Last year my nephew was expelled from school for shaving his head on a field trip to Cheese World. If you’ve not been it’s a forlorn assemblage of derelict teat-suckers and an actual stuffed cow, clustered round a diorama of Sumerians inventing feta. At the end, for the class photos, he could choose to dress up as a dairy pioneer or wear a replica emmental hat. He may be irreverent but he gives a shit about personal hygiene. Quite reasonably unimpressed with either option, and while everyone else was exchanging bonnet cooties, he went to the strip mall next door and got a decent number one clip at Snipperty Cricketz Hair ‘n’ Tan.
Apparently this was the final straw in a litany of unauthorised behaviours, which included listening to the Third Test while smoking pot in his uniform at the local wind farm, and yelling “On a scale of one to ten Helen Keller, how blind are you?” at the headmaster, who was reffing my niece’s basketball finals match.
The previous summer he’d rescued a vicious, heat-exhausted koala from the toddlers’ pool at the Pat Clacker Memorial Sports Centre and saved a lot of kiddies from a nasty case of marsupial chlamydia. This counted not-at-fuck-all with those beloafered Presbyterian educationists. No cheeks were turned and Our Lad of the Perpetual Shenanigans was cast out for his sins. My exceptional but beleaguered sister, a dipsomaniac self-flagellator on a 19-year Xanax jones from a) accidentally marrying a feckless whiner, b) having three teenage children nearly all at once, and c) everything, blamed herself. Unhelpfully, so did her husband. But that’s another damn story. Anyway. The only other place that would take him was the local Catholic college. Despite their grievous academic record, salmon blazers and grammatically incorrect motto, my sister practically had to kiss their rings to get him in.
Children will do your head in if you’re not careful, and babies are tricky little bastards, especially here in the Bodes. My sister-in-law just had one this last CharmingVille Sunday, so I know almost firsthand. It’s adorable. I’m sorry, but much more adorable than a scrunchy newborn barang. Even a stylee French person’s – and that’s saying quelque chose.
To get one can be fun for sure, but once the sexy part’s over, and if you’re the classic Khmer mum-to-be, you’re well knocked-up in a deliberately steamy hospital room at the mercy of well-meaning but gabby female relatives who eat on the floor and watch those endless mindfuck hand-dancing shows full blast while you’re flailing in agony and sipping on stick wine in between contractions. And they make you wear a woolly hat. Beanies are not the wisest fashion choice at the best of times, but when you’ve got a bun in the oven and it’s 75 Celsius and there’s not an epidural in sight… bitches, please!
It’s not over once the fat lady screams, either. After the little tyke is swaddled with scissors to ward off the evil eye, you’re in for weeks of poultices, more steam, wicked nip-lash and a veritable parade of unflattering, Arctic-rated headgear. Meanwhile dad is down the coffee shop yelling at televised sports. No change there, then.
Despite this past week of post-natal voodoo claptrap, mum and poppet are doing well, though she remains nameless and my offers of ‘Tinkle’ and/or ‘Vader’ have been politely declined. I just came back from the blessing and we had a monk with a disco fan, an unseasonally cool breeze and, thanks to the brainchild of proud uncle Hubster, excellent Bloody Marys at 7.30am. So a pretty good outcome for this doting Auntie.
Meanwhile, on his last day at Velcro-Closure-Goody-Two-Shoes-College, my contrite and sharply tonsured nephew handed in his locker key. The snidey Principal priggishly opined that “an important lesson had been learned” and joked that he wouldn’t want to meet any of my sister’s offspring in a dark alley. Too soon and too right, you smug cock. Personally I think the young feller should have got an elephant stamp and a fucking scholarship. The irony is that this month he and 10 other students will shave their heads for charity with his new school’s blessing. They’ve even got a Facebook page. Finally those ragtag Fenians deserve a gold star for effort. And those others get a big fat F. Class dismissed!