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.
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.
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
Avid readers of this blog, or even those with a tangential interest via a partner who forwards it to you sometimes even though you don’t care at all, may recall that in late 2023 Kevin the Flamingo was tired, rung-out and suffering from at least one slow leak.
Mercifully, Kevin was placed in the ‘shrink wrap for the wet season’ pile over the summer holiday and an internet search was begun in earnest to find a replacement. It was remarkable to me how much comes back in one’s search engine when one types ‘inflatable ride-on costume’. Try it. It yields a pleasingly large selection. So large in fact that we needed to short list and then vote on Kevin’s replacement, via an anonymous preferential ballot.
The short list was:
rainbow unicorn
avocado guy
super pizza man
ride on chicken
ride on snail
ride on prawn
Shiba Inu
It was a tight ballot actually, with avocado guy exceeding early pre-polling expectations, but ultimately ride on prawn won the day. So we paid our $49.99 and way sooner than you might expect it would take to receive a ride-on inflatable prawn from China, he had arrived on our doorstep. We named him Bob.
Our first impression of Bob was that he was waaay bigger than we expected. He is at least 2 metres end to end, and has a giant protruding fluorescent booty that juts out and then droops grotesquely under its own weight, dragging on the ground. He has creepy little feelers that dangle out all over the place but also cute little blow-up eyes that do somewhat redeem the whole thing. Same as Kevin, Bob has tiny little blow up child-sized legs that are supposed to provide the illusion that I am riding him. But my torso is way too big so it all looks rather confusing and odd. Still, the boys’ objective remains memorable stupidity, and Bob delivers.
This week marked a return to school after a very long summer break. Morning one (Tuesday) brought with it a ferocious monsoonal downpour. This is not an inconvenient drizzle that causes you to hold a magazine over your head while you accelerate slightly from your car to the front door of the cafe, hopping once or twice awkwardly like a gazelle over developing puddles. No, this is like there are families of mischievous possums on your roof dumping buckets of water on you as soon as you exit your front door while others from the same family, who are hiding in the bushes, whip you viciously in the face with palm fronds.
Hmmm.. we thought, as I pulled Bob awkwardly up over my legs, and we peered out through our foggy windows at the aquatic carnage beyond.
“I still want to walk” exclaimed Milo, “we’ll take umbrellas”. Fair enough.
Monty did not express an opinion because Monty was still asleep. This was, as it turns out, not good.
Monty awoke eight minutes before our scheduled departure, took one look at the squall, and declared he was not going to school. Perhaps not ever again. Parents can generally tell when a child is trying it on, reasonably serious or absolutely committed. Monty was absolutely, positively, definitively committed to his course of action, which surprised us because he is not ordinarily that committed to anything… except terrariums.
It was rather quickly apparent that there was to be no negotiation. Not even the desperate and reckless offer of a Crunchie Bar before breakfast made any impact. Nope, this was to be a forced relocation.
So, dressed in aforementioned enormous prawn suit, I scooped Monty out of bed and hoisted him, kicking, screaming and clawing into the air while Kuepps dressed him. I then carried him out into the wild weather and plopped him into the car. The hastily, and not particularly well conceived plan was for Monty and Kuepps to drive really slowly next to Milo and I while we walked the 10 or so minutes to school.
Milo could not have been happier. Torrents of water tumbled down the overflowing gutters, he was using his umbrella to collect water, not shield himself from it, and he was splashing from deep puddle to deeper puddle. My feeble attempts to dissuade this behaviour were fruitless. I had the agility, speed and influence of, well, a giant inflatable prawn. I was helpless.
So by the time we arrived at school Milo was beaming with joy but absolutely, absolutely drenched. Kuepps opened Monty’s door and he was still bellowing at the same volume as if no time had passed at all. It reminded me of that scene from Ace Ventura where he stands on the balcony yelling in a very Jim Carrey way as he opens and closes the ‘double-paned sound proof’ sliding door. Noisy, not noisy, noisy.
So, I scooped him up again, pinching and grappling, and we waddled with as much haste as possible across the street to their school, Milo trying his best to keep Bob’s tail out of puddles.
Ultimately we managed to deposit both children into their respective classrooms (with spare clothes in their bags and smiles of relief on our faces) and escape the school grounds relatively unscathed.
This afternoon we explained sex to Milo and Monty. The way the subject came up is one of the most Milo things that has ever happened.
At school today one of his class-mates was delivering a ‘persuasive argument’ as to why a motorbike is better than a quad bike. The conversation progressed naturally among the class until one of his friends offered, by way of support for the counter argument, that she had previously ridden on a quad bike and it was great, although the bike she had ridden had six wheels, not four.
Milo, never able to abide inaccuracy or a missed opportunity to demonstrate knowledge, put up his hand and said technically its six wheels would make it a ‘sex bike’, not a quad bike. Much hilarity ensued. Milo knew he had said something amusing, and so laughed along, but it was not at all clear to him what he was laughing about. Of course upon arriving home he sought clarification from his parents, and here we are.
It is so obvious in hindsight that the numerical prefix for 6 was always going to be the way our eldest child was introduced to sex.
Quickly we have learned there are many questions in this place for which there is only one answer.
“Why is there a giant black beetle riding a green tree frog on our driveway?” #becausedarwin
“Why is there a python dangling from our front porch eating some kind of lizard?” #becausedarwin
“Woah, why did we get home so quickly?” #becausedarwin
“Why does that restaurant sell laksa pizza?” #becausedarwin
“Why don’t I groom anymore?” #becausedarwin
“Why am I sweating under water?” #becausedarwin
“Why does my lemonade taste like mosquito?” #becausedarwin
“Why does that guy whose name appears to be Dan have his first name ‘Dan’ as his numberplate? Why does he need that? Doesn’t he know his name is Dan already? Why do I need to know his name is Dan?” #becausedarwin
“Why am I wearing a tie-dyed shirt at work on a Tuesday with three buttons undone?” #becausedarwin
It has become a common refrain in our home and the boys enjoy its use a great deal; “Milo, why haven’t you brushed your teeth?” … because Darwin dad.
THE LOLLYPOP GUY
I feel there is likely to be a whole series of these, as the weird becomes the norm… but I’ll start with this one, which is our best example of the genre to date.
On the last day of the Flamingo episode the school crossing lollypop guy asked me for a photograph. We had been engaging in fragmented conversation all week, but standing in the middle of a school crossing dressed as a flamingo is not the best locale for properly breaking the ice. I responded with general positivity about the concept of the photograph and hustled the boys forward, but by the time I returned he had gone, or I had removed Kevin, or a combination of the two.
The following week as I sat in a coffee shop not far from the school, the lollypop guy walked past and, somehow recognising me as Kevin’s chaperone, sat down. We chatted for a few minutes as I laid out the general ethos of Flamingo Parenting when, all of a sudden, I noticed a giant poster of his face sitting conveniently just over his shoulder about 20 metres away. It was framed perfectly. I did one of those non-sensical ‘point at picture, then point at person, then point at picture again’ routines, whilst looking baffled and intrigued.
“Oh yeah, I am the local member of Parliament” he said nonchalantly.
#becausedarwin
More to come.
Because in Darwin the Post Office workers are pretty confident they know everybody who visits by sight
Two Fridays ago Milo came home with a recorder. A State-sanctioned, State-endorsed, State-sponsored recorder. We have to pay $7 for Happy Healthy Harold but recorders are deemed so essential they are prioritised in the budget and provided to all. I received a recorder in year 3, you received a recorder in year 3, we ALL received a recorder in year 3. Where did this intergenerational torture come from and why does it persist?
A recorder is a shit instrument in so many ways. Unless a child plans to host medieval banquets as an adult, mastering it gets them nowhere. It is so temperamental that if the applied pressure is off by half a hecto-pascal (I know this is a unit of pressure from a childhood spent watching local weather reports and presume it also the correct unit of measure for recorder playing) the sound moves quickly from accurate (but still pretty shit) to absolutely ear-splitting in a nano-second. Because it is so boring to play properly, every single practice session moves from Hot Cross Buns to ‘damage all those tiny important bones in my parents’ ears’ within 35 seconds. It is so transportable that I don’t even know it has come in the car with us until the sound is blasting those little wispy hairs that I only just discovered off my ear-lobes.
Also, why does every song sound the same? Hot Cross Buns? Mary Had a Little Lamb? Jingle Bells? On the recorder – same song.
One of the downsides of owning a record player is that the boys enjoy playing 33s at 45 speed and vice versa. One of their favourites is playing Taylor Swift 33s at 45, like a Taylor Chipmunk. They call her Saylor Sift and these days she features on the rotation more regularly than Taylor. Saylor is not bad actually, once you get used to her, and much much better than 45 Taylor played at 33 – Maylor Mift. She is melancholy and depressing, and makes you think bad things are just over the horizon. Anyway, recently Milo has started playing his recorder along to Saylor Sift. It is absolutely as awful as it sounds.
I do actually want some answers. I presume at some point an education department apparatchik forgot to carry the one and signed off on a vastly larger contract with ‘big recorder’ than they intended. And knowing, as we all know, that you don’t mess with ‘big recorder’ we are all still paying for this mistake.
Days, or at most weeks from now, all of these thousands of new recorders will mysteriously vanish, as so many millions have vanished before them. But in the meantime parents across the country are shaking their fists, covering their ears, and yelling frequently, and irrationally at their children who are gleefully shattering the peace all in the name of ‘music homework’.
No, I did not expect my first four posts of 2023 to start with the word flamingo. I’m as surprised as anyone.
Milo’s class chose their representative to the school council this week. Interested students needed to prepare a one minute speech supporting their candidacy, and deliver it to the class just before recess. To my surprise and delight Milo enthusiastically said he would like to have a go and so hand-wrote himself a short speech which he drafted and redrafted until he was happy with the tone and content. Given this was his first ever speech we practised it five or six times so he could get the timing of his jokes just right, and so he could make sure he could read his own hand-writing at the critical moment. He also wrote “SLOW DOWN” in big letters at the top to remind himself to take his time. The whole process was about as adorable as it gets.
Milo’s pitch had two prongs.
The first was to begin a campaign to change the awful school bell/ music. This needs some explanation. At the boys’ new school there is no bell. Instead there is a rather strange musical mash-up (which must impinge upon multiple copyrights) which they pump through the tinny, mono speakers for about 10 minutes before the school day begins. Most of it is indecipherable but through the haze one can recognise Frozen, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, possibly bits of Tim Minchin’s musical Matilda and maybe (at least subliminally) a hint of Crazy Frog. It is weird to say the least, and somewhat eerie. It feels like the music that might be played inside a bomb shelter, through the air-raid speakers, at the end of the world.
Prong number 2 was an undertaking, via his inside connection, to bring Kevin the Flamingo back in term 2.
These two big campaign promises, I think, demonstrate a better understanding of the electorate’s wants and needs than either major political party in Australia. And the fact that Milo has already secured agreement on the second promise shows a political nous beyond his years.
So I dropped the boys off at school, wished Milo good luck and went for a coffee to settle my nerves. Whilst sipping my coffee I was greeted by the school crossing guy who requested a photograph of Kevin last week. He sat for a few minutes and we chatted. As it turns out he is our local member of Parliament (#becausedarwin). He asked a few more questions about Kevin and I told him about Milo’s speech. He was impressed and I could tell he was considering how Kevin (or Milo) might be able to help him in future campaigns.
At pickup it was clear right away that Milo had not been voted in by his peers. He said the speech had gone well, that he had enjoyed it, but that it hadn’t worked out. He seemed disappointed but not crushed. I felt terrible for him and said all sorts of things at once; I’m so proud of you for even trying in your second week, It’s hard because many of them might not know your name yet, Don’t worry there’ll be so many more opportunities in future, Did I mention I am proud of you? He eventually gave me the ‘shoosh dad’ face and said he was okay. He then said perhaps we need to stay in Darwin a few more years so he can have another go.
All of this got me thinking about how easy it is to dispense advice to our children, and how not so easy it is to live by that advice ourselves. I do it all the time.
Well, I actually wrote a picture book quite some time ago, based on this blog, which tells the story of a dad who spends six months at home with his first son. He is apprehensive at first but he figures out a few tricks and ends up having the time of his life. My very talented friend and parenting co-conspirator Alex has been illustrating it, but for some reason I have really been dragging my heels about doing anything with it, for years. Fear of failure is, I am sure, a big part of it.
But I think if my 8 year old can stand up in front of 20 mostly-strangers in his second week and promise them new school music and a plastic inflatable flamingo named Kevin then I, as a fully grown adult human, can muster the courage to send a manuscript to a few publishers.
Having achieved Flamingo Fame there wasn’t much left for Kevin to do on Friday except stand still for the pats and cuddles that rained down upon him from the many students with whom he is now on a first name basis.
Everybody continued to be delighted with Kevin, including the school crossing guy who finally asked for a photograph. Except, that is, for the principal who demonstrated great enthusiasm on day one but perhaps has softened on the whole shamozzle as the week has gone on. She apparated next to us more than once and said things like “you’re still a flamingo I see”, no doubt hopeful this general distraction may soon come to an end.
As we were leaving the school on Friday afternoon a teacher walked over to us and said Kevin had made her first week. She was new, just a month in Darwin, and Kevin had helped keep her smiling all week. She said that she was previously unaware of this Northern Territory tradition but that she liked it very much. We explained we were also new and we all agreed, if not a tradition yet, Kevin should become so.
Kevin waddled home, pleased with his week’s work; a little twisted and saggy but still most recognisably a flamingo. Over Frosty Fruits on the way home Milo, ever the accountant, noted that I had promised him a week and that technically I had only delivered four days, given the Tuesday start. My mind on the apparating principal, I rejected Milo’s position, noting the spirit of the deal had been satisfied if not the precise details.
Given this argument has worked with our eldest son exactly zero times over the 8.5 year span of his life, it was not entirely surprising to see it a) not work and b) drive him into a spontaneous decline. Sensing the moment, acknowledging the very positive week we had just had, and recognising the overarching objective of Kevin’s adventure in the first place, Nicole (my wife) adroitly stepped to the plate and agreed to wear Kevin for a final fling on Monday. The children cheered, Kevin looked up from his deflated pile, shrugged his shoulders and said “why not?” Because that’s the kind of flamingo Kevin is.
So on Monday, Nicole donned the luminescent flamingo and wore it very well. The jockey legs were still miserable and flimsy, but they were perhaps slightly better proportioned to her body. It’s still unlikely anybody really thought she had ridden a flamingo to school, but it’s more possible. We did enjoy some renewed honks from passers-by, some fresh positivity from the stew of drop-off parents, and new smirks from the boys’ teachers.
Most importantly Milo and Monty were satisfied that Kevin’s adventure had come to an end. He was gently hung on his hanger, hugged once more and flung into the cupboard. So, perhaps now there really are only 510 more Kevin journeys to go.
Although as a wise friend of mine, and father of two older boys, pointed out – if he were to try to take his more grown up boys to school dressed as a flamingo tomorrow, they would never let him take them to school again. So perhaps this is Kevin’s future; as the years drift by, the boys’ attitudes to us and the public wearing of inflatable exotic birds shift, he might morph from a comforter, an ice breaker, to a threat. If you don’t go to school today I will dress up as Kevin and walk next to you! And Kevin will be pulled out of the cupboard, mouldy, patched up with emergency electrical tape, and we will shake him at the boys as a cautionary tale, as we hustle them out the door.
Who knows.
Either way, Kevin is family now and his story is not yet done.
Jupiter & Sons 