Get a job, why doncha!

As I jiggled and hopped around with Louise later that evening I began to realise that the affair with Bridget was always doomed. I had been lusting above my station. Bridget was too posh. Louise was more 'my type', as my mother would say. And I began to see she was right. Somebody more 'your type' has more empathy with you.

As a concession to honesty, I explained to Louise what I'd done and why, and she said she understood my need to avenge myself on the stuck-up Bridget. I felt better straight away. I warmed to her. And as she smiled at me in the noisy, smoky darkness, it looked like we had something.

Of course, I wasn't sure whether it was for better or worse but I decided to make the best of what I had. So I started calling Louise every now and then, just to say hello and thanks. Then, for whatever reason that drove me to do it, I started to apply the ‘formula’, so that after a few weeks, I found myself telling Louise that I liked her. Next it was “I really like you's” each day a day for a week or so, hopefully leading up to an “I think I love you” that would probably put me in good for a grope, or maybe something a little bit more, er.... exciting. I do find it hard to stop myself once I get rolling on a formula.

Only this time, before I got in over my head, my brain actually started working. After the “lust-rushes” subsided, or were appeased - if you know what I mean - I gradually began to realise that I wasn't happy about what I was doing. True, Louise was very nice, and a female. But also true was the fact that I had used her to save myself from total humiliation, and, while something a little more than “thanks” would have been appropriate, forcing myself to 'love' her for it was taking gratitude a bit too far. And taking the … er … 'gratuities' a little dishonestly. I took a lesson from history - the Yanks might have bailed us out of the second world war, but we still don’t love them for it. I gave myself a number of mental slaps in the face, and, having woken up, made a decision not to lie to the poor girl in order to secure my emotional comforts.

This was my first awareness of this kind of independence. Even if it was not intellectually derived, but guilt-driven, it was still an evolutionary step forward. Mind you, while I told no more lies about being in love with Louise, I also did not tell the truth - that I didn't love her. No point in burning your canoe as well as your bridges.

What was even stranger, the seed of an idea about being a little more emotionally independent started me thinking about other kinds of independence and, before I knew it, I’d started thinking about moving out of home and becoming financially independent.

While this is a perfectly natural and actively-encouraged life progression in the animal kingdom - according to what I learned from the TV - it is not always music to the ears of the lower-end of the higher-apes part of the realm. My announcement to the family that I was thinking of leaving the nest met with a mixed reception. Mum flipped out, screaming and frothing at the mouth as she usually does when I make “announcements”, but Dad was a different kettle of kippers. At first, his face displayed anger to the point of violence, but then, to my surprise, he cracked a sarcastic grin and said that maybe it was a good idea and he would be happy to help get me out of the house.

In ten minutes he had a bed fixed up for me in the shed. He'd put the dog's rug on a couple of bags of manure that would serve as a mattress, a bucket of water for an ensuite and, for my own personal safety, he added a security system: a padlock on the outside which he said he would set at night for me.
"Father," I said firmly, but not too firmly, “I want to get a job to earn my own money and look after myself!" To which my father suggested that I should remain on the dole and leave the work force alone as it's in enough trouble already, and forget about looking after my self as it was impossible for the two of them to manage that monumental task so how the hell was I going to do it by myself!

But, I was determined to paddle my own canoe up the creek of my own choosing and, with that resolve, I went, at the earliest opportunity, for my driver's licence (which didn’t seem to want my possessing it) and, once “licensed to kill”, I applied for a job as a parcel delivery driver, something I reckoned I could do one-handed.

I feel that I could pass on a little bit of experience here to others going for this kind of job — parcel deliver is a job that could probably be done one-handed, providing you’re not doing something stupid with the other hand. But the most important lesson I learned was never to leave a tennis ball resting on the seat when you are driving a van… or a car, I suppose, as the mode of operation is similar.

I was of an age and mental development where I was a little over-concerned about my body image. I was scrawny with arms like pigeon legs. So… while driving the van around the city, I had been squeezing a tennis ball in alternating hands to build up some strength and put some shape into my arms. And they say ego is not a dirty word. Well, maybe it’s not dirty but it does dim your senses somewhat. I kept that ball on me at all times, squeezing every opportunity that presented a free hand. But not swinging the steering wheel to get the van out of the courier company’s yard - that would be unsafe. I rested the ball on the seat to apply two hands to the wheel, not realising that the slightest amount of braking would cause the ball to roll off the seat and onto the floor where it could get caught under the pedals.

Have you ever tried to remove a tennis ball from under the brake pedal while you're trying to stop a car? It's an extremely difficult thing to do and would need some practice to do it well. Unfortunately for me, and the van, that was my first time.

And it was the last time, as well. Later, I thought of going back to the company to ask if they would return the ball as it was my favourite, but it took them so long to finish fixing up the van - and paying for all the other cars I pranged into - that it eventually slipped my mind.

That wasn't a good start to my financial independence but, Louise, with whom I was now occasionally - and guiltily, I may add - “hooking the velcro”, came to my rescue again. Her father ran a large cycle courier business and she said he mentioned they needed some new riders. All of a sudden, driving a parcel van seemed to lose its glamour - it was a dead-end job to me. I had found a career path that went further than the front gate and I began to see myself as an Olympic champion cyclist - thanks to my rigorous training as a cycle courier - and so, was determined to be at the top of the queue for the position the next day.

I was very keen to get that job and my brain was heaving and churning, trying to speculate on my chances of success while, at the same time, working on my race strategy and Olympic acceptance speech. It knotted itself so much that it must have squeezed my proper mind up into a higher plane of existence where it was able to work unencumbered by my mental wrangling. And when it came back to me, it had a brilliant plan to help me get the job, the gold medal for cycling and a lucrative, less strenuous further career endorsing sports drinks that taste like camel’s piss.

The nest morning, while all the other hopefuls were shuffling slowly forward on a carpet of chewed-off nail parings, I rode my pushbike into the cycle courier company’s office, right up to the receptionist’s desk, and delivered an “important and urgent” envelope for the personnel manager who had to sign for it, personally, while I waited, decked in the guise of a cycle courier, I might add. I suppose I don’t need to add that the envelope contained my highly fictional but “well-writted” resume.

Actually, before we go any further, I should point out that I don’t really know what camels’ piss tastes like. I just assumed those drinks would taste like camels’ piss because the way some of them smell makes me think of the camel enclosure at the zoo. Or the monkey’s enclosure, I can’t remember for sure.
Anyway, the stunt worked. The poor fool thought he was employing the city’s most sought-after cycle courier and, in a funny way, that ended up being the truth of it.

The first thing I did after getting the job was to study the street directory until I knew it like the back of my hand and it was then that I encountered a small problem — I obviously didn’t know my hands all that well. In fact, I still don’t and sometimes get them mixed up when I wash them. It's not an easy thing to do but I manage it.

As I had decided that being a cycle courier was going to be a “serious commitment” career, I thought I should get a map of the main roads tattooed on the back of my hand for easy reference while cycling around town. As my enthusiasm and ambition grew, I began to consider getting a map of the highway system of Australia done on my thighs (in two halves of course. The map I mean, my thighs are already separate) for longer trips. I knocked that idea on the head when somebody pointed out that Adelaide would have to get tattooed on a particularly sensitive part of my upper, upper leg region, and eventually settled for a sketching a rough layout of the city’s streets on my knuckles with a marking pen.
Then I squeezed myself into tight black and flouro yellow lycra pants and vest, and off I went, flinging parcels, cheesy grins and beads of perspiration at secretaries all over town.

What I loved best about the job was zipping between the lines of traffic. I used to cut it so fine I wore the bicycle pedals - and my ankles - down to short stubs from scraping the car doors.
I became so good at getting around town that I started thinking I could do it blindfolded. I tried it once but it took me three hours to find my bike. Then when I took off the blindfold I realised I had been trying to pedal some bloke in a wheelchair backwards down the footpath. I was wondering why the bell sounded a bit strange when I tried to ring it.

All things considered I think over-confidence was my downfall, so to speak. I noticed that with all the pedalling I was doing my thighs were pumping up, making me look like I'd done something fluffy in my pants that couldn't get out past the elastic knee-band. I know all champion cyclists look like this but I didn’t want to so I began to rest my legs a bit by holding on to the back of delivery trucks that were going my way. In no time at all I had that down to a fine art.

I would hang on to the back of a semi-trailer when I wanted to deliver big parcels and when I had to run letters and documents around I would find a postman on a motor scooter and latch onto his collar, an idea that wasn’t always successful.

Anyway, there I was one day, hanging on to the back of an express delivery truck, reading my favourite Duckman comic that I had draped over the handlebars, when an awful thing happened - my brake lever got caught in the ropes that were holding down the load on the delivery truck. For about ten minutes I was expressed around town to many places that were not on my schedule, yelling at the top of my voice, losing my comic and smashing my leg in three places: Victoria Square, North Terrace and Port Road.
The truck was going at about 80 k's when the brake lever gave up and I departed from the vehicle on a tangent, which is another word for “like the clappers”. My bike stopped suddenly at the kerb, catapulting me away at a breakneck speed, and it's only thanks to a lovely old couple who were sitting with their bags of shopping in a bus shelter that I didn't break my neck, for they caught me as I flew through the air.

It took them a bit by surprise, actually. With the noise I was making as I sailed towards them, they were craning their necks looking for a fire engine when I smacked into both of them.

By the time the police and the ambulance arrived the old couple had just about beat me senseless with their groceries. The lady was pelting me with olives and the old gentleman was earnestly walloping me with a large garlic salami — I can still smell it now as I think about it.

The old couple were held in the same hospital as I was for a while, just for observation and a bit of calming down. I thought about hobbling down to their ward to thank them before they left but I decided to wait until the hospital dentists pried the gentleman’s false choppers off one of my runners so the old bloke could smile at me when I returned them but, they were released before I could visit them.
Speaking of visitors, I was a big hit with some Greek and Italian families who loved the way I smelled so strongly of garlic and they took me to their hearts, which was a bit different to my lifeless family. When they visited me they stood at the door, complaining of the odour, and threw a few hard-centred chocolates at me in between reading some of the previous year’s idiot rags from the magazine table.

Through Louise, I learned that the courier company suggested I should not bother hurrying back which suited me fine. Then I didn’t see Louise for some time but read something interesting in the paper that may have had some bearing on that particular situation. It seemed that Louise's father's company was in trouble because one of their bicycle couriers delivered some extremely confidential documents, relating to some company or other, to the offices of a rival company and was in too much of a hurry to get the docket signed for. The culprit was in for a corporate flogging if they could find him but it appeared that they were having difficulty identifying the rider because his signature at the pick-up point looked like nothing short of an “X” with one stroke missing.

I’d found that I could actually sign for some of those things like that and get away with it because I was gone before anyone could check it. It saved about one and a half seconds. However, in this case, as I read it, I thought perhaps I should stay out of circulation while the problem was being sorted out.
And “sorted out” it was. Or at least, Louise’s dad was, I guessed, because Louise never called or came to see me. And I would have loved to have seen her one more time before they went to work in India as missionaries or something after losing the their house, money and personal possessions in the corporate litigation that followed the improper delivery of those documents.

Anyway, the whole experience taught me a very valuable lesson; never accept a job that someone offers you - they always expect too much of you.

o-0-o

To Chapter 3 - All Creatures Great and Small

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