Fish Out of Order, Daily Edition

Well, MY dad battles the forces of evil

If there's one thing Australia does well, it's producing a large number of spiny and poisonous things. One of the spiny things, which amongst those in the know is essentially thought of as Satan's prickle assaulted my bike tyres a few days ago. The tyres were so thoroughly pierced (while, I might add, I was riding humbly upon my metal steed across the footpaths of suburbia, where one does not expect to be assaulted so¹) that they were rendered unsalvageable.

They were only two weeks old, too.

The tyres, I mean. Not the prickles. The prickles were surely forged at the birth of the universe, coated with impenetrable matter as yet unknown to modern science, wrapped around a core of hot melty evil. Like a Snickers bar that JUST MURDERED YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY. But with thorns on.

While I was regaling my father with this tale of woe, he remarked that I should return to the site where the villainy took place while wearing thick thongs upon my feet, where I could then locate the source of the localised evil and collect it in the soles of my shoes.

While the daddy was, in fact, joking, at the same time it is no stretch of the imagination for me to visualise him doing just that, and rather enjoying it, too.

And that's one of the reasons why I love my dad.

(It also helps that he looks like a retired Gordon Freeman.)

¹ Unless, of course, one has the misfortune of living in Queens Park

Filed under // family hillarity ensues

Give me the words and I will understand

My dad conducted several IQ and personality tests on me while I was growing up. It happens, when your father is studing for his Masters in Psychology.

I loved it. I treasure those hours I spent with my father filling out questionaires, solving logic puzzles, pulling out obscure facts I'd learned. He was always so pleased when I ranked considerably above average for every test he threw at me. That was back in the days when I never had to study to do well in school, back in the days where my brain was a sponge that dribbled facts and stories every waking moment. Those days lasted until I was about 16, when suddenly I couldn't breeze through school on what I remembered from class alone.

When I was younger, though, the world continuously fed me everything I needed to know, and more. My mother was a primary school teacher, and she had shelves and shelves of books on every question a child could ever ask. I began reading young, and before I iht double digits I'd read throughout the history of the Tudors, gazed in fascination at Mayan calendars and poured over illustrations of the inside of an eyeball.

When the internet came, I was perfectly primed. Hours were spent pouring over scans of someone's old issues of Doctor Who magazine from the UK. Wave files were downloaded at a painfully low rate, volume on my tinny speakers set to max so I could just make sense of a fuzzy, glitchy soundbyte.

I enjoy nothing more than pouring over reams of information, diving into a sea of facts and research, and coming out with a summary at the end for my own use. Nowadays, visiting someone's blog is like consulting the oracles, interpreting their cryptic messages for my own unusual quests.

Ever since I was very small, I wanted to be a writer. To contribute to that enormous font of wisdom and comedy and fact-gathering.

So here I am. Practising.

Filed under // family writing

Posted by Wendy White

Comments [0]

Contributors

Tags

family

Well, MY dad battles the forces of evil

Give me the words and I will understand