It starts somewhere

Even school......... I'm not sure why school appealed to me. Later in life it didn't. Learning did, and still does, but school itself lost appeal. Too many pitfalls to get in the way of pure learning.

So it's the beginning of the 80's and I live directly across the road from school. It's an infants school. Only prep through year 2. So no bigger kids. I'm really in support of these broken up environments, although it won't matter in the modern internet connected world.

So I'm standing around in the lounge room, the whole family is there, I mean literally. We had grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunties, Little Kal and cousin Wayne heading off to school for the first time was a big occasion.
We got on our uniforms and then they brought our bags, brand new backpacks for each of us. Identical except for colour. I had a bright red one and Wayne had a blue one.
They were upright, square and had a single clip. It was like an airline seatbelt, a HUGE clasp but we did like that it had a reflector built into it, like one off the back of your bike. Truly school was going to be an awesome experience with a start like this.

Across the road we went, and up the hill, this hill would amaze me daily for years. It was so so steep and about 50m top to bottom, quite a workout for little legs.

We were lined up into grades, boys and girls in seperate lines (which no-one complained about at the time) and we moved into classrooms and learnt the basics. Who our teacher would be and how things worked.

I don't know if it was a private school or not, but we had hot lunches. We paid for them, but you could order a pie or a sausage roll in the morning before school and at lunch it would be brought out to you. And they were beautiful, I still remember how they tasted and it's why I'm so picky about meat pies today even. You can't beat those.

Mrs Irish was the teacher for Prep and year 1, she was dark haired and very sweet. Genuinely loved all of us and remembered everyone.
She recognised me on sight when I came back to visit when I was 10. And later 21.Now that's devotion.
I did not look the same each decade that passed.

There are some key things that stand out from the infants school.
Highlights

• A school play about a magic department store or a fifty cent piece ( it's a little blurry, but I played a cat and had to "meow" 3 lines)
• A fancy dress parade where I went as a Tea Bag
• Alcohol based photocopies. ( I didn't know they used alocohol back then obviously, but they were purple and smelt awful, but whenever you smelt it you knew you were getting a handout)

We used to play a lot of games, every lunch break we would gather in our little groups and let our imaginations run wild.
I remember Louise, who I planned to marry wanted to play "flying horses" which consisted of everyone being given a flying horse name and running down or across the hill as fast as you could with your arms stretched out. As far as I recall I was the only boy in the game. All of the other flying horses were girls.......I guess I liked women from an early age.

One of the other games we played consisted of an incredible journey. You can guess where we got this idea from. There was a play gym shaped like a long arch, this was used to simulate the teeth. And we the scientific explorers would enter through the throat and make sure this person was ok.
We knew all about how it worked, the "Life education" van came by every few months and taught us about organs and the important stuff.

I remember one day being pulled out of my line and moved to another. I told Mrs Irish I was in the wrong line, but she said I belonged in the new one. I was apparently too smart. The prep class was not going to be good for me, because i could read already. I'd learnt from Sesame Street and kids tv and then rehearsed it from my sister's books. I used to listen to her read them to mum and I'd memorise them.
Then I'd take the books and read them myself, working out the words matched with what was said.
A big start for a small boy.
Unfortunately this would be my only step up in the world. Moved ahead a single grade, forever destined to be smaller and younger than my classmates.
Never again in my school years would my intellect be pushed towards something greater......

Things carried on at the school in normal fashion. My sister and I continued to spend alternate weekends with my Nana.

Nana's house was at the top of a nearby hill. It was enormous, swimming pool, many bedrooms, floor to cieling windows etc, years later this went from being a nice house to a sign of wealth as I learnt more. But I'll discuss Nana's house in depth later.

I never really liked peanut butter. I mean from the start I didn't enjoy it and one day my lunch got mixed up. I had my sister's sandwiches by mistake, too late. She had eaten the vegemite ones. I had nothing to do but take them home.

This was an important lesson in life. Mum was annoyed that I brought them home. So I got in trouble for wasting them, even though I clearly hadn't been responsible for the mistake.
Next day I was sent to school with a note and some sandwiches.
Lunch time arrives and I'm pulled aside and sat at a table with a peanut butter sandwich.
It was cut up and I was made to eat it. I felt horribly sick and I cried. I was forced to eat this sandwich I didn't like. For no reason. Alternatives were available, there was no reason I should be made to do this.

So I learnt that people react to things and make demands.Even if they have no reason to.

Lesson learnt: In my life I do not make people do things for no reason. I have staff under me, I have managed businesses and I am a father. I make decisions for a reason and can rationalise all of them. Don't do things to the people in your life you can't justify.

I learnt to tie my shoelaces in the back of the car. We were going to get an ice cream and I undid them and kept trying to get them tied again, I eventually did it 20 minutes later. It would be years before I could do it consistently. Until 12 I wore Velcro or tied knots in them.
One of those strange things I just didn't get how to do.

Does it matter what I couldnt do? I'm only a guest.

Who am I really?

I know there's questions on who I am.
I know some people who read this, and they don't know it's me. I've even been passed the link....

So let's go back to the beginning..... All the way back to the beginning. Because who I am is not a name. It isn't a photograph. It's me. All of me.

The earliest I can remember clearly is sitting at home watching sesame street. I was too young to go to school, and I was waiting for my older sister to come home. My mother was in the kitchen making apple crumble, which I didn't eat, but I loved helping make it. Breaking up biscuits to go in the bowl, watching Mum peel the apples, the apple peel reaching to the floor in one long spiral.
This was in Murwillumbah, the small town I grew up in.

It was a beautiful house, and I lived there, right next to the Pacific Motorway with my mother, father, and older sister. Years later I would find out unsettling things about this. But for now, these were the occupants.

My room was at the back of the house, and I had 2 windows, one looking out the backyard and onto acres of canefields. And the other looked across at the neighbour's house.
You may think I had a noisy home, but we didn't. Carpetted floors and lots of room kept the noise we all made to ourselves, and the houses opposite the freeway were down a hill, so any noise from cars and trucks simply went over us.

Our loungeroom was large, and on the front corner of the house. Exactly opposite my room. I used to sit in there and play games on some video game system we had, or I would watch movies or listen to records.
My favourite videotape had film clips on it.
Some I knew for sure we watched are :
Summer Loving - Grease SOundtrack
We built this city - Starship

I loved the film clip for starship, these enormous cities I had never seen before, people dancing and singing on the street, and being chased by enormous fluffy dice, rolling down the road behind them.
I was hooked, it was loud and wild and incredibly exciting.
The presence of Starship places us in 1985, I was 6 at this stage, so firmly going to school.
It's difficult to piece things together at this point, there are 27 years of memories to sort, and at that age, MANY MANY things were of no significance to me.

While we are looking at music, I used to go to my Nana's house every second weekend. (we took it in turns) and she used to let me watch one of her video's.
It was a Tom Jones concert. Tom sang and danced around a huge fancy stage with some scantily clad women. I think this is one of the moments that defined where I see women.

They were beautiful, stunningly so, like you would imagine a pile of gold and jewels. I remember thinking how happy they all looked. They were dressed up (I knew this wasn't normaly daywear from things I saw) and they were so happy. Tom made them happy, they were happy singing and dancing and I loved them all.
Also worth noting, and I'm very confident of this, none of them were sticks. Real women, they had curves, which I would come to appreciate later in life......... But I was enthralled with them and their feathers and glitter and jewels.

I wanted one day to give women jewels, and feathers and glittery underwear (I don't think this one works anymore) and to make them happy. Didn't everyone deserve to be happy.

So there I was, no more than 8 years old, enthralled at watching Tom dance and sing and suddenly the flood started. Water was pouring down the stage Tom was on, It cascaded down the stairs, missed the women by inches, missed Tom, washed away a little bridge he'd just danced across and carried on.

Now THAT's showmanship.

Tomorrow we go to school.
It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, it is unusual to be only a guest.

How do you tell

Someone Kal know's thinks they've changed.
They've grown up, moved on and become a bigger person.

I don't think they have. I think it's a game, a deadly dangerous game with their life and someone elses.

There are things I count as being an adult, that contistute growing up.

Responsibility is first. For everything you do. I don't make excuses. I don't beg for forgiveness, all of my mistakes are my own. I am the one who was late. I am the one who didnt return the call. It's all my fault.

And consideration. How does what I'm doing affect someone else. It does, and you know it does.

If you can't follow either of those, then you have not grown up and it's unfair of you to declare that you have.

One person in particular, has regressed as far as I can see.
Spending your time with irresponsible people and taking actions to hurt someone does not a grown up make.

Do you hear me? Grow up and act like the adult you claim to be. Stop hiding behind excuses.
How's that for directness....


And while my mood sits as bitter as it does, what the hell is wrong with the average person. Why can't a decent conversation be held....Why can't the truth be told.........

I gave a speech last weekend, which I sorely missed. Maybe I should move back into a speaking job, I love talking and the deep voice of Kal overpowers all.

Then again.......why get a job I'd enjoy. I'm only a guest.

Foot Steps

Often life is about following in foot steps.
We strive to follow those in front, whether it be a relative, a teacher or a self chosen hero.

But often the steps we follow the most, the hardest steps to follow are the little things. Something small being done by someone we know and we can't follow it.
For some people this is something like not being able to say "I love you" back to a partner and for others its simply being monogamous...

For me............I don't think I've found it.

I beleive in honesty, brutal and forward.
Yet I can't break someone's trust.

If I KNOW someone is going to be hurt, how do you ruin one friends impression of you to save anothers. Does it matter if he will never find out I knew in advance...

Inside it does. I know the mistakes. I know the errors. I know the time I havent spoken out.

I'm afraid to defend a friend who was verbally attacked.
The office environment I am in is malicious and evil. It's a genuinely harmful place to work.
Constantly at one another's throats, the pack of jackals seeks a new throat to devour.
So she was the target.
First how she spoke, then something she did, and as they continued on self reinforcing, supporting one another's claims, they needed to stay in the game...

Like most bitter and self righteous attacks they lost focus. Suddenly the issue was that she had helped. She had done something of her own free will and of no harm to anyone. And they all finally had the same point.

It was raised again 4 times. The same point. The same comments, and not once did it sound like she had done something wrong. If you're curious what she did?

She made 4 phone calls from home. 4 calls to find the right company a customer needed.

Is this where we live in? Is this the world I want to be a part of?

I cannot change the actions of others, I cannot make others see the error of their ways.
And sadly I cannot speak up when someone I cared about is being ravaged by the jackals.

The superman has let the world down again.
Suddenly I feel not so super.
Would anyone else notice I didnt speak up? I'm only a guest.