Mullumbimby Madness #1, Page 2
Neil Dobbs
By Monday morning, Eddie was advanced enough to be enrolled at school – but this probably says more about the standards at the school than Eddie’s achievements.
The other kids were really envious when I turned up with my new pet. We had decked him out in one of my-father-the-funeral-director’s old suits. It was a wee bit floppy at limbs’ ends but pretty spiffling all the same. Father found an old jar of hair oil. It had gone a bit sour but we poured it on Eddie’s head to flatten his rampant locks. The part down the middle became a landing strip for all the blow flies attracted by the oil.
The girls were especially impressed with the idea of a pet boy, but I didn’t appreciate the implication of them calling him my ‘Toy Boy’. When I explained to Eddie that rumours like that were hard to hose down, he said, “No probs Neil. Just cock your hind leg and away you go.”
Being progressive, our school has a culturally specific entrance exam. For instance, students from Melbourne are timed while they put on ugg boots and a brown pullover. They then have to give a short talk on ‘The Importance of the Groin Injury in Australian Rules Football’. Chinese students have to perform a heart transplant operation while blind-folded.
The test for my little pet dingo boy was a cinch. Eddie had 10 seconds to get into a zipped-up tent, bring out a baby-sized doll and chew its head off. My Eddie did it in 3.5 seconds.
Even though he was a couple of years younger than me, Eddie was put in my class. (They had to – I still had him on a leash.) Our first class was ‘Life Skills for the Seventies’. (We couldn’t afford to update the text books.) The lesson was called ‘Discotheque Etiquette’. We learned how to discretely break your opponent’s ankle when you reach the finals of a disco dance challenge. Then we heard about why powder blue flared suits and body shirts will be eternally fashionable. Then a student from Melbourne gave a short talk on the importance of the groin injury in disco dancing.
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The other kids were really envious when I turned up with my new pet. We had decked him out in one of my-father-the-funeral-director’s old suits. It was a wee bit floppy at limbs’ ends but pretty spiffling all the same. Father found an old jar of hair oil. It had gone a bit sour but we poured it on Eddie’s head to flatten his rampant locks. The part down the middle became a landing strip for all the blow flies attracted by the oil.
The girls were especially impressed with the idea of a pet boy, but I didn’t appreciate the implication of them calling him my ‘Toy Boy’. When I explained to Eddie that rumours like that were hard to hose down, he said, “No probs Neil. Just cock your hind leg and away you go.”
Being progressive, our school has a culturally specific entrance exam. For instance, students from Melbourne are timed while they put on ugg boots and a brown pullover. They then have to give a short talk on ‘The Importance of the Groin Injury in Australian Rules Football’. Chinese students have to perform a heart transplant operation while blind-folded.
The test for my little pet dingo boy was a cinch. Eddie had 10 seconds to get into a zipped-up tent, bring out a baby-sized doll and chew its head off. My Eddie did it in 3.5 seconds.
Even though he was a couple of years younger than me, Eddie was put in my class. (They had to – I still had him on a leash.) Our first class was ‘Life Skills for the Seventies’. (We couldn’t afford to update the text books.) The lesson was called ‘Discotheque Etiquette’. We learned how to discretely break your opponent’s ankle when you reach the finals of a disco dance challenge. Then we heard about why powder blue flared suits and body shirts will be eternally fashionable. Then a student from Melbourne gave a short talk on the importance of the groin injury in disco dancing.
6
