The terrifying incident of the dog at lunchtime

When my sister heard ferocious growling through the phone she wasn’t surprised. Even though I don’t own a dog. She once told me “sorry I can’t meet you for coffee, I’ve rescued a baby cormorant.” I answered the phone to her by saying “can’t talk now, saving frogs.” We’re just that kind of people. We take animal loving to the point of stupidity. I spent much of my childhood babysitting for a pair of magpies and recently offered sympathetic pats to an overly fluffy discarded jumper.

When I went to get the paper on Saturday morning I met a dog I will call Clunkhead. He was part Staffie, part pitbull, part breeze block and we was tied to a sign post looking sad. We became friends instantly.

Hours later I walked down the street again. Clunkhead was still there, still tied up and looking sadder. The girl who runs the corner shop told me he’d been there since early this morning and that she’d called the council. Council. Dog rangers. Pound. Don’t worry, Clunkhead, I won’t let the evil council men take you away!

So Clunkhead and I move into the shade of the corner shop’s verandah and wait. Clunkhead doesn’t look sad anymore. He begins to look happy. Soon he’s clambering over my lap, smiling and trying to lick me. He loves having his ears tickled and is a very good listener. I learn that he doesn’t know how to sit and that he has mild eczema and unclipped claws. His eyes tell me he hasn’t had the easiest time. I decide that there is no way Clunkhead will be taken to the pound on my watch.

When the dog rangers turn up they see Clunkhead laying on my lap getting his belly rubbed. I prepare to tell them that their services are no longer required. One ranger approaches, Clunkhead sits up, takes one look at him and charges. Like a bullet, Clunkhead flies through the air and latches onto the ranger’s leg. I scream “Clunkhead, no!” and pull him back. Reprimanded, he sits between my legs as I tell him that that’s not how nice puppies behave. The ranger surveys the damage. The dog had missed his flesh but nearly severed his leather wallet in half.

“I’m not going near that thing. That there is a dangerous dog,” said the ranger, looking at Clunkhead enjoying getting tickled behind the ear. Another ranger approaches. Clunkhead charges again but this time I know to pull him back quicker. This dog, this low-to-the-ground, muscular dog had been trained to attack men. I look into his eyes and wonder what kind of monster had created him.

Unable to come within five metres, the rangers pass the microchip scanner to the shop girl who passes it to me with an outstretched, shaking arm. I run the scanner over his fur until it beeps. Clunkhead, or Oscar, is registered to a man in the next suburb. Clunkhead does not respond to the name Oscar. I don’t like his chances of the owner coming to collect him. He doesn’t even answer his phone.

I call my sister and explain the situation. She agrees that no, Clunkhead must not go to the pound. Then she hears him charging at a man attempting to buy milk. Yes, Clunkhead must go to the pound. But he likes girls, I explain. Maybe there’s a convent or a colony of separatist lesbians he can move to? Clunkhead must go to the pound.

The rangers have devised a plan. They are to kit up in their padded gear, get out their Steve Irwin style crocodile catchers and stand 10 metres down the street. And me? Well, I have to get Clunkhead into the van.

That means walking Clunkhead past the shopkeeper and her elderly dad and a number of other bystanders. That means walking calmly so that the dog doesn’t get wise to our scheme. That means looking him in the eye and telling him to get excited. We oh-so-enthusiastically head on over to the waiting cage. Trying to stay calm and look normal, I stupidly, stupidly leave the lead long. At the first opportunity, Clunkhead launches at the exposed flesh of the shopkeeper’s dad. It turns out there was blood but I didn’t give myself time to register it. Less sympathetically, I lead Clunkhead to the cage, tell him “woo, yeah, psycho-killler, we’re going in the cage now!”

With only two paws in, the rangers gather. Clunkhead, tasting human blood, nashes his teeth through the bars of the cage. The rangers are all practically wearing chainmail but there’s nothing between me and this dog’s teeth but his sense of gallantry. “Push!” the rangers yell at me. Push!

Clunkhead, maybe smarter than he looks, hooks his back paw on the bottom of the gate. He stops his nashing just long enough to shoot me a look that says, “I thought we were friends.” He must read my look of pure desperation because he lifts his paw up and lets me slide him in. I slam the gate shut and the rangers descend with a cacophony of locks, bolts and the snapping of jaws on metal.

As they do paperwork and see that the shopkeeper gets to the doctor, Clunkhead and I take a moment to sit quietly, the scent of my betrayal thick in the air. Even when he’s being heaved into the doggie paddy wagon making eye contact with me keeps him calm.

After the doors are shut the rangers come and thank me. Trembling and sweating, I shake their hands. Thinking of how the professional attack dog would rest his head on my lap, I wonder if I’ve missed my calling as the world’s most gullible dog catcher.

 

Special note: I would like to thank the wonderful, totally not evil dog rangers of the City of Sydney who continue to have Clunkhead’s best interests at heart.

Update: one of the rangers called me to tell me that they took Clunkhead/Oscar back to his owner instead of the pound. The incident has been reported to the RSPCA.

Also, the shopkeeper’s leg is healing nicely.

 

10 things your English teacher should have told you

I spent three years as a private English tutor. It’s less glamorous than it sounds so to make up for it I liked to imagine myself as a 19th Century governess who was destined to rebel against society’s restrictions by stealing the heart of her rugged and brooding aristocratic employer. This never happened but to this day it remains my favourite gig. It’s something about the way their eyes light up when they master narrative voice or iambic pentameter.

Not being an actual qualified educator, my tactic was to win my students’ trust by swearing like a drunken wharfie and talking about drugs. Below are ten pearls of wisdom.

1. The Romantics were really just hippies before there were hippies. “For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity”* sounds a little better than “double rainbow!” but it’s really the same concept.
2. Shakespeare had no idea what the fuck he was doing.
3. Movie adaptations aren’t always worse than the book.
4. There are many people worth swooning over. At this stage all of them are in literature and none are sitting in the back row.
5. Listen to Hermione.
6. A person isn’t right just because they’re on TV wearing a suit in front of a bookcase.
7. WWAFD? (What Would Atticus Finch Do?)
8. Bladerunner could happen. Recycle.
9. How to use a semicolon.
10. No amount of cramming and rote learning can ever compare to a stroke of creative genius. This is unlikely to occur in high school. Do shit. Watch people. Pay attention. And if  that fails make like Mary Shelly and head for the woods. Or at least invest in good tea and a houseplant.

*Taken from Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey. On a scale of 1 to spunkbucket how much of a wanker does this quote make me? Place your score in the comments below.

How my parents convinced me the world was ending

I grew up in the Blue Mountains, a place two hours from Sydney famous for bush fires. Our family home sits in a valley, surrounded by flamable things. When my parents bought it in the summer of 1977 a massive fire stormed across the ridgeline eventually singing our fence posts. It hasn’t burnt since but every summer it comes close. Childhood summers to me were a bright red sun, ash falling from the sky and ABC radio constantly on to tell us if we had to evacuate.

You might think that this was scary, but really it was just exciting, mainly because nothing made my mother happier than imminent doom. One year a column of black smoke covered half the sky and evacuation seemed likely. My mother had been packed for days. There were photos in boxes, clothes in bags and, as an alternative to a cat box, poor Missy in a pillow case. For my mother this was the best Christmas ever.

So, at the beginning of 1999 when rumours of the millennium bug started to circulate my mother listened with interest. What’s that, you say? Planes falling from the sky? Techno apocalypse, I hear? As someone who feared technology as a concept, the idea of the toaster being scheduled to revolt against its human masters and kill us all made perfect sense. It was time to prepare.

Room was made in a cupboard in the kitchen. This was filled with dried grain, pulses, spam and seeds. Aware that the vats of water stored under the house would only go so far, my father was sent into the bush to find the nearest spring. I was told that I couldn’t tell anyone at school about the preparations because, come January 1st they’d all be banging down the door for their share of grain. I’d seen Mad Max. I knew the score.

Dad, usually a skeptical man, must have been caught up in the festivity of it all because soon he was preparing for the end of the world with the best of them. Such was their enthusiasm that I was totally convinced that the world could end a cruel week before my 12th birthday. At Easter, I found myself in hospital with a penicillin reaction. The nurse kindly enquired about me starting high school the following year. I replied casually “yes, bad timing, isn’t it?” she asked why and I told her “because of Y2K. Hasn’t anyone told you?” Had I been her I would have called Community Services.

We surely weren’t the only ones caught up in the thrill of Y2K fever. There were long specials about it on the ABC. Plane tickets for New Years Eve were sold at bargain prices. The Prime Minister went on TV to reassure the nation. But you can never trust a politician.

Not long after Easter Dad told me that my cubby house would be converted into a hutch and that I’d get to breed bunnies. Being slightly dim I didn’t connect all the dots. Days later, when my parents confessed what the baby bunnies were for I became hysterical. I can only assume that at that point my parents looked from the distressed child to each other and wondered if they hadn’t got a bit carried away with all this apocalypse business.

I woke on the first morning of the new millennium to the smell of spam being fried. The kettle was singing happily and the toaster seemed content. The air was filled with relief, but also, just a little, disappointment.

Tourette syndrome: an excuse to swear and hit people

So I have Tourette syndrome. Which is fun. Like lots of fun pastimes it involves dancing, loud noises and surprising people in public.

All it is my muscles, usually my arms or shoulders, spontaneously moving followed by pins and needles running through my nervous system. Sometimes I make noises but you would too if your muscles moved themselves around. It doesn’t make me swear or say inappropriately sexual phrases. I can do that all on my own.

What makes my own pet neurological disorder special is that, more often than not my tics resemble dance moves. I’ve been known to shimmy, twist and clap my hands like a flamenco dancer. Lately I’ve been doing a series of jazzy, sultry clicks with my right hand. I’ve also kicked lovers and smacked my head violently on bus windows. It took a while for a hand shaped bruise on my arm to fade because I kept refreshing it.

I’ve been getting several tics a day since I was about nine. Some things that appear to trigger them are:

• Fatigue
• Stress
• Boredom
• Being slightly chilly
• Sickness
• Being over caffeinated
• Being under caffeinated
• PMS
• Needing to pee
• A random weather event happening in a nearby city (or something like that)

So being in an overly air conditioned late night session of a tedious movie where I’ve drunk one of those giant cokes after I’ve had a fight with my mother while I have the flu is basically my idea of hell. If you manage to engage me in interesting conversation on a warm day when I’m feeling chipper you’ll probably never notice.

There’s nothing I can do to stop a tic from happening. I feel one coming as a kind of pressure building up in my limbs. Then the tic happens and there’s a feeling of relief. Over the years I’ve learnt to redirect the movement. For instance, if I have hot coffee in my left hand I’ll be able to force the tic down my right arm to avoid disaster. For all I know my jazzy clicks could be an alternative to me shouting “I prefer to Cherry Ripes to hairy scrotum” at my boss.

As neurological disorders go it really isn’t so bad. It’s actually quite surprising how little impact it’s had on my life. I manage to get quite a bit done between dance moves. Tourette syndrome is incredibly varied in its symptoms and severity, ranging from imperceptible to almost debilitating. This could explain why I only got a formal diagnosis* at 23, long after the point they’d told me I’d grow out of my strange little habit.

The only thing it’s really ever stopped me doing is driving. I’m told that it takes quite a bit of concentration so I expect I’d be fine, I just haven’t quite worked up the courage yet. I guess I learnt early on that I got to decide how much it would affect me. I opted for “very little” so I developed a sense of humour about it.

When I was 16, during a particularly dance-a-riffic stage, I was in history class. I hadn’t yet learnt how to redirect my tics so I kept making this little “OOOP!” noise and moving my hands around. An angry looking chick turned around and said “What, do you have Tourette’s or something?!”

“Yes,” I said, with a deadpan expression. The angry chick, who is now one of my best friends, looked mortified, folded herself in half and sunk into her chair. I don’t think she ever quite recovered. That was a turning point from which I decided that the problem wasn’t with me, it was with society’s lack of accommodation for spontaneous dance.

So in summary, if I swear at you or approach you with out of context sexual innuendo, chances are I mean it.

*Can I get some kind of certificate for that? I’m not asking for much, just like a merit award or something. I’d also like a badge.

There are a number of groups that support people with Tourette syndrome. Try the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia.

The UK based campaign, Tourette’s Hero uses the humour approach quite well.

This post was republished on Mamamia.com.au where readers have written many encouraging comments and have shared their Tourette’s experiences.

Door bitch

The coalface of contemporary gender politics isn’t actually the earning gap or reproductive rights. The real battle, the one I rage daily, is a door. Specifically, the door of the lift in my office building. If I get in the lift first I stand towards the back and other people, including men, get in the lift and stand towards the front. Normal so far. I ride to the top floor, and if a man happens to be standing in front of me he will stand, somewhat awkwardly to the side and look at me expectantly.

I stand there awkwardly back.

He looks at me like I’ve forgotten something.

I stand there awkwardly still.

He gestures towards the door as though I might have misplaced it.

I smile sweetly and say something condescending like “out you go.”

The poor man will then either smile sheepishly and leave or continue to stand there with his arm half raised like a vaguely chauvinistic muppet.

If that happens I will then drop my voice an octave and tell him “we’ll be here all day.”

Given the choice between a speedy exit and being trapped in a lift for eight hours with an increasingly threatening woman they tend to choose the exit.

Taking gender out of the equation for a moment, I think the idea of people holding doors open for one another is quite nice. It’s also terribly inefficient. The time I spend each day saying things like “oh no, you go first” could be better spent staring out the window while my coffee kicks in or reading Jezebel. I’m a busy person and time is precious.

I have, on occasion, tried to instil a people-hold-doors-open-for-people regime by holding a door open for a man. This causes great confusion, much oh-no-you-go-first-ing and eventually I give up and just get the hell out of there. Less efficient still.

So back to the gender thing. I realise these men are just being nice. They’re just trying to do what society tells them. Problem is, society hasn’t updated its quote book since 1903. You can call it gentlemanliness, you can call it curtesy but as my very smart sister pointed out, if you hold doors open for me my arms will get weaker.

The polite gesture I meet every morning acts as a reminder that my presence in the building as anything but a secretary is something very new. It reminds me that women are treated in so many ways as special or unique or delicate or in some way worthy of men’s special care. It implies that I am either too important or too fragile to open a door myself. However well meaning, this is always patronising. Especially when you’re just planning on staring at my arse anyway.

I know not everyone thinks this way. I know that the graphic designer on Level 7 gets huffy if someone doesn’t open a door for her. I know that there are probably more of her than there are of me. I know that she and I probably both call ourselves feminists and that we don’t wear badges explaining how much we feminise and how often. I realise that the daily door dilemma is a minefield for us all. How about tomorrow we do this: who ever is nearest the door leaves first. And if the graphic designer from Level 7 gets huffy just smile politely and threaten to take away her right to vote.

Update: just after writing this my feminist door stance nearly got a man killed. I just had to use the sentence “I’m sorry my feminism nearly got you crushed between the doors of a closing lift. That really wasn’t my intention! I appreciate your efforts to be polite. Can I please buy you jellybeans or something?” Now I can see why the Republicans say feminism is so dangerous.

The 12 stages of a long distance relationship

1. Uh-oh
2. This so romantic! I bet they make a movie about us!
3. My  judgment has been clouded by Hollywood. I’m sorry I bothered you.
4. OK, let’s do this.
5. This is awesome. I feel wanted but I never have to shave my legs - it’s every woman’s dream!
6. Wow, this sucks a little.
7. I’m going to kiss all the boys!
8. Abstinence will enhance my creativity. Just look at Charlotte Bronte or that monk who invented the sun dial.
9. What with the wonders of modern technology it’s like you’re really here.
10. I know – the lottery! Why didn’t I think of that before?
11. This sucks a lot and will continue to do so.
12. As states of being go, constant longing isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s better than despair or a bad rash.

A long time in politics

I dated Marcus for a week, from the Saturday we met to the Saturday morning I spent sitting on his balcony trying to delay the moment when I’d crushed his spirit. Spirit crushing is something to which I should probably grow accustomed.

Thing is, I go for the quiet, understated gentleman. Really, if you have boyish features and tell me at a bar “I know I’ve only spoken a few words to you, but I have been listening intently and am now thinking dirty thoughts” then you’re basically my ideal man. My dad once told me that I’m destined to be murdered by my husband since it’s the quiet ones that always have the axes.

So I was chatting to Marcus, who at that point was not carrying an axe. He was saying a few words every so often but was otherwise just looking at me adoringly. When he did speak it was usually about left wing politics, indie music or food. He was good looking and interesting, yes, but that wasn’t why I was interested. I think what made me want to jump his bones was the fact that he was quite obviously scared of me.

Don’t let the fact that I spend all my time alone in my room on the Internet fool you, I’m actually a very self assured person. I also like to provoke people at parties which I guess gives me a brazenness that offers a welcome change from girls who don’t smack people. That, combined with a large bust and talent for hair flicking is all a bit much for a nerdy boy to handle. And, like a female hyena, I seek out the ones waiting at the back of the waterhole and then pounce on them while they’re drinking.

I told him straight up that I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. Then for a week I acted like his girlfriend. I’ve never been good at the dating thing. I tend to just decide whether or not to marry them sometime after breakfast. By my standards I was going slow. So there were dinners, long nights and lazy mornings. Questions asked and jokes made. And Marcus,like all my hapless victims, was suckered into it.

I’m not sure how much he liked me, but he definitely liked the idea of me. He wanted the home cooked meals, the arguments over who puts the bins out, someone to sit next to at Christmas. I wanted all those things too, but with someone on the other side of the world. I watched him getting his hopes up, like I watch an egg rolling off a bench – regretfully but without going to too much effort to stop it. When, at the end of our second Saturday, he asked if he had a chance with me all I could do was apologise.

My friend tentatively raised the point that maybe, just maybe these boys were not the hapless victims I’d always portrayed them to be. Maybe they’re actually very capable young men who know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. Maybe they think they’re the hyena.

Look, that’s always a possibility, I replied, thinking it over. Maybe I just assume they’re terrified and vulnerable because, in a not completely healthy way, I’d rather be the hyena than the prey. Maybe I should give them and myself a little more credit.Or maybe I’ll just have to wait until I get my axe wielding politics geek and we can both sit, terrified and happy, well into old age.