.  This is simple stuff.  And for those who think he is a big star and couldn’t possibly feel personally discriminated against, fuck you, and also, that’s not up to you to question- decent people don’t question the authenticity of others’ experience, especially when that experience is born of a set of circumstances you cannot possibly understand because you’ve been lucky enough never to have to encounter them.

As for him not ‘deserving’ the AOTY award- this argument is regularly employed as a guise for discrimination.  Have you ever noticed that cries of, ‘There’s someone else more deserving!’ only crop up when the awardee is a member of an oppressed minority?  The same cries were levelled at Caitlyn Jenner recently when she was awarded the Author Ash courage award at the ESPYs.  Seriously, name one time when a white man was the awardee and the outcry reached the same fever pitch.  Didn’t think so.

I shouldn’t have to add this, but Goodes didn’t receive the award just for his pointing out of the girl who called him an ape.  He also participates in regular social justice work for the Indigenous community and is a champion of Indigenous rights.  So there’s that.

And finally, since when did someone ‘not deserving’ an award warrant this kind of animalistic jeering?

‘There are plenty of other indigenous players, and they don’t get booed.’ 

The Indigenous players who don’t get booed also happen to be the ones who don’t display anger at institutionalised racism.  So let’s get into that whole thing…

‘He whinges all the time.’

Here is a quote from the HUN’s Rita Panahi about his ‘whinging’:  ‘His comments about “Remember whose land you’re on” and his consistent bagging of the country that has given him such a high honour, are why he incites this treatment.’  (Emphasis mine)  Similar justifications are regularly employed by the likes of Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones.  Here, these commentators are openly asserting that Goodes’ audacity to be angry about racism is reason enough to abuse him.  Just digest that for a second.

There is an unwritten code of behaviour that Indigenous public figures are expected to behave by in this country, and Adam Goodes will not toe the line.  Unlike his fellow Indigenous players, he refuses to sit down, shut up and be thankful for the opportunity his white benefactors have bestowed upon him.  He shows anger.  And we can’t stomach it.

His anger is ‘intimidating’.  It’s ‘demonstrative’.  There’s ‘no place for it in the game’.  It upsets our delicate white sensibilities to be unceremoniously reminded of the systematic oppression this nation has visited on aboriginal people.  We don’t want to think about it.

But to not want to think about it is to deny it.  To call his anger ‘whinging’ is to imply that he has nothing to be angry about.  It is to put your fingers in your ears and shout that there is ‘no racism here so shut up!’

But guess what?  It’s not Adam Goodes’ job to shelter you from the truth by staying quiet.  It’s not Adam Goodes’ job to protect your poor white feelings.  Anger is a fundamental tool for the advancement of any civil rights movement.  It is healthy, it is necessary, and it is absolutely his right to show it.

You don’t get to tell Adam Goodes not to be angry about the plight of his people.  You don’t get to tell him to sit down and shut up about it.  The policing of oppressed peoples’ right to display anger at their oppression is a historical trope that has reared its ugly head again and again, and it is the absolute definition of racism.

And let’s not even get started on the irony of being ‘offended’ at the temerity of Goodes to show anger, while you spew seething vitriol at him from the sidelines. 

From the sidelines.  You coward.  Hiding behind the crowd.  Hiding behind the racist media.  Jeering in your mob, indulging in the most masturbatory and animalistic form of human behaviour.

I’m disgusted that I live in a country where this is up for ‘debate’.  Hello, welcome to Australia; where the most proudly Indigenous of our AFL players, a man who has won two Brownlows and worked tirelessly to advance the cause of his people, a man who was last year’s Australian of the Year; is relentlessly and viciously jeered at every touch of the ball.

I would politely posit that it is not Adam Goodes who is the ape.

A Note to my Readers

Hello all,

First of all I want to apologize for the long silence on the blog front.  It’s so heartening to know people care enough about the blog to pester me about what’s going on.

The truth is I’ve reached something of a crossroads, and for a while now I’ve been struggling to figure out where and how the blog fits into my changing life. 

Those of you who are close to me will know that for some time, my family and I have been dealing with a difficult situation involving my sister.  It has been an emotionally taxing time for all of us, none more so than my sister herself.  Of course my instinct is to write about what’s been going on, but the issues surrounding our situation are complex, and I’m not at liberty to betray my sister’s trust by discussing it.

As you guys know, I use this blog as an outlet.  So it feels strange and stifling having to consistently omit one of the central issues in my life.  What it effectively means is I have no choice but to blog about fairly peripheral stuff, as the goings on in my family have had implications on the rest of my life, and indeed on the person who I am.  I like writing about funny stuff that happens to me, but this blog was always meant to be an accurate representation of all of my sometimes shit life.  Not just little bits of it.

The other consideration is a much more positive one.  In the last few months, my writing career has finally started to take off.  I’m finding myself more and more busy with articles and interviews, and so, I’ve got to admit, I have been neglecting the blog in favour of looming due dates.  I am deeply envious of bloggers that can just dash off an entry in a few minutes, but that’s never going to be my style.  It always takes me longer than I think it will to make an entry I’m happy with.

But that’s really no excuse, and I’ve resolved to be more organised with my scheduling so I have the time to dedicate to the blog.

My problem is this; where do I go from here?  I know I’ll probably never make any money out of this little blog, but I’m loath to give it up.  It’s been there since the beginning; when I came out of my post-uni funk and decided to write; and I’ve formed quite a sentimental attachment to it.  I could wait until I’ve got more freedom to write about my family situation, but who knows when that will be.  I could take the blog in a new direction and write more about current events, like I do for a lot of my magazine stuff, but with a personal twist.  I could make it more focussed on one theme; concentrate on organic farming, or some other interest.        

I’m sure I’ll figure out soon where I want to go with it, but in the meantime, I thought I would let you guys in on what’s been on my silly mind.   

Oh, and for anyone who’s concerned, don’t worry.  I’m happy and healthy and have access to an awesome support network.  I’m so lucky to have the most wonderful friends.  Also, my relationship with my mum and dad is more solid than ever.  We’ve been through some pretty tough situations together and it’s only served to galvanize our love and respect for one-another.

And if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Until next time,

Katie xxoo

My Life in Share Houses

 

If you are filthy rich, or in possession of one of those rare kinds of lives whereby your shit is bound tightly together, you may have escaped the Era of the Share House.  If you, like me, have spent the entirety of your twenties poor-as-fuck and often floundering, you will be familiar with the tedium of this special time.  No matter how thoroughly you interrogate your would be house-mate during the ubiquitously awkward interview, somehow you always wind up locked in a battle of wills with said person over the cleaning/ persistent goon theft/ intensifying suspicion from both parties that the other is deeply insane.  For Tom and me, this time has been particularly fraught.  We have come to accept that we are either A) really bloody crap at choosing housemates, or B) intensely delusional about our perceived status as generally OK people.  The latter is entirely possible.  But, no matter, because this week marks a special time in the chronicles of our shared lives.  This week we left the Era of the Share House in our dust.   

Which is why I feel it’s appropriate to submit you to an Internet List.  Come, sit by me as we bask in the musky aroma of share-houses gone by. 

Kipling Street, Moonee Ponds (18 and Knew Literally Everything)

In the cradle of Dame Edna and shithouse coffee, I escaped the straggling grip of my parents and entered the equally strangling grip of an ageing couple approaching their 21^st year.  How unreasonable they were to expect me to clean the bathtub and not stay up till 4 in the room adjacent to theirs stoned and babbling to my pale and porn-obsessed English housemate. 

Stafford Street, Abbotsford (21 with a Reluctant Boyfriend in Tow)

The first attempt at grownup-hood having scared me back to mother’s teat, I ventured out afresh to the most hipster-ish locale I could afford.  The boyfriend I brought with me from the suburbs hated it, and so did I until I married a job where my primary responsibilities were boasting about being a manager and flirting with the Italian Sommelier. 

Epsom Road, Ascot Vale (22 and Suffocated by Anxiety)  

Here, sandwiched in compromise between our parents’ place and Where I’d Rather Be, my boyfriend and I earned true de-facto status as we hurtled at great pace toward Boring.  I was no help, my once nibbling anxiety having built to a deafening roar.  Too frightened to tell, I descended unceremoniously into a prison of my own obsessions.  Who knows if it was this or my admission that I’d like a child sometime between now and 2050 that saw my bf talk the walk, but suddenly the minutiae of my painstakingly structured life was shattered.  I found my self bawling and afraid in the tiny bedroom I had spent my girlhood years.

High Street, Armadale (24 and Blinded by Romance)

We should have known we could never make it on THAT side of the Yarra.  We should have considered the stupidity of moving into an expensive room without so much as an inspection.  But Tom and I were in the throes of new love, and when you’re distracted by butterflies and vodka and acid (we were doing a lot of acid), taking the first place you’re offered as A Couple seems like a great idea.  It smelt like meat.  Our room had an indiscriminate wet patch.  Our housemate subsisted purely on white-bread-tomato-sauce sandwiches.  We left after 10 days, donating the month’s rent to a dubious sandwich habit.

Eveline Street, Brunswick (24 and After Actual Consideration)

Nicknamed ‘The Taj’ by our friends at the aptly dubbed ‘Crumble’ over the road, this place was not so much a living space as a social convention centre.  In the sort of twenty-something lifestyle reminiscent of Monkey Grip, we socialised, we partied, and indeed we puked.  Having ironed the rough edges from my anxiety through therapy and hard-work, I embraced the Hipster Life with gusto, discussing over endless drinking and drugging sessions the pointlessness of work, the problems with society, and the idiocy of the ‘pawns’ who had been sucked into the machine.  There were arguments, yes, but nothing that couldn’t be drowned in beer.  Thank you, government, for funding my ludicrous lifestyle.  It was super fun. 

Hosier Street, Eden (27 and Ready to ‘Clean up and Embrace Adulthood’)

Aware that we had pushed partying exactly to the point where further indulgence could have prompted an intervention, Tom and I packed up for the coast, landing in the generously provided beach home of a close friend of Val.  The waves lapped, the beach beckoned, and all there was to do was relax.  I hate relaxing.  It gives me the sweats.  And so, for the first time in years, I wrote.  I couldn’t stop.  Offered a Travel Writer gig by a friend with a budding online mag, I corrupted the content with musings about my sometimes shit life.  The column, that became a blog, that became a career, started here in the lap of boredom and suddenly, acutely, I knew what I had to do.  I had fought, and failed, to carve a different path from that of my mother.  To allow an ironic cliché, it must be in the genes.

Geelong Road, Footscray (28 and Brimming with Naïve Ambition)

Amongst the throng of bogans, immigrants, drug addicts and oh-so-intrepid hipsters, Tom and I felt strangely at home.  Distracted by our bubbling joie de vivre, we somehow managed to assemble a share house comprising a raging alcoholic, a pathological liar, and a tragically OCD hermit.  Our grog was stolen, our disbelief forced into perpetual suspension, our tether run dangerously short by paranoid accusations of Pyrex jug theft, but care, we did not.  Finally Going Somewhere, my writing was garnering a tentative reception, Tom’s dreams being realised in the cultivation of his hobby farm at Wang.  Here, as I people-watched and scribbled endless notes, we battled encroaching poverty and worked our (disappointingly lacklustre) bums off.  On the verge of frustration as I rounded the 2 year mark of striving for creative legitimacy, I was finally approached by a magazine, and then another, and another.  One night, as the alcoholic vomited violently in the room adjacent, I told Tom I was sick of the share house life.  He couldn’t have looked happier.

Stamps Lane, Wangaratta (29 and Embracing Domesticity)                         

Here we are, and I was wrong.  We will never escape the share house life.  But for all the fun we’ve had, I’ll take a dog, a kitten, and a harem of jubilant farm animals for housemates any day.

I did Weird Sex Stuff as a Kid, and Maybe, so did You

When I was a kid, I did weird sex stuff with other kids.  And, to the extent of my sneakily begotten and wildly inaccurate knowledge on the subject, I knew what I was doing.  When my two year old best friend ushered me into the nook between big and little side at crèche to show me her ‘girl doodle’, I was all too aware of the naughtiness of the revelation.  When, at 4, I plodded over on the reg to my next door neighbour’s house for a cubbyhouse session of ‘Doctors and Nurses’, and her mother drew the curtain to find me buried somewhere in between her lovely daughter’s thighs, I was red faced as a touring pom.  Because I had been to a doctor, and never had I seen them engage in such behaviour with their nurse.  My sister and I would play the ‘touching tongues’ game, laughing hysterically as we separated in a spray of spittle.  At Christmas one year my boy cousin and I were caught, butt naked and fawning over each other, in an oh-so-steamy bath.  I liked this cousin very much at the time.  And I liked it even more when we got nakie together.  I knew, he knew, we knew as kids, that we were doing the ‘sex stuff’.     

Do I have to say it?  This stuff is totally normal!  It’s an explorative stage of childhood, driven in equal parts by the desire to understand our bodies, to interpret the messages we are steadily absorbing from the adult world, and, shock(!), for pleasure.  Every single person I’ve gotten pissed enough with to brave the subject has spilt their own sexy can of beans, and psychologists have been telling us for decades that sexual exploration in kids is A-OK. 

So, why am I telling you this?  To relieve my own burden of gnawing guilt and come clean?  Maybe a bit.  But mostly, it’s an extremely cumbersome segue into my declaration of solidarity with Lena Dunham.  No matter your opinion on the Girls creator, the ‘child molester’ accusations being hurled her way by the right wing sleazeballs over at Truth Revolt are, as she puts it, fucking disgusting.  Since the furore blew up, there have been an opportunistic few in the corner of the publication.  I’ll choose to ignore them.  What’s been heartening to see is the out-pouring of support for the artist, most prominently from the newly minted Tumblr site Those Kind of Girls, which serves to normalise the sexy, touchy stuff we do as kids by providing a space for others to tell spill their stories.       

This is obviously awesome.  But it doesn’t go far enough.  Embedded within the context of the tales, a new problem is presented. 

Almost all of the contributors admit to ‘doing stuff’ as kids, but with a loud proviso.  It wasn’t sexual!  They didn’t have a clue what they were doing!  They were just kids, after all!  The implicit message is; it’s OK if you did it, but only if you did it in an innocent, rosy-cheeked way that conforms to our rigid standards on what a child should and shouldn’t be.  The inherent hypocrisy stems from setting out to assuage feelings of shame derived from childhood curiosity, while implicitly shaming those whose experience deviates from this culturally palatable norm.  Those who knew they were being sexy.  Those who enjoyed it.  Me.        

All this stuff hails from our pearl-clutching tendency as a society to anchor our morals on notions of what a child should be.  We’ve constructed anything but picture-book innocence as deviant, as perverted and weird.  Because we cannot stomach what professionals have been telling us for years, we pathologise what should be a normal part of the transition to adulthood.

Before my many drunken chats on the subject, I thought I was a fucking weirdo, too.  In my quieter moments I would reflect in shame on the time spent with my neighbour behind the fitted-sheet curtain.  Every single one of my convo-buddies has admitted to feeling the same.  But really, we got off lightly.  The fucking tragedy derives from the adults out there who haven’t had this cathartic opportunity, whose guilt has led to mental illness, and for what?        

I’m not bitching on the Tumblr site.  It’s doing a good thing.  But if we’re gonna talk, let’s really talk.  Not everyone has the luxury of drunk buddies to tell them it’s ok.    

The People of Melbourne all Hate Me

Earlier today I walked past an older lady on the street.  She was meandering along slowly, pushing her trolley, and appearing to be generally of sound mind and constitution.  A few steps after passing her I became suddenly incensed at my hair flying into my eyes.  I stopped, threw my head back to make a pony tail, and began sliding the elastic from my wrist into my hair.

 

It was at this point, head tossed back and staring in concentration at the sky, that I heard the muttering.  My headphones in, I thought nothing of it and continued. 

‘Excuse me!’  It was the lady.  She must have been trying to get my attention for a while, as by the time I turned around she was glaring at me, positively pissed.  I thought she would ask for money.  Instead she began to huff and puff before producing the following nugget:

‘Look, we’ve all got our problems, our worries.  We’ve all got our cross to bear.’  A regular footpath philosopher!  ‘And I don’t mean to disrespect you.  But,’ exasperation now oozing from her pours, ‘why did you DO that?’

I wasn’t aware I had done anything.  ‘Do what?’  I asked, feeling more curious than defensive. 

What followed was a bizarre sequence of facial twitches that could best be described as startled; confused; exhausted.  She sighed and instructed me to ‘Forget about it.’

But I didn’t want to forget about it!  I wanted to know what I had done to incite her impassioned plea.  ‘Can you just tell me what I did?’  I implored, leaning in close in case the answer was blasphemous. 

The lady would not say.  Drats! 

Since the exchange I have been methodically running over my actions immediately preceding the incident, and have come up with this:  Walked.  Walked.  Tied up hair.  The hair!  Was it the hair?  Was she personally offended by the shaved-ness of one side of my scalp?  It will haunt me!

I called Tom to request input.  What could it have been?

‘It’s just you!’  He offered emphatically.

This to you may seem insensitive, but you do not know the back story.  You see, for some reason, random people of Melbourne find my presence to be deeply angering.  For years, people have approached me on the street to inform me of what a shit I am.  Just last year I was accosted by a dishevelled woman who lambasted me for ‘taking it all’.  Why had I taken it all?  And left her NOTHING.  Ok, you’re thinking, but that woman was nuts. 

There is more.  At the pub once a man (sane but drunk) sat staring at me with such fury that our entire group decided to relocate.  On the way out (I had no choice but to file past him), he produced a seething tirade about my stupidity; ‘You think you’re smarter than me!  Well you’re fucking not you stupid whore!  I am so much smarter than you could ever dream of being!’ 

Ok. 

I was on the tram and it happened.  Leaving a restaurant.  At a pub once a man gave me a dirty look before intentionally sticking out his foot to try to trip me.  Not one of these times had I knowingly glanced, let alone made eye contact with, my haters. 

It’s happened so many times that Tom has become hyper-defensive.  If any random person so much as opens their mouth in my direction, he springs into action.  ‘Don’t even start!  Just leave her alone and sort your own issues out!’  This sounds far fetched but sadly it’s legit.

Tom’s belief is that people are intimidated by my intelligence.  Which is extremely flattering, but highly unlikely, as many of the people who’ve attacked me haven’t heard me speak, let alone corresponded with me sufficiently to establish that.  I honestly have no theory.  Aside from the wishy washy concept that people don’t like the way I look at them.  But surely bitchy resting face doesn’t warrant this level of vitriol?

So you can see why I was so keen to draw an explanation from the incensed older lady.  Why, cruel world?  Why do you taunt me so?    

Detective Dipshit

I watched a show on patterns the other day.  An affable British chap presented his viewers with various everyday scenarios, the point of which was to prove that we lofty humans are just like ants, or the planets, or whatever.  We may feel that we are agents of our own destinies, encountering and navigating a series of random occurrences every day.  But no.  Apparently, our seemingly random existence is made up of a rotating set of pre-determined patterns, as predictable, if you have the right algorithm, as the migrations of whales in winter. 

As mildly uncomfortable as this made me feel, I really had to give it to that English guy.  He was sooooo right.  It was one of those watershed moments.  Nothing I did was random!  Every decision I made was determined by a place in my brain labelled ‘What Katie does when X happens’.  I was trapped. 

If I was a brilliant mathematician, I would get to work figuring out my own algorithm in order to intentionally subvert it and then, then I would do something truly random!  What would it be!  I don’t know.  I don’t know what an algorithm is.  What I have instead done is spend the past week noticing more and more ‘shit that I always do’.  One of the things in the ‘shit that I always do’ box is this… 

Put my headphones in and walk to the local grocery store with Richard Stubbs in the Afternoon and the dog for company.  Tie dog up, reassuring her that I am not abandoning her forever more.  Dog doesn’t believe me.  Leave wining dog and enter said grocery store.  Proceed to magazine isle.  Leaf through one of those truly horrible Kim Kardashian mags for a few minutes, guilt ravaging my soul.  Put magazine down and begin shopping, working my way from the chocolate to the vegie sections, reciting in my head the contents of that night’s intended dinner because I haven’t made a list.  Pay.  Collect hysterically relieved dog.  Walk home.

Nothing ever changes.  Except the other day, when I was at the bit where I stare at the ‘bikini bods’ of celebs, some of whom have always ‘gone too far!’ while other, slightly less skinny ones are ‘embracing their curves!’; something did.

A determined looking woman approached me.  ‘Hello.’  She announced loudly.  ‘I’m the store detective.’  To prove she was indeed the store detective, she produced her detective’s badge, which she waved with gusto for some time in close proximity to my nose.  Did you know there are store detectives and they have badges, just like the police people they weren’t motivated enough to become?  Well, there’s one in Footscray, anyway.

My only thought was that I was being reprimanded for the vulgarity of my magazine choice, that they had planted those mags there as some sort of social experiment to see what cretins would be lured in. 

‘I’m going to have to ask you to put that magazine back.’  Demanded the power-drunk detective.

‘I don’t normally read that one.’  I said in feigned embarrassment as I slid the magazine back onto the rack.  ‘You were out of Vogue Living.’

She didn’t like my joke.  ‘I was watching you.’  She revealed, fired up now.  ‘You weren’t just leafing through to see if you wanted to buy it.  You were reading it.’

She was right.  I considered congratulating her on her fine detective skills.  I refrained.

‘If we let everybody just read the magazines in store,’ she spluttered, ‘then no-one would buy them, would they?’

I nodded, imagining the chaos if they let everybody just read the magazines in store.  Hordes of budget-conscious gossip addicts stopping up the isles, elbowing eachother out of the way while the lady at the checkout rued the day they changed the policy, her job now on the line due to plummeting ‘Famous’ sales. 

The woman had stopped and was glaring at me impatiently.  What did she want?  Remorse?

‘I didn’t know that was a thing.’  I said, picking up a shopping basket before she could unload anymore bottled-rage onto me.  I then began going through the motions of my regular shop.  But something was not right.  I found myself devoid of the concentration required to weigh up the various brands of beans.  I had been wronged. 

I couldn’t let it go.  Who did that woman think she was?  Apprehending good customers to get her kicks?  I wasn’t going to be a pawn in her imaginary moral crusade!  I would get my justice. 

I found the manager and was immediately relieved to see he was the sort of older white male that always seems to like me.  I put on my sweetest I-could-be-your-daughter-voice and invoked his protective instincts as I recounted the monstrous actions of his crazed store detective.  He apologized profusely, assured me he’d sort it out, and strode with purpose into the bowels of the store.   

Collecting the dog, who had befriended some other tethered pooch and was utterly indifferent to my arrival, I realised that life isn’t entirely predetermined.  No matter how concrete our rituals, there’s always some bloodthirsty ego-tripper waiting to throw a spanner in the works.  Ain’t life grand.

Belle and The Great Escape

I had a funny feeling as we left to do the weekly shop last Sunday.  ‘We should shut the front gates, too.’  I said to Tom, and went to hop back out of the car. 

‘Why?’  Was his reply.  ‘She can’t open the side gate.’ 

Recently there had been some conjecture over whether or not Belle, our dog, was able to open the side gate, as on several occasions we’d returned home to find it swinging in the breeze and our mutt sniffing around the nearby laneway.  ‘No, not I!’  The housemates had cried in chorus when questioned, and so we’d had to conclude that Belle, in her infinite wisdom, had deciphered how to jump repeatedly at the mechanism, forcing it after a time to spring open.

Our dog is not smart.  This was never a likely scenario.  A bashful housemate fessed up to me after some coaxing, and the gate-opening theory was dropped. 

Still.  I’d become paranoid about the side gate and against my better judgement, sat as Tom pulled away.  ‘We’ll only be gone a few minutes.’  He reminded me.

When we got home the dog was gone.  ‘Jenny!’  I screamed at my housemate.  ‘Where’s Belle?!  Who let her out?!’

Jenny had just arrived home and knew nothing.  ‘You go that way!’  I instructed Tom and we started up down opposite ends of the street.

For approximately half of one block, I managed to stave off the panic.  She will be in this laneway, I told myself as I neared her favourite sniffing-spot.  She was not.  I broke.

‘HEEEEEY!’  I shrieked at a couple of Bulldogs supporters sauntering down from the footy oval.  ‘Have you seen a black dog?!’

Obviously there was something particularly desperate about my appearance, because despite not having seen the pooch, the two seemed intent on being of assistance, each interrupting the other as they reeled off competing ideas on where a dog might be likely to go.

There was no time for politeness.  I left the old couple standing on the street corner squabbling.  As far as I know they’re still there, stuck in an infinite loop of old dog stories, vaguely aware of some purpose long since lost.

Wild eyed and dripping with sweat, I began a loop of the footy oval.  Repeatedly asking after the dog was demanding too much extra energy, and so I resorted to a process of dashing up to people, pleading stare glued to my face, in hope they’d already registered my incessant cries.  ‘No’, ‘No, ‘No’, came one reply after another, until people began waving me away on approach, a mix of apprehension and pity on their faces.  Keep going, running girl.  We can’t help you here. 

Finally, and just as I was about to give in to a full blown melt down, an annoyed looking man approached.  ‘Hey!  Your dog was here.’  I got the impression he was providing the information on the condition that I cease tearing around the oval.  Two bewildered children were huddled behind him.  ‘She went that way 10 minutes ago.’ 

A lead!  I gasped something at the exasperated man and ran off, my heart straining as I wheezed and coughed.  The people on the street adjacent having apparently been briefed on my imminent arrival, I was met with yet more waves and carry-ons.  I saw a black dog across the street.  It wasn’t Belle.  I felt I might throw up.

‘Hey!’  Another man.  ‘I saw her.  She was following some puppies up that way.’ 

‘HOW LONG AGO?’  My voice frightened even me. 

‘Not long,’ said the man, who seemed genuinely sympathetic, ‘maybe 5 minutes.’

I could make it.  All I knew at that moment was that if I ran fast enough, I could make it.  Adrenaline flooded my system and somehow, I broke into another sprint, my heart now seriously threatening to explode.  I ran.  And ran.  I had to stop.  I couldn’t go on.  I saw my dog. 

The silly mutt was happily trotting after a friendly German Shepard, its concerned owner dialling a number into her phone.  ‘BELLE!’  I screamed as tears began to flow.  Blissfully unaware, my dog ran over to hug and lick me.  The lady, looking almost as relieved as me, told me she’d been just about to call the council.  ‘She’s such a lovely girl.’  She mused.  ‘I’m so glad you found her.’

Intending to thank her, I instead could manage only a garbled, teary noise.  She got the idea.

I have no idea the extent to which Belle comprehended what had happened.  I do know that on the way home, she trotted beside me at my exact pace, not pulling or sniffing once.  Like returning war heroes, we were waved at and applauded by those who’d become involved in the incident.  ‘Lucky dog!’  A few of them yelled.  Indeed.