When we first decided to move to Darwin, Milo was not pleased. In fact, he gave me a sharp punch to the stomach and told us we should have given him hot chips for breakfast before sharing such news. He was right.
Of course, Milo moved on quickly; his fiendish genius allowing him to pivot seamlessly from misery to opportunity; he would acquiesce to new town, new school, new friends, but I would need to dress up as an inflatable flamingo named Kevin to drop them at school each morning for the first week. Deal.
The details have been muddied by history and/ or careful subterfuge, but at some point every day of that first week became the first week of each term, and then the last week of the year was added as well. And then Kevin the Flamingo became Bob the Prawn and then Bob the Prawn became Glitterbutt the Unicorn, and now almost three years later our cupboard is full of punctured, deflated looking, but very well used adult-sized inflatable creatures.
Oft have we wondered how long this might continue. We check in with the boys at the beginning of each term; okay, so you still happy for your dad to dress up like a buffoon and walk with you to school? yup? yup? Two yups. Alright, let’s go! Until quite recently, Milo has in fact continued to maintain that I would be dressed in a blow up crab or something to drive him to his first day of his first job at the AI factory.
But… very recently, I regret to report, we crossed over some invisible childhood barrier that I fear cannot be recrossed. Like one of those carpark security mechanisms with the angry looking teeth that shred your tyres if you mistake an egress for an ingress.
On the first day of Glitterbutt’s fourth week of action; “Dad, it’s ok if Monty still wants you to dress up as the unicorn, but I don’t really want it anymore. I used to think it was funny but now I think it’s a bit weird. Actually, would you mind not walking past my classroom? I think people are starting to judge me”.
Actually, he handled this heartbreaking moment for me with complete grace. He asked politely, acknowledged Monty’s feelings, made his case quietly, respectfully and succinctly, agreed we’d had some good times in the past, and then strode off towards his classroom and his adult life… leaving me standing in the carpark in the drizzle, dressed as an inflatable, bedazzled unicorn, with a misshapen, pointy pink hat perched on my head, shoulders slumped forward, eyes moistening, now with only one child prepared to hold my hand in public.
So there you have it; if you’ve ever wondered when ‘my parents are awesome’ transitions to ‘my parents are embarrassing losers’ (as a good friend of mine so eloquently put it), the answer is year 5, term 4. I actually think we had a pretty good run.
Monty, I think sensing the moment was somewhat emotional for me, was content to walk in silence for quite some time, hand in hand. Well, he walked, I waddled.
But right before we arrived at his classroom, he took his chance; turning his face up towards mine with a smile “hey dad, if Milo doesn’t want to vote on next year’s costume, can we get the inflatable avocado?”
I grinned back. Of course we can Monty, of course we can.
How many breeds need to play a role in a pup’s make-up before they go from being a particular thing to being a dog? I mean, when do you stop saying “we have a Pomsky”, or “I’ve always wanted a Chiweenie” and just acknowledge you have a dog with a few things going on. Can you have a Dasch-heeler-dor? Or a Bull-samoy-kelpadoodle? The protocol seems to be two, but having recently purchased a puppy after many years of resisting this great inevitability, this whole thing seems a lot looser than I had previously thought. But that might be because our puppy, Ollie, is from Humptydoo.
Before we get to the great Olivia Chuggles Von Schnausen Van Hauten however, there is a little context to be explained. Since before Milo could talk, he has wanted a dog. We have a photo on our wall of Milo smooching a random cafe pug taken well before he could walk. A dog has remained a consistent request throughout his life, and he has embraced every canine or canine-adjacent animal he has ever walked past, as if it were his own.
We have resisted his pleading for many years because, you know, we don’t want our lives to be shit. But at the same time we have researched and planned and considered. I am a planner, certainly in the skinny bit at the top of the bell curve for tendency towards planning. But my wife Kuepps is really, really, really, really, really, really a planner. So we have had many variations of ‘what dog breed is right for you?’ books, pamphlets, youtube research, and dozens of probably overbearing spontaneous interviews of people walking their dogs peacefully in the park.
We never found consensus.
There is a whole genre of dogs, popular in 2025, that in our household we categorise as ‘pat your granny’. You probably instinctively know what I mean. But if not; imagine sitting on your sofa, closing your eyes and your gran comes and sits on the ground quite close to you. You start patting her permed hair. If a dog feels a bit like that it is a ‘pat your granny’, and off our list.
Unfortunately this rules out almost all of the more reasonable, non-shedding, non cat-killing dogs available today. In my view it rules out all poodle mixes, but this is not a view held so strictly by others in our house. There has always been some flexibility on this point from certain quarters, but I think I can confidently say none of us want to sit on the sofa of an evening and pat or tickle any of our grandmas, no matter how lovely they might be.
But, if you eliminate anything ending in ‘oodle’, things get pretty narrow pretty quickly. Watch some ‘Is this dog right for you?’ youtube videos and you will inevitably discover that no, this dog is certainly not right for you. It will either eat your chickens, escape from Alcatraz, round up your neighbour’s kids, run 75km a day, fall off your sofa and die, dig up your daffodils, smother your children, bark at butterflies, produce fist sized poos, suffer from myriad skin disorders, or insanity or hip dysplasia (all of them are prone to hip dysplasia, which sounds uncomfortable and expensive), or early death, or way too late death, not to mention all those dogs that simply can’t breathe!
And alas these are the ones that Milo has always wanted. The most ridiculous kinds; Pugs, French Bulldogs, British Bulldogs, Boxers, nude ones, maybe a wiener dog of some kind. Any breed that says ‘humans have dominated the wolf, suck it wolf, and now look at this comical thing we’ve made, well done us’… Milo is into it.
And so years went by. We came close on the Miniature Schnauser, probably mostly because Schnauser is very fun to say. But ultimately we could never reconcile whether the Miniature Schnauser is pat your granny or not. I’m still not sure.
Kuepps and I think we really want a pointer of some kind, a Vizsla or a German-Short Hair, a real dog. But deep down we know we aren’t real dog people. The sphincter is just too large, and the commitment too heavy.
A wienery sausagey thing was subject to way more serious conversations than it ever should have been. The idea that we would have to lift it on and off the sofa was, at various times, considered a pro or a con. In the end it just petered out. I’m not sure what it was exactly, perhaps the fact we live in an area of Australia highly populated with birds of prey. Our little wiener guy may have just been carried off one day. Or maybe the whole concept was all just a little silly.
And then one day, because my wife is very clever and patient, a ‘Jug’ found itself on the agenda (this is a Jack Russell/ Pug for those unfamiliar. I was unfamiliar). Monty has always wanted a Jack Russell (apparently – I do not recall this) and of course Milo’s love for the Pug is well documented. This is the perfect mix for us! The Jack Russell influence means the Pug can breathe a little and won’t need expensive surgery immediately and might not snore so horrendously. And, oh look there is a Jug breeder quite close to Darwin and would you believe it they have a litter available in a few weeks! Check mate.
Considering the decade of meticulous research behind us, it certainly felt we were going in somewhat unprepared when we drove out to Humptydoo the following week to meet the little Jug pups. I’m not sure we had even watched one ‘Is a Jug right for me?’ video. Well, obviously we didn’t because otherwise we would have discovered it was not.
And then, upon our arrival, we learned that these were not in fact Jugs, but Puggles (or Pugapoos). Because, in one of the most Humptydoo events ever, the Toy Poodle, who also lived at the residence, had snuck in and done his thing with the Jug mum (who is apparently 7/8 Pug) before the Jug dad could get in there. Jug dad had no hustle. One look at the Poodle dad, who was strutting about very proudly, would also tell you there was more than just Poodle swishing around in his virile loins.
But of course, a puppy is about the cutest thing that exists on this earth, and we knew that if we took our boys out to Humptydoo we were not returning without a dog, granny or no granny. So after a decade of meticulous deliberation and research and debate and spreadsheets and delay and careful planning, we agreed on the spot to purchase a pug/ poodle based-cocktail known as Ollie, from Humptydoo.
And yes, she is completely delightful.
Ollie – the Pug/ Poodle-based cocktail from Humptydoo
I remember distinctly the day my mum finally let me stop taking piano lessons. I was perhaps seven or eight, and it was one of the greatest days of my childhood.
Then, there was my French Horn period that we don’t much like to speak about. Late with my enrolment to the Beginner Band in year 7, the saxophone cupboard had been cleaned out by the cool kids who were already blasting almost recognisably Kenny G riffs on the backseat of the bus. Thus, I could choose one of those wooden instruments with a reed in it, for which I might as well have just wedgied myself, or the French Horn which I had never heard of, but at least it was the same colour as a saxophone.
I thought maybe people, from a distance, might have taken it for a saxophone variant, or at least saxophone adjacent, so I shrugged and took that squiggly looking thing home with me.
But alas, one toot on that weird little mouthpiece thingy that detaches for no obvious reason, and it was clear nobody was ever going to mistake me for a saxophonist. For those who have never encountered a French Horn, it is a decidedly ungainly looking thing; and spit gathers in one of its little tubes that needs to be drained from time to time via a little lever. Gross.
I am 100% sure nobody has ever been woo’d by a French Horn.
But I was pretty good with those three little buttons on top, and my teacher was excited that there was somebody on the Eastern Seaboard under 50 learning French Horn so she invited me to a French Horn gathering at her house, and her friends were there and they ate liquor chocolates and played French Horn at each other and then she encouraged me to ‘play at the academy’ or something of that nature, which my mum then told everybody about, which was either not what the teacher said, or if she did say it not really a very cool prospect, so shortly after that I quit.
Anyway, the point of these half stories is that despite the evidence available to me, I still think the one thing I want to be able to do really well in life is play a musical instrument. So recently, as a much older gent, I have started taking guitar lessons.
And when you try to take up a musical instrument in your mid-forties there aren’t too many people in your ‘circle’ doing likewise. “Hey Harry, I hear you started learning the Timpani recently, would you mind flicking me the detes of your teacher? strong arm emoji shrug emoji drum emoji”
No, the only people learning instruments are your friends’ children, and thereby the only teachers available are the ones who make their (cash in hand) money teaching six year olds.
Slight digression here because a repressed memory has just pounced out of my subconscious where it should have remained in its semi-hibernated state. When I was a teenager I couldn’t swim because I grew up in a cold place and I don’t really have the skin tone for the beach or the public pool anyway. My mum, accurately, saw this as a serious developmental issue so enrolled me in swim school but ticked ‘beginner’. Again, accurate. So, on the day of my first lesson I went to the local (indoor) pool where I was joined by a group of proper beginners, and their prams and their mothers. I stayed for three more lessons and honestly, I was so much better than those toddlers by the end, and my mum barely even had to come into the pool with me.
So I’ve had about four guitar lessons so far and the cognitive load is unbelievable. My teacher is a nice fellow, a little bohemian, and very good at guitar. He gives me little compliments which are mostly based on the fact that my hands a bigger than somebody in grade 2; “wow, you were able to form that chord structure so much faster than most of my students!”, but then we start plucking away on one of Beatles songs, and he is strumming the chords, and I am clumsily picking away the melody and he forgets that I am terrible at guitar, and gets quite fancy and then I lose it completely and stop and there is a great sense of deflation in his little studio.
But then we start again, and actually I get a tiny bit better and I can really feel my aged synapses resisting what is going on. They are so happy in the shape they have settled into over the decades; all of the real estate is allocated, the boundaries are settled and there really is no requirement to forge new highways, or backstreets or anything. But they must, and they do! And I can feel Simpsons quotes slipping out of my brain, because there are no greenfield sites left, and all the seemingly unnecessary versions of the F chord take their place.
This week my teacher made me a cup of tea before class, and we talked a little bit about politics and the world, and at the end of class he said to me “I am glad to have you as my student, it is much better than the drudgery of teaching primary school kids”. I thanked him for the nice compliment and thought back to those happy days in the pool.
At the start of February, as he did in early 2023, Milo stood up to pitch his classmates on why they should vote him in as one of their Student Representative Council (SRC) nominees. His central promise, which he rehearsed many times, was to explore what additional opportunities might be made available to gifted mathematics students. Clearly this is an important, meaningful and well-considered pitch but, in the populist world of 2024, ideas that are important, meaningful and well-considered are rarely rewarded in the cut-throat world of classroom politics.
Milo was, for the second year in a row, sadly unsuccessful in his campaign. And he lost out to a guy who suggested his classmates should vote for him because he is ‘ravishingly handsome’. Populism at work.
Certainly, Milo’s classroom disappointment was not the only reason he decided to embrace ‘conscious mainstreaming’ this year; for example readers will recall that by February the basketball revolution had already begun in our house. But it certainly got him thinking.
During our bedtime debrief on the evening of the SRC vote, Milo said he didn’t mind that he would not be on the SRC, but he did plan to try to ‘meet more people’ in 2024, and ‘do some different things’. He had thereby decided to suspend his chess lessons with Boris, and he was going to wind down his reading from 4-5 hours (including every non-classroom minute at school) to about 1-2. As I said, conscious. Nothing has ever been by accident with this child.
And that is exactly what happened. As the year progressed we got less Keeper of the Lost Cities, and more skibidi toilet. Less hair ribbons and plush monkeys, and more basketball jerseys. Many more basketball jerseys.
And as a parent it is very easy to feel good about such a transition. Milo’s group of friends at school has expanded rapidly, at this year’s school disco he tried to chug a Coca-Cola and build a human pyramid with his friends, last year he literally lay on the stage underneath the booming speaker and read his book. Birthday parties, the dreaded athletics carnival and lunchtime at school are all easier for him than they were 12 months ago. He is happy.
But how much of their weird should we support our children to smooth over? To mainstream? In the pursuance of social comforts? We read a lot of Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different and Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls in our house. That sort of genre; stories about kids who are slightly left of centre but who go on to invent something, or conquer something, or save something, or just generally make the world more awesome. As a general rule, these kids are not being voted onto the SRC, nor singing skibidi toilet, nor building a human pyramid at the disco. They are much more likely to be reading their book on stage under the booming speaker and advocating for mathematics programs for gifted students.
But also, most of them don’t report having a particularly happy childhood.
So where does this leave us? Well, firstly most of us adults never really figure out how to completely resist the lure of social acceptance in pursuance of our true selves do we? So it is perhaps unreasonable to expect that of a ten year old. And secondly, us adults are also pretty hopeless at defining what we are all trying to do with our lives anyway; the concepts of success and happiness are intertwined and elusive, and unique to each of us. If we can’t define it for ourselves, how can we adequately counsel our children on what they should be striving for? Is it better to spend time memorising pi to 200 digits by yourself, or learning the intricacies of ohio skibidi rizz with your buddies?
Certainly in our house we have no profound answers to these foundational life questions that we can usefully share with our children. But, as a mostly-adult it seems pretty clear to me that the secret sauce of life is to figure out what you like, and the kind of things that make you feel good, and then be and do as much and as many of those things as is possible, as often as you can.
Of course the tricky bit of my half-assed Hallmark wisdom is that figuring out those things takes time, and experimentation, perhaps some heartache and disappointment, and then just when you think you are getting them all in a row, they unhelpfully shift to the left and nudge your rows out of alignment.
Clearly Milo is just at the early stages of figuring out what his things are; an exciting and never-ending journey for him, as it is for all of us. Boris is back, on a fortnightly basis now, reading remains at a solid 2 hours a day, and pi remains lodged in his brain to a certain extent. But as we move into 2025, The Griddy and The Orange Justice continue to enjoy prominence in our house (google them if you don’t know, I had to) and obscure basketball statistics from the 20th century have seized centre stage.
Weird is good still continues to spill from Milo and Monty’s mouths with reasonable regularity. This is pleasing because in lieu of any real life guidance, being as weird as you are comfortable being is a fine foundation for two young lads who are figuring out their things, and deciding the best way to pitch for the SRC, or if they even care about that at all.
There are people who have visited Canberra and don’t like it, there are people who have never visited Canberra and don’t like it just the same, there are people who have been to Canberra and actually quite like it, and then there’s Monty.
If there was an annual competition to find Canberra’s biggest fan and then award that person a hot air balloon voucher and a free Commonwealth Public Service lanyard, Monty would win it every year. Admittedly, the field of contestants would be rather small, but Monty would still win it, and we should be proud of him for that.
Monty and I recently travelled to Canberra for a long weekend for a friend’s wedding, just the two of us, and it was the greatest display of Australian Capital Territory fandom that perhaps this non-State has ever seen.
Our very civilised 0045hrs Qantas flight from Darwin was delayed by two hours, but at 0245hrs Monty was still break dancing, running back and forth and dreaming about Questacon.
“Daddy” he asked me, pausing his break dancing.
“When you die, are you buried where you are born or where you were when you died?”
“Umm” I said, finding it hard to move my sleep deprived brain out of neutral to answer this unexpected question, “Well, either, and neither really. You can be buried wherever you like, or even get cremated if you like. You’ll be dead, it won’t matter to you.”
“Well, when I die I want to be buried in Canberra, with you.”
This was one of the more heart warming yet strange and disturbing sentences that has yet come out of Monty’s mouth in his 7 years so far lived, and he says some pretty weird stuff. But I gave his hand a little squeeze said “me too”, and thus we boarded the plane, and our adventure began.
I let Monty have complete discretion over our itinerary, and this is how he drew it up:
Edgar’s in Ainslie, or that out of place crepe cafe down the other end;
Movies at Dendy followed by getting our nails did followed by sushi – readers may recall this was a standard Friday for us when I took a year off a couple of years back, we watched Bob’s Burger Movie at least three times – more here;
The Mint;
A rather non-descript cafe that we used to go to a lot near The Mint;
Rainforest Gully (The National Botanic Gardens) “In my opinion daddy, these are the best Botanic Gardens in Australia”;
The War Memorial;
The Arboretum;
New Parliament House (when Parliament is sitting ideally, to sit in the gallery);
Black Mountain Tower (traditionally known in our house as ‘the rocket’);
The National Museum (if we have time); and,
Watching cousins play basketball (of course).
I am happy to report we did all of the above, except the Museum, which he decided in the end wasn’t one of Canberra’s highlights (I tend to agree).
At The Mint we saw Titan the robot money-making arm which seems a bit over-engineered, and souvenired a Penny minted for the year of Monty’s birth, at Rainforest Gully we somehow couldn’t find that slightly dangerous treehouse but we did souvenir some mosquito bites, at the War Memorial Monty deeply admired the dioramas and procured a pencil sharpener shaped like an F18 Fighter Jet, at New Parliament House we spent time in the public galleries of both the House and the Senate, observing a couple of dry 2nd reading of bills, but also a spicy censure motion, we also purchased a puzzle of lego people sitting in the Senate. It is REALLY hard. At the Arboretum we just tried to stay dry and at Black Mountain Tower we were saddened to discover that it is STILL closed to the public, and looking more like the scene from a zombie apocalypse than ever before.
In between we enjoyed some crisp air, some rosellas and the opportunity to wear a jacket (Monty purchased an incredible bedazzled coat from this fancy shop called H&M which we don’t have in Darwin). All in all a very pleasant visit indeed.
As we sat on the tarmac ready to fly home, Monty was full to the brim with the spirit of Canberra, his head in my lap and almost asleep. The latest Qantas safety advert came on our little screen; this one weaves in ‘Where is your magic place? We hope you get there soon‘ and then gratuitously shows all these lovely places that Qantas flies to.
Monty looked up at me, his eyes moistening, and he said “I’m in my magic place, and I’m just about to leave.” And then he began to cry.
Give that boy his lanyard and his balloon voucher. There is no competition.
It is hard to say just how long Deady Dude hung improbably onto Milo’s front gum. Milo says five years, which seems something of an exaggeration. But certainly three years is possible, perhaps longer. Either way, Deady Dude enjoyed one of the more remarkable runs in baby-tooth history. He was the Lebron James of dentistry, and we will always remember him.
Like most of history’s more problematic, complex figures, Deady Dude did not develop in a vacuum. There is always context, and continuum; and Deady Dude’s started in early 2016, long before his notoriety began.
Milo was a reckless toddler, and loved to thrash around on his ‘Mimi’, a $20 plastic ride-on fire engine from K-Mart, gifted to him by some well meaning friend or aunt. I guess we were equally reckless parents, or perhaps we just had no idea what we were doing. The line between fostering independence and inviting injury is so fine, and often impossible to identify as a first-time parent. Actually, perhaps that line remains elusive for every parent, forever, regardless the number of children or length of parenting resume. Today’s Mimi becomes tomorrow’s Can they walk home from school alone? and the day after’s Is a full-length back tattoo of Patrick Ewing a good idea?
Anyway, one morning I allowed an 18-month-old Milo to ride his Mimi down a rather steep concrete ramp, and, somewhat embarrassingly, filmed it. Mimi had no brakes, that should be obvious, and Milo’s little feet were not strong enough to adequately overcome the relentless persistence of gravity; and so, enterprisingly, he employed a little assistance from his face.
In my defence, despite the swollen lip and blood, his teeth appeared fine.
Some months later, under Kuepps’ watchful eye, Milo slipped while clambering up a ladder at a crappy neighbourhood park and dinged one of his front teeth. Over the course of the next 12 months the tooth blackened and became increasingly funky until, following a sheepish visit to a dentist, poor Milo had it removed under general anaesthetic. It is unclear which injury played the leading role in this unfortunate outcome; as is always the case, no one parent is to blame, and no one parent is ever fully exonerated.
So, like a tall person who finds themself unexpectedly sleeping alone in a queen-sized bed, Milo’s other front tooth took advantage, and began growing diagonally into the space.
When, finally, an adult tooth appeared in the gap, the diagonal tooth began jutting forward, as the diagonal sleeper does, reluctantly, when the co-sleeper returns in the middle of the night; not vacating the space but accommodating slightly. Perhaps I have stretched this metaphor too far.
So now we had ‘Snaggle’ (as the diagonal, jutty-outy tooth was dubbed), and a very languid adult tooth growing at a slight angle in the gap, pushing Snaggle into an ever more audacious contortion.
By now Milo, quite reasonably, was rather sensitive about his teeth. He refused to pull Snaggle out, despite its alarming wobbliness. No amount of financial enticement could lure it (even with me dressed as a nightmarish tooth-fairy), no number of stern warnings from dentists, no corn cobs, no toffees, nothing. Until Snaggle stuck out so far that Milo had to rearrange it every time he wanted to fully close his mouth.
It should be pointed out that most of the Snaggle saga played out within the private confines of COVID lockdown. Had the wider community witnessed Snaggle, coupled with his horrendous lockdown haircut (super high forehead fringe trim with unkempt mullet), we would certainly have been reported to family services, or at least shamed in private parental whatsapp groups.
Snaggle finally fell out on Tuesday 15 June 2021, whilst playing ‘Pokemon Bus Driver’. I know this because it featured in the blog that recorded our second stint of COVID hotel quarantine:
Milo’s front tooth fell out. Affectionately known as ‘snaggle’, this was long in the making. It is now in an empty pill box in the front of the suitcase. Not sure what to do with it now.
Snaggle’s long overdue dislodgement revealed to us another wobbly little guy, the next one along, perhaps that’s an eye tooth? Certainly, one of the carnivore focused ones. Overjoyed by the apparent return to some sort of normalcy inside Milo’s mouth, we thought nothing at all of this wobbly little white pea. But sometimes, when you remove a despot, it only creates room for another, more dastardly tyrant to emerge. Be careful what you wish for.
Deady Dude was born.
So, for the next three years or so we sometimes paid attention to Deady Dude, and sometimes ignored him. A full-sized adult tooth grew at a slanty angle over the top of this wobbly little kernel, whose transition from white, to whiteish, to greyish, to grey, to blackish was therefore largely obscured. We can’t recall when Milo anointed him ‘Deady Dude’’, but presumably it was around the grey or blackish stage.
What I can recall however, is that over the last 12 months of this period, Milo started to alert us to the fact that he was quite regularly forcing Deady Dude back into its little hole, as it desperately and forlornly attempted to jettison itself from his face. He provided this information to keep us informed, but also to troll us, as the update was always accompanied by a provocative little grin. We usually took the bait, shaking our fists and warning him of the dire future consequences of his folly. He usually shrugged, smiled, and walked away, muttering something about braces.
Eventually Deady Dude gave up trying to escape and a strange, translucent pink pseudo-gum grew up and over, holding him in place. The human body is indeed a strange and adaptable organism.
You awful parents, I hear you say, didn’t you take Milo to the dentist, and what did the dentist do about it? And the answers are yes, regularly, and… not much.
You see the dentist, like most people (including us) misunderstood Milo’s commitment to everything, and utter lack of flexibility. Visit after visit, year after year, the dentist (which changed as we moved city to city) would say “ah, don’t worry, it will fall out by itself.” But it didn’t.
By the end, Kuepps and I were taking it in turns to accompany him, to spread the parental scrutiny. We had some continuity with the same dentist, and the visits were becoming more strained, and more judgy. Milo, as ever, was entirely unfussed by the tut tutting of his parents, and by the judgement of the entire dental profession.
And then one morning, on 12 September 2024, Milo informed me that Deady Dude was “really, really painful” and perhaps that weekend he might be willing for me to have a look at it. And by that afternoon, after school, Deady Dude sat in a small ziplock bag in the front pouch of his backpack, like an inconsequential, shrivelled little dried-out black corn kernel. This despotic little bean that had ruled our dental lives for more than three years, that had caused such consternation, debate and parental stress, now a trivial little artifact in a bag. What was all the fuss about? Milo displayed zero remorse, zero regret and zero emotional attachment to his weird little mouth companion. I offered to drill a tiny hole in it and present it to him on a golden chain to wear around his neck. No interest. Milo simply moved on with his life.
So what did we learn from all of this? Not much. I doubt there are any insights from the Snaggle/Deady Dude saga that dramatically shift our view of Milo as a human-being; all of it was entirely consistent with what we know of him, his brain, and how he likes to navigate the universe.
There’ll be more of this in future no doubt, maybe not teeth, but something. And we will of course fall for the same traps, tie ourselves in knots with stress, and ultimately Milo will change course once more, when he is good and ready.
Vale Deady Dude.
Not a picture of Deady Dude, that’s way too gross. Just a tube of GC Tooth Mousse.
It is surprising to me, in fact, that it has taken me quite so long to write this story. We have a cat, and his name is Huckleberry. In fact we have two cats. The other one is Huckleberry’s sister, Suu Kyi, and although she is without hyperbole perhaps in the top 5 cutest creatures on planet earth, for pizzazz and personality, she has nothing on her golden-furred brother.
Our pair of cats came into our lives in the same year Milo did, which is why I am surprised to find it has taken me almost 10 years of blogging to mention him. He is a very curious creature indeed. He may well be a human trapped in a cat’s body, or an actual lion so confused by his domestication and constant belly rubs that he forgets to kill us each day.
I don’t really know why I write this blog. Sometimes to amuse myself, sometimes to amuse my mother or my children. But sometimes it is just to record something properly for posterity. I think this story is the latter, so I might just list his many strange habits one by one, some of which might seem unbelievable to you. They are all definitely true and unembellished.
He can open any door unless it is locked, including our front door. He leaps, grabs hold of the door handle with his paws and mouth, dangles and slowly slides down the handle until it pops open. This is completely true and it is a real problem for us. The straight long handles are a breeze for him but I am sure one night, in a dazed state on my way to the bathroom, I saw him do it on one of those stumpy circular handles. He has also learned when the door is likely to be unlocked. He does not bother most of the time, but if we open the door to go out and close it behind us, he will immediately appear and leap onto the door handle. He can execute this move in less than 3 seconds.
Huckleberry has a gross, misshapen, distended, formerly plush little stuffed-toy donkey that he purloined from one of the children at some point, and made his own. We call this tangled little beast ‘Donkey’.
Whenever we feed our cats, Huckleberry will immediately go in search of Donkey. Donkey is usually nearby, but sometimes he has been carried away and left somewhere unseemly like on a pillow, or in the pantry. Anyway, Huckleberry will locate Donkey and then carry him back to his food bowl, with a strange mix of embarrassment and primeval violence in his eyes. He will place Donkey adjacent the bowl, gnaw on him a little, and then take a mouthful of food. Gnaw on Donkey, eat some food, gnaw, eat, gnaw, repeat, until he is finished. He is very much simulating the thrill of having caught and killed poor old donkey while he eats pre-packaged chicken mush, over and over again. Donkey’s nightmare never ends.
Well, in fact one day it will, because Donkey is the second such talisman of the savannah that Huckleberry has had in his life. The first was one of Milo’s first ever plush toys, a cute little fox, that Huckleberry chose to invite into his ‘circle of life’ cosplay. Foxy was with us for many years, he nose pulled and flattened and stretched almost as long as the rest of his body, before one day he finally turned into a pile of thread, and disappeared.
Watching him do this is as weird as it sounds.
Huckleberry is happiest on your shoulder. This was cute when he was a small, agile kitten. He would leap softly from a high place, and land gently on your shoulder. You would then walk around with him up there for hours while he purred and rubbed your cheek gently with his.
Now that he is not small, and increasingly less agile, this odd behaviour is less endearing. He will now leap out from behind a pot plant with no notice and thunder into your neck and chin area while you are peeling carrots. At best this will cause you to drop your carrot and stumble awkwardly to one side as the momentum of his ample frame tries to dissipate into your body. Usually, however, he underestimates the size of either his bottom, or your shoulder, misses his mark and then thrusts his claws into you in desperation as he cascades awkwardly down you back and onto the floor. So then you end up with both a dropped carrot and a bleeding neck.
Linked to this behaviour (probably) is his overwhelming desire to sleep on your face. This was a genuine concern when our boys were babies; the threat of asphyxiation by feline was real. These days it is only Milo and Kuepps’ faces that will do, and it is more the kind of forehead area with the volumous tail and legs sprawled across the pillow. How either of them sleep like this is a mystery to me.
Huckleberry is a many-nicknamed cat. Here are the ones that come to mind:
Huck
Huckie
Huckie Boy
The Huck
Punk
Punkie
Punkie Boy
Punko the Munko
The Punk
Punkleberry
The Punkleberry
Punklebaby
Huck Bomb
Spunkle
Spunkie
I’ll finish with two anecdotes about The Punk.
First – shortly after Milo was born, Kuepps was feeding the baby, and I was heading out to the supermarket. We were both delirious, in that sort of first weeks of baby way. As I was opening the door to leave, Huck pushed up aggressively against my leg, making a most unusual noise – not dissimilar to that guttural sound he makes while brutalizing donkey. His tail was all big and puffy. Once he had captured my attention he motioned for me to follow him. I could not tell you exactly how he did it, but I remember his intention seeming crystal clear to me. So I did, and having walked the 5 metres to the laundry, I found Suu Kyi inside the washing machine. A front loader, the cycle was just beginning, with water trickling in and the barrel gently rolling from side to side, but not all the way over. Suu Kyi could be seen clearly inside, atop the wet nappies, stumbling back and forth, and looking quite distressed indeed. I yelled for Kuepps and immediately switched off the washer. Being a front loader, half full of water, there was no easy way to release her, so we channeled our inner Schwarzenegger, ripped the door off its hinges and retrieved a very bedraggled but grateful Suu Kyi… who immediately began purring. Huck literally saved his sister’s life, and a good deal of mental anguish on behalf of his owners.
Second anecdote – Huck and SK are now very much indoor cats, but they once lived a slightly more outdoorsy sort of life. During this time, we were moving from Canberra to Sydney. We had removalists in our house all day long, packing and moving, and drinking energy drinks and packing and moving. At the beginning of the day I told them about Huck’s proclivities, and warned them of the very real possibility that he may try to stow away in the truck. I asked them to make sure he was not inside the truck before they closed the doors to depart. They laughed and obviously thought nothing more about it because at the end of the day, of course, they had done just that.
It was about an hour after they left, with Huck nowhere to be seen, that I called the driver. He initially scoffed at my suggestion that perhaps he could check, but eventually I convinced him. He kept me on the line as he pulled his large truck to the side of the road on the Hume Highway, levered open the heavy doors and then gasped and said some rude words as he discovered Huck, standing on top of a sofa in the back of his truck.
Fortunately the driver managed to capture The Punkleberry (probably by moving a shoulder into his nearish vicinity) then kept him safe in his cabin until the driver made it to his home in Camden. We were only a few hours behind, and arrived at the driver’s house around 8pm to find Huck sitting on the man’s shoulder, purring, and watching Friday Night Football together.
Huck, the coolest cat on earth, barely looked up to say hi.
One day, I am sure of it, Huck will just start talking to us, with a deep James Earl Jones-type voice, and all of it will finally make sense.
For most Australian kids, even bookish chess-oriented ones, backyard cricket in the summer is a wonderful experience. And so it was for Milo this past summer. For weeks we played every evening with the cousins. Lots of bowling, lots of swashbuckling, care-free batting, lenient umpire-uncles, a little bit of fielding, usually a zooper-dooper appears or a sausage on a piece of bread. Heaven.
The warm cricket experience carried through to our return home, and the start of a new school year. We played in the driveway until late in the evening, and when the days got shorter we installed a flood light which made it wonderful to bat, but impossible to bowl. I could even see Milo starting to modify his game to suit the conditions, as all backyard (or driveway) cricketers do; gallant over the offside to the short boundary on the other side of the cul-de-sac, but cautious off his pads to the shorter boundary with the tall pointy fence and the dog on the other side.
One evening, as I walked in my crocs once more across the road to fetch one of my dispatched pies, Milo asked me “could I play for a team in Darwin?”. I was surprised, pleased at his interest in trying something new, but simultaneously apprehensive because actual cricket is pretty shit to play, not very sun-smart and really very shit to be administratively associated with in any way. But I answered as any semi-decent parent would; “I’ll google it”.
And so before long Milo had received some long nylon trousers and matching long-sleeved shirt, perfect for the tropics, a floppy hat, and in a mystery that I am sure will remain unsolved, I found myself on a team whatsapp group stocked with parents and administrative types.
After early introductions the club manager got right to the point, requesting volunteers for a coach and a team manager. Well, there her message sat, unashamed, unyielding, but also unanswered, for at least 36 hours, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I sent a private message to just the club manager saying I don’t know much about cricket and couldn’t commit to being a coach, but I would be happy to take on the noble burden of team manager, whatever that is. Within moments she had responded to the full group congratulating me on my appointment as co-coach.
Well played, I thought, and immediately ordered ‘Cricket Coaching for Dummies’ on Amazon.
So Milo and I arrived at his first training session, a balmy Monday evening, feeling bewildered and unsure about our recent choices. As we walked over to a group of adults who looked like they knew slightly more than me, I whispered to Milo that I was feeling as nervous as he was. He seemed to like that.
We followed their semi-instructions and soon found ourselves at one end of the nets, surrounded by small cricket enthusiasts, with balls pinging this way and that. A smiling other-parent introduced himself as the coach and said he was glad to have me with him this season. I think he believed me when I offered similar salutations and words of enthusiasm for what lay ahead.
Now, a ‘net session’, as it is known in cricketing circles, essentially entails one person putting cricket-armour on and the other 6 or 7 people (or whatever it is) taking it in turns to hurl cricket balls at you. When the batter is bored, or bruised or belittled sufficiently, they waddle back out of the net, take off their armour and commence hurling cricket balls at the next person. Milo had never seen a ‘net session’ before, and he didn’t much like the look of it.
He looked at me with those half-closed, suspicious eyes that he is fond of deploying and said; “do I have to put that stuff on?” Now, I know my child. Most kids facing this situation for the first time might be concerned about the isolation of it, or the potential to be hit in the many soft areas of the body that the armour neglects, or simply the daunting challenge of facing so many new ball hurlers he had never met before. I knew immediately what was on his mind. Sweat. And more specifically, other people’s sweat.
“Yup. But what you need to do is put your hand up to bat next and the gear will still be fresh and sweat free.”
His withering look remained; “but that girl is already wearing it.”
“Yes, true. But there is usually 2 or 3 sets in the kit and most of these kids will have their own. Go and tell the proper coach you want to bat next.”
So he did, and he did! And he batted pretty well. Although some of the older kids were quite brisk, nothing like Uncle David’s loopy left armers that are supposed to turn out of the rough but never do. Most importantly he avoided soft tissue damage… and sweaty gloves.
This luke-warm training session did, I must admit, make me somewhat nervous about our first match, which took place three days later. I was right to be nervous.
The 0730 arrival time did not please him, nor did the heavy, flammable uniform. The floppy hat was ruled out immediately. But it wasn’t until he learned that the game would take three hours, and that for most of that time he would be doing nothing but stand around in the hot sun with insects buzzing around him that he really started warming up his scowl.
Fielding first also didn’t help. In Milo’s age group the field basically cycles like a merry-go-round. After each over the fielders move around one position, clockwise, until they arrive at the bowling end, have a bowl and then keep rotating. So, for the first over Milo sat down at point, where everybody yelled at him to stand up. During the second over he sat down at gully, at which time everybody yelled at him to stand up. Then backstop where he sort of lay down and nobody said anything to him, and then around to square leg where he squatted and then kind of rolled down onto his forehead. He was quite excited to discover that his team had too many players so after square leg he rotated off the field for an over.
He ran off the field and straight over to me where I was sitting in the shade trying to figure out how to score the game with a very confusing iPad app. He arrived, looked wordlessly at me for a moment, shook his head as if to say WTF is this? then asked me for his book. I handed it over and he walked off to sit in the grass next to the boundary and commenced reading.
Milo’s one over respite was over quickly but when the next player came to take his place he waved them off and kept reading. They were very pleased to rotate around to mid-wicket and so did not argue.
This was not going well.
After one more over the real-coach realised what was happening and beckoned Milo back onto the field. He complied, but took his book with him. The real-coach advised him that wasn’t a great idea because he might be hit with a ball if he read at mid-wicket. Milo thought about this for a moment, placed his book on the ground and walked slowly, very slowly, to mid-on. Later on he had a bit of a bowl which was okay, and then recommenced cycling around the field, sometimes sitting, often distracted and always displeased.
The great thing about cricket is, once you are done standing around (or sitting) inside the field not doing much for an hour or two, you then get to stand around (or sit) outside the field not doing much for an hour or two. Milo wasn’t sure whether to be confused, disgruntled or enraged. He settled on disgruntled and loudly advised the real-coach he wasn’t going to bat. The real-coach did a very nice job of coaxing and encouraging Milo who remained unmoved on the issue for the best part of 15 overs until his cousin convinced him to ‘pad up’, as they say, and waddle out to the middle; no mean feat, and a fine demonstration of the true power that cousins possess over each other.
So he batted, was non-plussed by the whole thing, ate some grapes, received a Happy Meal voucher for ‘player of the game’ (again the real-coach did absolutely everything he could to enamour Milo) said goodbye and we drove home.
Of course on the drive Milo said he never wanted to play again, and he seemed more baffled than anything by the whole experience. I chose not to play my hand while Milo still had other people’s helmet sweat on his brow, but later in the week I picked my moment to tell him that he would need to ‘give cricket a proper go’ before he could quit ‘to make sure he was making the right decision’. Two games and two trainings was the arbitrary number I came up with. Why? Why is two the right number?
I must have caught him off guard because he agreed, and the following Monday we found ourselves back at the nets. Once again he didn’t bat and patted dogs for most of the session, and on the way home he said he didn’t want to play two more games or in fact any more games of cricket. Ever.
Trying my best to parent, I explained calmly that he had made a commitment and that he ‘owed it to himself and his teammates’ to give it a proper try. Unsurprisingly this approach was not well received but I shut the conversation down, not wanting to have the final showdown so early in the week.
Before I get to the last part of this story, I think it important to reflect on the fact that he doesn’t want to play cricket and nor do we want him to play cricket. Cricket is an odd, slow, boring sport that, if allowed to develop unchecked, will consume our weekends and then our lives, and then give our child basal-cell carcinomas in his 30s.
And yet…
I chose Friday evening to remind him that the following morning he and I would be going to cricket. He was playing Nintendo and, although he did not look up and arguably thought I asked him if he wanted a slice of toast, replied ‘ok’. I took this as a small win. It was not.
Saturday morning I woke Milo just after 0700 and reminded him of his solemn commitment to the cricket Gods, and finally it all unraveled. Once in full flight Milo is something to behold and he and I were flying high together.
There were pink faces and clenched fists and squinty eyes and lofty statements from me and tears and mucous… and finally, I slammed the door and drove by myself, to umpire a game of junior cricket in which my child was not playing, for three hours, without enough water.
I arrived home around lunchtime and we were both feeling far more relaxed about the whole thing. He asked me, with a slight grin, “what are you going to do now dad?” I explained that I had made a commitment to the team so I would continue pseudo-coaching for the rest of the season which is about 10 weeks, I guess to demonstrate good behaviours to my children?
So now, each Saturday morning I fill my giant Yeti water bottle, apply sunscreen, wave goodbye to my family at around 0720, and head off to some patch of grass somewhere or other to stand around not being all that useful to anybody. My family, comfortable in their pyjamas, look up from their breakfast, wave back and wish me luck. And just to demonstrate how ludicrous this situation has become, this week Kuepps was interstate so we paid a babysitter $125 to look after the boys for the morning, which is more than the cost of the entire season’s registration.
So here’s the thing; when I look back at all the individual decisions that led us up to this point, they all seem quite reasonable. And yet, the sum of those many reasonable decisions is well, quite unreasonable, and I haven’t even been on orange and grape duty yet.
Sometimes it does get tiring to be so constantly reminded how much we still have to learn about parenting.
When cricket could be played in 20 minutes, and in pyjamas
Clearly parenting is baffling. We are making it up as we go along for the most part; building the plane as we fly it, as they say. But I always thought there were a few fundamental planks upon which we could rely. For example:
Broccoli is always good;
Screen time is always bad;
Dogs licking your children in the face is good or bad, depending on tongue length and intent, and whether you prioritise a strong immune system or an absence of bum worms.
Recently, for us, this second plank has been thrown into disarray.
Milo had a brief foray into basketball a few years back; enjoying a memorable season with the Hellratz (you can read about it here). Monty has steadily chipped away at Aussie Hoops; perfecting his dribble handoffs, bounce passes, and absent-minded dancing during layup drills, but with minimal ambition to actually play a game, or bump into anybody, or be involved in any aspect of an ‘alley-oop’. Milo (who is an all-in or all-out kind of human) has also exhibited zero basketball ambition in recent years; seemingly leaving basketball in his rear-vision mirror in order to turn his attentions towards other worthwhile pursuits.
However, this year, things have changed.
Summer means cousins; and cousins mean new games, new rules, new horizons, and new zooper dooper flavours – like blue raspberry, which for me seems a dangerous manifestation of consumerism and a waste of chemical lab research funding. This past summer our boys enjoyed a lot of cousin time, and their cousins are basketball fanatics. Of course, the outcome of this was numerous games of 3 on 3, and 4 on 5 and 7 on 6 and other permutations; but the most impactful outcome was an introduction for our boys to the classic console game NBA2K – in this instance, 2K24.
For the uninitiated, NBA2K is a popular basketball series that let’s you play as any NBA or WNBA player from history, or even invent your own improbably proportioned player and lead them through a ‘career’ that spans carrying the team kits bags as a rookie, All Star fame and fortune, and finally the twilight years spent in the Taiwanese professional league playing for a beer company (like a real life Boogie Cousins).
It took no time at all for Monty and Milo to start quoting the stats and relative merits of Bob Cousy, Hakeem Olajuwan, John Starks and Kevin McHale. For some reason Monty has a real affinity for the Minneapolis Lakers legend George Mikan, who plied his big-man trade between 1947 and 1956. And of course, we have now prosecuted the Lebron vs MJ GOAT conversation from every angle, a topic that was simply not on the agenda before the summer.
So that’s fine, and quite predictable. But what happened next surprised me. Of course, once we returned home from the summer spent with cousins, we purchased NBA2K in the post-Christmas sales. Monty and Milo built their own players, Abdul Cicaman and Nikheil Gronko respectively (falling into the age-old trap of making their guys waaaay too tall with improbable wing-spans and then becoming disgruntled that they can’t run or dribble) and then began to play together during most weekend Nintendo sessions.
But, once Nintendo time was over they would not mooch around wondering what to do with their lives, they would instead almost always drift outside to the driveway hoop and shoot free-throws like Steph, or dunk on the trampoline hoop like Vince Carter, or snatch blocked shots out of the air like Shaq, or set precise screens like Nikola Jokic (it is odd to watch them practice this skill).
The driveway has also now led to Milo rejoining a basketball team, training and playing weekly (I am considering re-introducing a Hellratz style match-report for his new team ‘Thunderdome’, stay tuned for that in coming weeks) and Monty graduating from Aussie Hoops to the local half-court league (which he calls ‘Crazy Apes’).
They are running, and sweating, and playing together, and meeting new people, and trying new things, and grazing their knees, and jarring their fingers, and losing balls over the neighbours’ fence and making me turn on the car headlights after dark so they can keep shooting.
And what do I make of it all? I really have no idea, and to be honest I am a little lost. Clearly NBA2K is a dangerous gateway to exercise, and new skills, and wholesome activities. Maybe we should ban broccoli? Or open the flood gates on Kandy Krush and see if they become confectionary moguls? Or remove all restrictions on Cookie Clicker and, I don’t know, see if they invent some cool new cookie.
Or maybe we should just hand in our parenting badges and motivational sticker charts and just accept we have no idea what we are doing, that parenting is really hard, and be grateful for the small wins when they materialise, even if we have the Nintendo corporation to thank for them.
A big chess tournament is a glorious homage to nerdy excellence and drab fashion. The tournament Milo and I attended in January, although largely overshadowed by our adventure with Lucky the Lorikeet (read here), delivered magnificently on both counts.
A tournament of this size requires a big venue; a school hall, basketball stadium, something of that nature. The folding trellis tables are laid out in rows and rows, each with its own chess timer and board. Adjacent each of these tables can be found a pair of children, each with a neat haircut, oversized dark coloured or grey t-shirt (Adidas or ‘chess themed’), plain shorts or long trousers in quick-dry material, white socks at medium ankle length (not high or low) and white sneakers (Adidas or New Balance). There is an occasional baseball cap in navy, white or bottle green.
Given the tournament includes 100 or more players, each participant will only play a small proportion of the possible opponents. To keep things fair, and to confidently identify a true winner, the pairings are constantly evaluated based on their last result. So, if a player wins they will move ‘up’ a table and if they lose they will move ‘down’. The top 3 or 4 players are usually pretty stagnant and consistent. These players will set up their residency on tables 1, 2 and 3 – personalising their spaces with framed pictures of their mothers, Magnus Carlsen bobble-head dolls and packets of supermarket-bought jam-filled sponge cakes. For everybody else there is quite some variability; a win rocketing you up 10 tables or so, and a loss doing the same in reverse. There are lots of intricate, tournament-specific, rules which I won’t trouble you with (mostly because I don’t understand them all), but players need to keep track of each move via a baffling, coded shorthand, written in hard copy on a score sheet. This becomes the permanent record of the game, and the outcome.
Parents and other spectators cannot be within earshot of the games and are therefore generally separated by a pane of glass, or an invisible barrier of societal judgement, or both. The parental behaviour is generally highly cordial and supportive, but also quite odd. The weirdest among that cohort stand and watch every move, sometimes pressing their faces up against the glass and then leaving little steamy halos of chess expectation behind when they step back. Despite my pre-tournament predictions and hopes to the contrary, I found myself in this cohort.
Match 1
The preamble to Milo’s first game is already well documented. With lorikeets on his mind instead of gambits named for obscure Eastern European villages, he was no match for a pint-sized, baseball capped ball of chess fury. Even from 30 metres away I could feel the intensity. Milo would think awhile about his move, make it, stop his timer, and before he had even written down his aforementioned baffling, coded shorthand, the counter-move was already made. The moves were made forcefully; there was no placing, only ploughing, and whenever one of Milo’s pieces fell, I felt genuine remorse for it. It looked painful.
Milo was unfussed about the loss and his only non-lorikeet related comment post-match was that the other chap refused to talk to him. What a pro.
Match 2
Milo slipped down a table or two and thus came face-to-face with an entirely different profile of opponent. This fellow did have a chess-pun themed t-shirt (‘Knight to meet you’ with a picture of a Knight taking a pawn, or similar) but he bucked the fashion trend with a yellow bucket hat. I liked it. Even from my distant, elevated vantage point I could tell he was chatty, and fidgety. He stood up, he sat down, he tried to engage the table to his right, he tried to engage the table to his left, and at one point he had clearly lost his scoring sheet. How he managed this on an empty one square metre table I cannot tell you.
The game ended reasonably quickly and I could tell by the smile on the face of my returning son that he had enjoyed a victory. Unlike round one, Milo had a full report for me; he had told his opponent about Lucky the Lorikeet. His opponent had then tried to tell the amazing story to the adjacent tables, and had been shooshed. He had also employed an interesting mind-game on multiple occasions during the match, saying to Milo “I bet you don’t know what I am thinking.” Milo had ignored him two or three times but then had eventually said “No, I don’t know what you are thinking!” to which his opponent had quizzically responded “Wait, I don’t know what you are thinking either!”
It all seemed like a curious, but not unpleasant interaction.
Match 3
Milo was emotionally and physically drained by the time round three arrived on the afternoon of day one. We had walked the streets looking for a vet, scoured the internet for information on Lorikeet Paralysis Syndrome and carefully drafted our email to the University of Sydney Professor. And he had already played more than two and half hours of chess.
Milo’s final opponent for the day was tiny, even among a cohort of nine-year-old chess players who are not renowned for their bulk. He sat at the edge of his chair and still his feet dangled. His chess-themed tshirt swam on him, and he looked like his little head might become irretrievably lost in his baseball cap at any moment. But in junior chess, perhaps above all other pursuits with the possible exception of professional hide-and-seek, a slight frame is no impediment to glory.
This was Milo’s longest game of the tournament. His tiny opponent seemed completely still throughout, or perhaps his clothing was so loose that the movement of his limbs had no bearing on the fabric. Milo became distracted and occasionally smiled and waved up at me. Although very sweet and heartwarming, this is rarely a recipe for victory in a game as concentration-dependent as chess. It seems unlikely that Garry Kasparov ever waved to his mum… although a quick google of ‘Kasparov’s mum’ yields a number of articles suggesting they were quite close. So, perhaps he did.
Anyway, because the game was so protracted, I started to study the parents around me, the vast majority clearly chess enthusiasts themselves (t-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Rook You!” alongside a Rook dramatically knocking over a Bishop tipped me off). Several of them were in fact zooming their camera phones so tight that they could photograph the boards of their playing children, allowing them to analyse the moves. This analysis then precipitated mutters of satisfaction or sighs of despair, or both, but also light-hearted conversation between these parents, many of whom seemed to know each other already.
I stood quietly by myself, and once the match had come to an end, walked down the stairs to give Milo a little cuddle. It was clear he had lost and so I didn’t even ask him about it. We did a quick circle of the surrounding bushland to spot any other distressed birds and then walked together back to our hotel after an extremely eventful day.
Match 4
Readers of this blog will know that Milo doesn’t really fit the oversized grey tshirt, athletic trousers and New Balance sneakers mould. On day one of the tournament Milo had been rather demure in his attire; chess tournament tshirt and black tights (although he did wear bright red crocs with rainbow coloured fluffy jibbitz exploding out all over the place). On day two he felt a little more comfortable with the environment and so leaned in a little more to his instincts. We have an expression in our house which we use often… ‘weird is interesting’, and everybody is encouraged to be weird in whatever way brings them joy. It is a philosophy very much open to individual interpretation and on that day Milo interpreted it as leopard tights, Tournament of the Minds tshirt, red crocs and his signature giant pink floppy hat. I expected him to remove the hat once play began, but he did not, which made him very easy to spot, and probably somewhat distracting to play.
The match was short and sharp and I could tell from his bouncy exit from the gym that he had won. A great start to the day.
Match 5
Match 5 was also reasonably short, but with a less victorious outcome. The pink hat came bobbing out of the gym once again, but this time in a more languid, dragging manner suggesting disappointment or calf injury.
When we arrived together at the meeting point Milo had a wry smile on his face, which seemed a little paler than usual. “That guy was like the Terminator” he said “I knew I was going to lose as soon as I saw him. It was a scary game.” (for those movie censors at home Milo knows of The Terminator but has not seen The Terminator – at least none of the good ones). According to Milo the Chess Terminator had only spoken twice; once to tell Milo to be quiet, and a second time to tell Milo to be quiet and also to confirm it is a tournament rule to be quiet.
Match 6
The final opponent for day two wore a COVID mask and a flannie, so he too was breaking with the general norms of attire. There was no point me zooming my camera in tight to analyse the game; I would have learned nothing. However, even from my distance I could tell it was an animated game. The two of them were chatting and pointing and thrusting their hands up to ask the adjudicators questions from time to time. Both boys looked focused and alert and the game stretched beyond the hour mark again. Really quite remarkable for nine year old boys who had already played 5 intense games of chess in two days.
Eventually the match ended and Milo bounded out victorious, a stream of words and phrases and energy bubbling out of him “so my rook broke free, but then I was stuck on the back rank, but then we did an exchange to my advantage, then I spotted a winning solution, I checked with my Bishop, he blocked with two Bishops… daddy? daddy? are you listening? Then I saw I could pin him and then I did a back rank check mate.” Awesome.
We went out for burgers and ice cream spiders.
Day 3
George Flopsy joined us for the final day of play. George is a pretty awesome little dude, a stuffed monkey with long arms that hold together with velcro; so he can cling onto the handrail on a bus, or the back of a schoolbag, or around your neck.
Milo wore George around his neck all day, positioned such that he was staring directly, unblinking, at each of his last three opponents. Milo also wore his giant pink hat, so by day three had completely leaned into his weird. We checked the rule book but found nothing precluding the wearing of inanimate, long-armed monkeys around one’s neck, and the adjudicators let it slide.
As I reported in the Lucky story, Milo lost his first game of day three but then, buoyed by the wonderful news of Lucky’s survival, managed to win his last two to finish 5-4 for the tournament, and about 25th out of 100 pretty intense little chess people.
Shortly before being check-mated, Milo’s last opponent for the tournament asked him;
“Why do you have a monkey around your neck?”
“Because he’s cute and I like him.” Milo replied.
The boy nodded and agreed “Yeah, he is pretty cute.”
Jupiter & Sons 