Things You Can Tell Just By Aging Her

It was earlier this year when a new song began to truly haunt me.  It didn’t come with the usual warning signs (like the name ‘Chris Brown’), it wasn’t instantly offensive (like the opening bars of One Direction’s audio assault on Blondie), nor was it distractingly confusing (like the lyrics to Good Charlotte’s… anything).  It was catchy, easy on the ear, and offered a pleasant break from hearing about how the singer was never, ever, ever getting back together (with Tina Fey & Amy Poehler since deciding to take on misogyny one feminist, woman-empowering female comedy duo at a time).

I never really had a problem with Taylor Swift, until she released the single ‘22’.  It was then, about a week of high rotation FM station airplay in, that I realised something awful – for the rest of my life, Swifty is just going to be motoring along, 5 years behind me, writing songs about how awesome the age is that I’ll never be again.  ‘15’ I could handle with its ode to heartbreak (what me worry… I have no heart) but ‘22’?  Come on, that’s just cruel.

Taylor seems set to be my Ghost of Ages Past.  All this I realised around March, when I was 27.  And now, to make matters worse, I’m 28.

Unless I find a carnival fortune telling machine that’s taking requests, I can no longer even remotely sell the idea that I’m in my mid-20’s.  And now, when I hear ‘22’ I’m not just thinking of the age I’ll never be again, I’m thinking things like:

It feels like one of those nights
We ditch the whole scene

[god I hate changing venues]
It feels like one of those nights
We won't be sleeping
[I don’t know, that sounds tiring, and I don’t really want to screw up my sleeping pattern]

It feels like one of those nights
You look like bad news I gotta have you, I gotta have you

[come on Taylor, make good choices - if he’s bad news now, what’s going to make him good news later?]

And following my birthday I’m noticing more and more signs of just how old I am.  I can hear you asking, Imaginary Audience, ‘what signs?’, and so I will provide detail:

That’s Why The Lady’s A Dame

Case in point, recently some friends and I were trying to assign each other actors and characters that we essentially are in real life (because, as we all know, actors, like characters and eskimos, aren’t real).  After much deliberation I was awarded Maggie Smith.  Current Maggie Smith.

Maggie Smith is awesome, but she’s also, like, a whole 10 years older than me.  It probably proved the point when I proceeded to purchase a cane for a dress up party a few weeks back, then use it at all subsequent gatherings as a dance prop.  But Maggie and I have a lot of other stuff in common aside from a walking stick.  That I am not listing them now should in no way be taken as an indication that no examples readily come to mind – plenty do.  Plenty.  For example… she was in Gosford Park, and I love Gosford Park.  It’s uncanny.

Use Your Words!

My two teenage nephew’s Facebook updates are incomprehensible.

Hey Guys, me & Slothy r [acronym] and will [acronym] the best [acronym] that any1 can [acronym].  Bring it!!!!!!!

I’m not completely off the grid, I do know what LOL, FML, FOMO and YOLO mean (and knowing doesn’t make their use any more acceptable… said Maggie Smith… not me, cause I’m cool, why would I think the only thing more mortifying is adults using emoticons?  That’s pure Mags talking), but this is a whole new level.  I find myself wondering whether said acronyms are simply invented keyboard spasms and the aim of the game is to interpret at will and then reply confidently in kind.

My Body Is Not A Wonderland

My body hurts more in general.  I’m just one set of dentures away from being able to predict the weather through the ache in my joints.

Next Thing You’ll Be Telling Me You Haven’t Watched ‘Spice World’…

There’s this entirely discomforting batch of people popping up in workplaces who were all born in the 90’s and therefore cannot complete a Spice Girls lyric if I sing it at them (call and response style)*.  This in turn has made me realise just how often I punctuate conversations with Spice Girls riffs.

Never fear, it’s not all doom and gloom though.  There are still a few fronts on which I’m fighting the youthful fight.  I still fail to see the allure of quince paste, would sleep in till 12 every day if that was remotely acceptable and simply can’t bring myself to listen to people talk on the radio for longer than 30 seconds (it’s for music after all… except when ‘22’ plays again, then it’s for self-pity).

On the plus side, I can still be mistaken for someone younger.  Not due to looks or attitude, but rather clothing.  You see, I've returned to the bottom of the workplace ladder this year to start all over again, and this event has been made less awkward for those giving me their coffee orders by the fact that I still dress (to quote former boss Dame Deadpan) 'like a teenage boy' leading them to assume I'm an oddly wizened 23 year old**.  Which is much closer to, though not actually, so still failing to be, 22.  Damn you Taylor, damn you.

"Who, me?"  Yes, you.

It feels like one of those nights

I’ll bail on work drinks

It feels like one of those nights
I’ll sleep 10 hours

It feels like one of those nights
Katie Holmes in First Daughter, so bad I must watch, so bad I must watch

Painefull Out

* = I feel safe excluding 1990 born J-Law from this group.  Any girl that can quote First Wives Club knows how to Spice Up Your Life (Every boy and every girl!)

** = See Mother Painefull, comfort, unlike crime, does pay!

Cool Woggings

I have long believed that getting fit is just a fancy, more socially acceptable way of injuring yourself.  If someone screws up their knee pulling aeroplane parts across a beach at sunrise while being yelled at by a sadistic drill sergeant (and paying for the pleasure) it’s somehow impressive, but you blow out one slightly important bodily hinge while joyously kicking snow and you know everyone will find you faintly ridiculous for the length of your limping.

This is a really kind-hearted artist's rendering of what I look like after exercising

That’s not an excuse for my complete lack of fitness (as excuses go, I’ve made better), but rather more of a philosophical viewpoint.

Obviously the real reason I’m unfit is because I’m lazy, but for the first 20 years of my life I was lazy in a less obvious way.  I’d always preferred team sports over the individual pursuits, and it was easy to assume this was because I was a naturally social person (an absurd assumption really, when combined with the well-known fact that I don’t like people).

Retrospectively I realise the real reason I so excelled at softball, basketball, hockey, cricket and touch football was because they actually involved a superb amount of standing.  You may think to yourself that basketball, hockey and touch football in particular actually involve a ludicrous amount of running, but you’d be wrong – not the way I played them.  I am an excellent stander (for no longer than 60 minutes).  When a whole team of people are running around madly, it can actually be considered an asset to be the one person who will always be reliably found standing in the same spot.

The only time I’ve managed to become some version of athletic was by complete accident.  I hiked the Machu Picchu trail and I can only assume the lack of the oxygen in the air made me more efficient at breathing or something (because that’s how those things work, surely).

When I went to university I got a bicycle and briefly became determined to be one of those people who rode everywhere (you know, Dutch, but with a point), and promptly failed.  I lacked the necessary balance and grit to ride up hills and inevitably ended up walking my bike most of the way.

That was 8 years ago, which is how long it took for me to recover from the mortification of being overtaken by toddlers on tricycles.

So here I am, in my late 20’s, newly emboldened to try to become fit.  I’m attempting this through running, but you know what they say, you have to wog before you can run.  Where do they say that (Mother Painefull wonders to herself as she engages in her weekly furniture rearranging session)?  Cool places mum, that’s where.

This is a rather sarcastic artist's rendering of what wogging looks like, the kind of clothes I do it in, and what sports bras do to my breasts - thanks Phil, you douche

I’m sure I don’t have to explain what wogging is, but I will.  It’s the pursuit of personal transportation through a combination of both walking and jogging.  And because it’s pretty much a science, I can tell you it can only become such a hybrid once 10% of the journey is done with jogging.  Of course, once the jogging takes up over 50% it becomes jalking (please don’t argue with me over the naming system, I have put a rather sad amount of thought into this – I think ‘brunch’ and ‘liger’ prove that the dominant feature gets leading naming rights, don’t you?).

But as I mentioned, it’s been 8 years since I attempted any meaningful and regular exercise, and 2 new facts have emerged:

1. Wogging is actually incredibly boring

2. Without my glasses I am basically blind

As such I’ve had to invent games to make it more interesting, and fortunately wogging blind provided the very first one.  This game was called ‘Man-Woman?’  Without spectacles I can’t even pick someone’s gender until they’re standing beside me… with that in mind I tend to lose at this game more than I win.

After tripping over several hoses, 2 branches, a crack in the pavement, and an orange safety cone I started wearing my glasses while wogging, which meant coming up with a new game.  This one is called ‘Engage!’.  When playing this game you get a point for every time you get someone to respond to your greeting while you wog.  This has the added bonus of alleviating some of the concern of people who look at me as if I’m dying as I heave past them, gasping for air.

You lose a point for every fail, and get bonus points if both members of a couple respond to your engagement, or if you can somehow get someone to spontaneously high five you as you go past (it’s only happened once, and it was a wonderful day).

I wouldn’t say I’m getting fit, so much as I’m getting moderately less unfit.  And the public nature of the whole thing is helping with my innate laziness.  The ease with which I get mortified in front of strangers, combined with the amount of construction workers sitting around listening to talkback radio in my suburb, means I spend much more time jogging, and trying to look nonchalant while doing it, than my body really wants to allow.  For some reason I’m really determined that these predominantly overweight men think I’m running the whole way (in reality I doubt they notice, but it’s somehow important to me to think they do… like it’s important to me not to make eye contact with the cashier while buying tampons).

Painefull Out

Do Voters Make Passes At Prime Ministers Who Wear Glasses?

It’s been a big week in politics, and under such circumstances it’s important to focus on the truly vital components of our ever lively national debate.  And what could be more vital than our Prime Minister’s bold decision to announce the longest election campaign in the history of Australia while wearing glasses?  Of course, I don’t have to tell you that the key word there is ‘glasses’.

If The Great Michelle Obama Haircut Inauguration of 2013 has taught us anything (aside from “Ask not what your fringe can do for you – ask what you can do for your fringe”) it’s accessorizing is the contribution women were born to make.  It’s like how Twitter is the medium Shane Warne was born to speak through, and maniacal laughter was the sound Christopher Pyne was born to let out (it’s sad to watch him fight it, day after day).

But of course a pair of glasses can’t just be a pair of glasses, there has to be a vaster plot behind such a truly audacious manoeuvre.  I know this because Julia Gillard is clearly smart (she wears glasses now you see) and crafty (because she’s a woman, and by ‘crafty’ I mean ‘manipulative’, and by ‘manipulative’ I mean… ‘female’).

After much research, and whole minutes of painstaking thought, I’ve managed to narrow down the conspiracy theories surrounding Spectacle-Gate to the most likely candidates.

Rose Tinted Glasses

You can’t tell from this side, but looking out through those glasses everything’s coming up roses for Julia.  It’s all puppies frolicking through meadows and flowers made of fairy floss where she’s sitting.  Look how she smiles now when Kevin Rudd walks past – that’s because she can’t see him (and there ain’t nothing he can do about that for the next 8 months).  She’s the only one who won’t be suffering the next time Tony Abbott emerges from the surf in nothing but a modesty cloth – to her he’ll appear full clothed.

The theory goes that she attained this technology on a vision quest back in 1993 and she’s been moving forward ever since.  The only other pair of these glasses in the world was given to Anthony Mundine, and no one knows why.

Ron Burgundy’s Glass Case of Emotion

This one’s really a Reverse Rose Tint – there’s some speculation the glasses are in fact aimed at hiding the wearers actual response to what’s going on around them.  Apparently they were rushed into production mere days ago.  According to packaging found at a top secret dump site (also the location of several well documented Yeti sightings) they’re specially suited for hiding the First Bloke-inducing winces that come when middle aged white men stumble into jokes that feature prostate exams and small Asian women.

Reportedly impenetrable, a small tag tucked behind the Prime Minister’s ear states ‘Only to be broken in cases of emergency or misogyny’.  According to anonymous, but highly creditable sources on conspiracy site TheDogAteMyHomework.com, the Ron Burgundy specials were designed to withstand extreme rage and despair, having been purpose bought for when Oprah inevitably scores the Craig Thomson interview (“Welcome Craaaiiigg Thomsoooooooon!  You’re getting a Health Services Union credit card, you’re getting a Health Services Union credit card, everyone’s getting a Health Services Union credit card!”).

There’s a failsafe button being held in a bunker at the Lodge – if there are any glitches it will simply render her mute.  It’ll be like watching Andrew Murray lose the Australian open and wondering why he keeps mouthing the word ‘Duck!’

Alien Invasion

This is the most obvious and concerning theory.  Julia Gillard has been taken over by alien life forms.  Who owns one of the most famous pairs of glasses in the world?  Clark Kent.  What was he trying to hide?  He was from another planet.  Boom!  I rest my case.

Need more?  One off-shoot of the theory suggest the glasses themselves are the sentient being controlling our PM – why else would they have their own Twitter account?

Clearly this means an invasion is imminent.  You know what they say about Extra-terrestrial life forms?  Total queue jumpers.

Painefull Out

Summertime Painefull

My feelings precisely

I’ve received several genetic gifts from my Dad – thin hair, ear wax and awful eyesight amongst them.  I know, what a catch?  I’m selling Father Painefull short with that list, he really is quite a handsome man (for the record, that’s another gift he’s given me, the opportunity to be mistaken for a handsome man, and if I wasn’t a woman that would be lovely*).  But chief among those blessings is a strict and overwhelming dislike of hot weather.

It’s an aversion matched only by Lance Armstrong’s disinclination for clean victories and Tina Fey & Amy Poehler’s inability to be anything but funny**.  That and my natural instinct to sleep all day and party all night (if you exchange the word ‘party’ with the phrase ‘re-watch the West Wing’) have led many to reach the only sensible conclusion available – I am a vampire.

There’s certainly a lot of hay to be made with that suspicion.  I’m so pale I practically glow in the dark, my personal ‘style’ can give the appearance that mirrors don’t allow me to see my own reflection on the way out the door, and I only ever play baseball during lightning storms (yep, that baseball thing is all I remember from my entire Twilight viewing experience).

On stunning 41 degree days such as was experienced in ye olde Sydney town (and by extension my own un-air-conditioned, shoddily carpeted rental crib at the Cliff) last week I almost wish I was a vampire.  If I was, the sensation I was about to burst into flames would have made slightly more sense.

How much do I hate the heat?  Let me count the ways.  Here are but some of the signs I am not made to live in such warmth:

I am a vampire
The jury remains out on this one.  This holiday period I managed to score a new personal best when I achieved sunburn at 7pm at night.

My standard life uniform involves jeans for every occasion
Even I must admit I’m pushing the boat out by sticking to them when it gets hot.  It’s heat, and not Mother Painefull’s traumatized sideways glance at my outfit choice, that brings me closest to wanting to own a rack full of dresses.

No one in my family owns a pool
Oh the inhumanity.  Each summer someone promises they’ll be in possession of a cool body of water the following festive season.  They lie.  My standards aren’t even particularly high when the mercury starts to rise - bug-infested, stagnant bodies of water start to look inviting pretty quickly.

It makes me question my commitment to tea drinking
If something shakes my addiction to English Breakfast, then you know it’s not quite right.

Like the American government on an annual basis, I enter total shutdown
Most of my conversations on hot days begin and end with “Don’t talk to me, I’m busy lying still.”  I can’t function.  A majority of my friends have a  photo somewhere from the first time they discovered me spread-eagled on the lounge room floor and refusing to speak in complete sentences for fear of breaking into a fresh sweat.  If I’m sweating and not getting fitter in the process then the world is officially an unfair place***.

One of said friends' photos of me

But never fear fair weather friends (mum, when you read this in a month you’ll see I’m referring to you in the plural now, because it makes me feel more special… so I’m counting you, and the portrait of you that hangs on the wall behind you in your office when you peruse this… that painting is just the gift that keeps on giving), some mild relief is at hand.  One of my besties, Fi, has just moved into an apartment block with a pool.  Which I now refer to as My Pool.  I’m officially like the French royal family pre cake eating fiasco – I have a summer palace.  Now the plan of attack is to simply wait this ‘thing’ (‘thing’ being Painefull for ‘season’) out from the confines of My Pool, emerging only to dowse myself in sunscreen once every hour.  It’s fool proof.

Painefull Out

* = Coming up… The Painefull Guide to Being Mistaken for a Dude

** = And soon… Why one of my closest friendships has been entirely defined over who’s the Tina, and who’s the Amy

*** = But after the break… Ridiculous statements by first world brats regarding what constitutes an unfair world

Paranormal Possum Activity

I think I’m being haunted.  By a possum.  And it’s really pissed off.

Looks angry, doesn't he?

Let me begin by saying I am not a natural animal person.  I scored that trait from my father, who, through years of family dogs, has avoided using their names, instead titling each canine with descriptors like ‘New Dog’ and ‘Little Dog’.  Until recently it had taken an outrageously cool or unusual animal – like a cat called Mouse, a Schnauzer that urinated in everyone's bedroom but mine, or a Staffy that only ever ran away to local brothels – to garner my affection.  But lately I’ve developed what can only be described as some sort of… dog cluckiness.  It’s appalling, and it’s begun to spread out through animal genres – I found myself admiring a ferret the other day.

Despite my varying degrees of interest in animals, I’ve always been particularly careful of them on the roads.  That stems from a formative incident almost a decade old…

(Cue time warp transition, over-saturated tones, Black Eyed Peas singing ‘Where Is the Love’, and me standing in a University dorm looking exactly the same because, much to Mother Painefull’s chagrin, my wardrobe really hasn’t changed much.)*

I was but a fresh-faced youth in my first year of university, blessed with the twin inadequacies of being 17 and unlicensed.  While the first left me banned from Uni Bar, the second curse was what had me begging lifts off dorm mates when it came time to visit the Parents Painefull in The Dor.  I scored that very first lift from a fellow student, a country lass.  Now I thought this would be an easy fit – after all I went to boarding school with several such lass’s, and thus, unwillingly, speak fluent Garth Brooks.  I was not to know this one young woman happened to be Deliverance on Wheels.  Not even her reinforced, bull bar toting ute made me doubt my travelling companion.  Only when she sped up on the road 30 minutes later and collected an innocent magpie, before declaring “It’s kill, or be killed!” did I realise I may have been out of my depth.  That was the first animal road fatality I had ever witnessed.  Needless to say, I spent the next 3 years of my life valiantly avoiding this person.

(Back to present day.  Yes mum, I’m wearing the same pair of jeans.)

So the other week, on a dark, traffic-filled night, when I accidentally clipped a possum stranded in the middle of the road before leaving it to its oncoming green-light-cued fated, I was reminded I was a truly terrible person.  The dry retching I did on the side of the road 3 blocks later did nothing to assuage my guilt.

Then, over the weekend a strange sound began emanating through the street.  At first I thought it was a woman screaming (Fun Fact: It’s not), then I thought it was a bird.  Now, I realise, it’s clearly the possum… haunting me.  While I speak Garth Brooks, and some Whale, I don’t speak Possum, so I’m not entirely sure what it’s saying.  Admittedly this could be cabin fever talking, or a brain tumor, or in fact a bird, but really, isn’t a creepy, vengeance-fuelled ghost possum a much more likely answer?

Not since my duel to the death with a spider on the staircase have I been so concerned about animal retribution.  Worse still, this grudge might have gone interspecies.  The white rabbit that roams free in the yard down the street has been giving me a much more glaring, beady-eyed look of late when I stop to admire him**.

Now they're all looking at me... and they know where I live

I can only hope this is simply the beginning of some Dickens-style scenario, in which case The Ghost of Possums Past should be done soon (probably to make way for The Ghost of Unemployment Present).

Painefull Out

* = Anyone a Cold Case fan?  You’re not, are you mum.  Cold Case is a show filled with flashbacks and era bound music.  They solve cases… that have gone cold.  They have a name for those cases that are cold… but is escapes me at the moment.

** = That might also be due to another incident, in which I pulled up in my car beside said yard and screamed “The rabbit’s there” at my traveling companion, only to realise he had his passenger window down and I had essentially screamed at house itself… which happened to be open for inspection… thus I screamed at two innocent families… who stared at me while I reacted instinctively by both ducking and looking around as if seeking out the source of such strange yelling.  Both of those tactics are hard to pull off when you’re sitting in a car in the middle of a quiet street.

Reunite This!

It’s been 10 years since I last trod the hallowed halls of my high school.  A decade has passed since I last rocked a blazer that featured a visible list of my sporting achievements, attended chapel twice a week and viewed boarding school dinners as a speed-eating exercise.  In 2002 I was living in a glorified, highly supervised version of a share house (replete with a swimming pool turned stagnant pond), being reprimanded for wearing sport socks with the summer uniform or a black ribbon that was too short, and passing my spare hours by swapping VHS tapes of the latest episode of Alias and Dawson’s Creek with the neighbouring boarders.

And so, with 10 years worth of water under the bridge, tradition, nostalgia and Facebook declared it was time for us to get the 150 girl band back together (like the Spice Girls if they stayed together longer, but had less cultural impact).  Twas reunion time, bitches.

Due to some belated international backpacking (which, bizarrely, coincided with the false accusation that I tried to shoot a man… true story for another time) I had missed the 5 Year Reunion.  As a result I was rather enthused for the gathering, but making Fi and Livinia join me was akin to pulling teeth (but less financially rewarding – unlike the orthodontist who gave me straight teeth, and the Parentals Painefull empty wallets during my high school career).  By bizarre contrast, in the lead up to the event Jim was persistently asking me if there was any way he could come along.  After living with me for 3 years, tales of my high school had somehow developed a mythological status that made him eager to get a first hand glimpse of the natives I had described.  He wanted to play Painefull High School Bingo.  Given that it was an all girl school, slipping someone called Jim into the mix was going to prove a little tricky.

The solution to all this?  The 10 Year Reunion Side Party.  What is a 10YRSP you may be asking?  I’ll tell you what it is mum.  It’s the small gathering of non school friends you coordinate to stage a drinking session at a nearby watering hole, thus offering an escape route for the less than willing reunion attenders, and an improvised entry point for the vaguely curious.

Side Party of Randoms: Acquired

So how do you kick things off when you have a 10 Year Reunion and a 10YRSP?  Well clearly that requires some sort of pre-party gathering.  Because when you start with one party, why not make it three?

Third Gathering: Acquired

And what’s three parties without at least one party game?  So, in a stroke of what I assumed was genius, I came up with a contest (largely inspired by the legendary Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion).  The challenge was this:

Each contestant must come up with a lie that’s believable to someone you haven’t seen in 10 years, but utterly ridiculous to those that know you.  A point is scored every time that lie is fact checked with another contestant in the game.

Challenge: … accepted*

Naturally I instantly declared that my lie was that I had a two year old child, called Tomas, whose father is German.  It pretty much sells itself.  But in case it didn’t sell itself, when I told my current crop of classmates the plan, they suggested I would need some form of photographic evidence.  Thankfully one of those classmates happened to have his own child, relatively fresh out of the box, with him.

Photographic Evidence: Acquired

My baby is on order, he's arriving fully trained with dish washing capabilities

Amongst the other back story lies, we had one girl who was going to reveal she was recently released on parole, an ASIO officer, and a pair with suitable hair colouring that had formed their own ABBA tribute band called ABBA-Salute.

Of course, when it came to the eve of the reunion itself, not everything went precisely to plan.

The 10YRSP venue turned out to be closed.  Jim was granted his wish when, for lack of  a decent Plan B, that gathering of randoms who never went to our high school was forced to station themselves within the reunion venue.  When confronted on the rather obvious fact he never went to our all girl school, his absurd knowledge of my year finally paid off when he claimed to be the post-op version of a girl who wasn’t in attendance.

And when I finally built up the courage (and remembered) to try out my lie… I happened to test it on the girl universally acknowledged as the nicest, kindest, loveliest person in the year.  What with her being so very nice, kind and lovely, she didn’t try to debate my tale, or query the photo I showed.  All this, plus alcohol, sent me so rapidly into a spiral of guilt that I was forced to admit the deception 20 minutes later.  And as I swayed drunkenly, while she looked at me with earnest, confused, widened eyes and asked:

“Why on earth would you lie about something like that?”

Forcing me to admit that it seemed like a funny idea about a week earlier… I knew then that 10 years had evolved me into an even stranger person than I had been at high school.  If that’s possible.

After that it was just a hop, skip and a jump into belligerent, retrospectively embarrassing sweary-ness (the type that often sees me coining phrases like ‘I prefer to bump’).  And tap dancing.  It’s remarkable that the most common thing said to me by various people the next day was:

“You really did a lot of tap dancing.”

Well not that remarkable.  What was remarkable was that I didn’t find my way into a top hat in the process.

And so, that cultural tradition (tap dancing at one’s 10 year reunion after lying about one’s life achievements) and excuse for a trip down memory lane has passed.  It was technically uneventful considering the Facebook Event Page that organized it devolved into a war of words over the venue that would make the Jets and the Sharks complain that things were getting a little too camp.  What it was, was incredibly eerie to step into a room where you recognized every face from some distant, long ago time.

It’s also been an eerie experience for Mother Painefull.  Her claim to everlasting youth – a final, last-though child that went to school a decade after the rest of her children – has taken a serious hit with the revelation that I am no longer that youthful myself.

Painefull Out

P.S.  The final scene from my evening involved housemate Layla (a participant in the 10YRSP) and I demolishing a plate of dips and cheese in a heady, primal swoop, seated in the darkness of the lounge room, not making eye contact, aware even in this most primal state that what we were doing wasn’t a notable high point for either of us.

Then I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica.  That’s right Tomas – mama parties hard.

* = I assume someone, somewhere out there appreciates a decent How I Met Your Mother reference as much as I do.

The Painefull Election

Every four years an event comes around that requires preparation, commitment and steely determination.  I’m speaking of course about the Olympic Heptathlon.  But for those of us who don’t quite make that grade, who find the idea of trying to jump over something backwards hilarious, but who still truly believe that without Paine there is no Gain there’s another happening that (thank god) doesn’t require you to wear a two-piece bathing suit.

Instead, it requires you to wear this

I speak of course of that beacon of democracy commonly known as the local government election.  That one day where we tell everyone that their voice counts in their community, that what they want for their children matters and, most important of all, that there’s a sausage sizzle set up by the exit from the voting booth.

Mother Painefull has been bringing her brand of maternal wisdom to the Hawkesbury for over 20 years now as a vital and outspoken member of the local city council.  So when I say I’ve been working the poll for my mum every four years since I was in Kindergarten, you know I mean it.

No Paine, No Gain!

Mum has been shaking up the system, and terrifying the political conservatives for as long as I can remember.  Of course, if memory fails, there will always be the photographic evidence – like the image of Mother Painefull getting a mammogram on the front page of the local newspaper.  And I don’t need to struggle to recall that one, because it’s been framed and hung on a wall in the parental House of Paine.

And for as long as mum has been dolling out front room talks to the local community, I have been handing out ‘How To Vote’ leaflets on voting day.

My original election day shirt, from back when I was cute

If life’s treating you too kindly, if you seem to be getting your way a bit too much, I recommend handing out to voters.  It’s constant, unerring rejection like that that can really put your feet back on the ground.  Plus, after a while being called a ‘%#$!’ is almost soothing.

A week ago today I was doing just that.  It’s days like those you can see mum’s decision to have so many children really paying off.  It goes like this – I stand at a booth for 10 hours, Elspeth stands at a booth for 10 hours, Mrs Ryan stands at a booth for 10 hours, everyone’s spouses stand at a booth for several hours, and Mrs Woog… makes some sandwiches.  I believe Gaddafi had a similar model of burden-sharing.

In all fairness, Mrs Woog also sat in a car for 4 hours delivering those sandwiches to booth workers.  From everything I heard from the people that got them, apparently they tasted great.  I don’t begrudge Mrs Woog the workload, I simply admire her ability to outsource.

But then she’s probably jealous of us poll hander-outer-ers.  It’s a special, weird, life-affirming experience spending 10 hours side-by-side with people, many of whom have inexplicably decided to hand out for dickheads.  It says something about the battle-hardening experience that despite the fact that they can’t stand my mum, I can’t stand their facial hair, and between us all a general pall of body odour is on the rise, that somehow we end up bonding.

Except Australia First.  You don’t find yourself bonding with Australia First, not even by accident.

Perhaps what brings us all together is the sheer effort of being there.  By showing up to hand out at a local election of all things, we must all invariably acknowledge within each other a commitment to the sacred importance of being allowed to vote at all.  By being there we’re saying, above all else, that we really, really give a shit.  That people make a difference just by deciding to, that apathy, not paperwork, or parking fines, or the queue at the check-out, is the devil’s handiwork.  And if you don’t give a shit, then I forbid you from complaining.  Because you gave up the right to whinge the minute you proudly stomped passed the sweaty, sunburnt maul of people while declaring ‘I’m just here to mark my name off!’.

Of course, some people were handing out because they were promised there was going to be a party afterwards.  Or because they lived in the candidate’s womb at some point in the distant past.  These are also valid reasons.

Except for Australia First hander-outer-ers.  I still don’t know why you were there.

And so we stood, we sweated, we yelled out things like ‘Vote for an Independent Woman!’ (while, in my case, trying not to break into a Destiny’s Child song in the process), and we bonded.  And then we were tempted to kill each other, because if I heard ‘Group F, a vote for Farmers, Food for Thought!*’ one more time my head would explode.  And then we all got so delirious we bonded again.  And then a man came through and asked us whether we supported Asian slums in his backyard, and we stared at him blankly.

The Australia First people had gone by then.

Of course there were many memorable moments, many of them quotable.

Some of the highlights included:

“What are you going to do about gun laws?” – um, nothing.  This is local government.  Do you know what local government does?  Same goes for the guy who asked about cannabis legislation.

“Clearly she’s just hired some attractive girls to hand out for her.” – uttered by a fellow hander-outer-er to one of the friends I conned into helping mum out.  Some of my other friends were enthralled by pollster gossip about wife bartering.  Cause that’s how we role in western Sydney.

“You don’t know what love is.” – perhaps the most phenomenal rebuttal of the day, from one of the opposition hander-outer-ers to one of my Aunts.

“If you guys start singing again at 3am, I am going to wake you up at 6am by playing my guitar in your face.” – Elspeth’s husband to my friends.  Clearly he’s still traumatised by our home made karaoke from the Easter long weekend.

“Four more years!” – the chant when Mother Painefull romped back into council with the highest individual vote in the district.  It was all a bit like my own private West Wing.

And so another Olympian effort by Mother Painefull & Co was brought to a close.  Mum promised this would be her last time.  She promised that for the last 2 elections prior to this one, so our collective breath is not currently being held.  Still, fun was had, and there are many things worse than a Painefull Election (such as a ‘Painefull Erection’… which is what mum called the gathering when we helped her to erect a shed in the backyard).

It was an exhausting weekend but, like they** say,  No Paine, No Gain.

Painefull Out

* = This is an abridged version of the ‘Food for Thought’ spiel.  The full text will be published over 28 pages in an expanded handout.  As I have it memorised, theoretically I could write it myself.  Sadly.

* = 'They' being ‘all the kids’, ‘everyone’ and ‘those bitches handing out the pink How To Vote leaflets’