Spaghetti Legs

by John Larkin

  ‘Eric, if somebody asks whether I’m your sister, deny it!’

  ‘Okay, Thing. As long as you do the same.’

  About an hour later all the new year seven students and their proud parents were sitting in the school auditorium generally beaming at each other and being waffled at by various speech makers.

  ‘Why do these things drag on so much?’ Mr Underwood was eager to get his sons sorted out and head to the golf course.

  ‘Quiet, Roger! This person is very interesting. He’s been given the key to the door of the city.’

  Mr Underwood turned to Eric. ‘The way the crime rate is going, maybe they should have given him the crowbar to the window instead.’

  Eventually the speeches ground to a halt and the students simultaneously tried to clear out at once to avoid being kissed by their parents.

  Eric gave Paul a high five, told his mother to enjoy her day off, and warned his father about the fairway bunker on the sixteenth, before he joined his new classmates in the higher halls of learning.

  ‘All right, all right, settle down!’ said the teacher as his new students took their seats. This confused them slightly because they weren’t making a sound.

  Mr Lawrence was forty-five, fat, and a lot of fun. He wore a permanent smile around his lips and a brightly coloured bow tie around his neck.

  Eric was glad that he got Mr Lawrence as one of his teachers. He had heard all about him from Iggy and Jenny.

  According to them, Mr Lawrence had fought in the Vietnam War. Rumour had it that he was injured by one of those anti-personnel mine things. And if the rumour was true, he arrived back from the so-called ‘policing action’ minus his sexuality.

  Mr Lawrence was probably the most popular teacher in the school. Apart from being an absolute cack, he’d once stood up to three bikies who were hassling a year eleven girl down the bottom oval. Apparently he held all three of them in a headlock while the four male PE teachers went to phone the police. They were such wimps. Mr Lawrence may not have had any testicles, but he certainly had a lot of balls.

  ‘Oh, you’re not making any noise. Well, one of us was, it must have been me then. All right, that’s afternoon detention for me, and if I do it again I’ll have to send myself to the principal’s office.’

  A couple of his students laughed, while a few more looked at him as if he were mad.

  Eric was one of the ones who laughed, having been brought up on his father’s sense of humour, which was very similar.

  ‘My name is Lawrence of Arcadia. No it’s not. Let me just check my notes here a minute.’ Mr Lawrence fumbled with some folders and bits of paper on his desk. Some of the more nervous students started to relax.

  ‘Ahh here it is. My name, according to the available evidence, is William Lawrence, but you may call me Mister, and I apparently come from Arcadia. Ahh well, that seems to have sorted out who I am. Now what about all of you, umm? I believe I’m supposed to mark the roll. Such a tedious task. Okay, let’s try it this way. Is there anybody here who shouldn’t?’

  The students were somewhat confused.

  ‘Mmmnnn. This particular method does have its drawbacks.’

  Mr Lawrence proceeded to mark the roll in the usual way. It was very clear that his students were enjoying their new school.

  With the roll marking complete, he handed out a textbook to each of them.

  ‘Apart from being allocated the monumentally brain-taxing task of marking the roll each day, I also double as your English teacher. Now, hands up those who speak English!’

  Class 7.A4 looked around the room and slowly raised its collective hand.

  ‘All of you already speak English? Well that’s made my job a heck of a lot easier. All right then, no point wasting time. Class dismissed for the next six years!’

  Mr Lawrence started to tidy up his desk as if he was getting ready to leave.

  ‘Err, Sir?’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘Aren’t you meant to teach us about poems and stuff?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Eric Underwood, Sir.’

  ‘Eric Underwood Sir? I don’t remember marking your name off the roll. Let me check. Nope. There’s nobody by the name of Sir on my roll. Are you sure you’re in the right place?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. It’s just Eric Underwood, not Eric Underwood Sir, Sir.’

  ‘I think we had better stop this conversation, Eric, before one of us gets confused. Probably me.’

  ‘Well, our friend Mr Underwood seems to think my task is to teach you more than to speak English, and that I am charged with the responsibility of teaching you about, and I quote, “poems and stuff”. Let me check.’

  Eric cringed at his desk. He wanted to do well in English so he could impress Iggy in his letters. But why had he been so dumb as to say ‘poems and stuff’? He could already feel the icy stare of his new classmates cutting into his back.

  ‘Mr Underwood is quite correct. There is of course more to a language than just being able to speak it. Apart from improving your linguistic skills I hope that high school English will show you that literature can soar and swoop like an eagle and yet crash and roll like the thundering ocean.’ Class 7.A4 clearly had a teacher who loved his subject. ‘Billy Nelson, please open your textbook to page four and read aloud the poem that you will find there by Mr Spike Milligan entitled On the Ning Nang Nong. Oh, and Billy, please try not to make the person in front of you faint with your nicotine breath.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I find, Mr Nelson, that boys who sit up the back invariably think they are tough customers. On top of that, you’ve got cigarette ash all over the front of your shirt. These two facts alone makes me think that you and I will have to keep an eye on each other this year.’

  Billy Nelson wiped his shirt.

  ‘There is no ash, Billy. But the fact that you wiped your shirt tells me you expected some to be there. You will find, class, that very little escapes my attention. We will have a good year together if you keep that in mind.

  ‘Misters Nelson and Fern, if you want to poison your lungs that’s your business, but why should the rest of us have to put up with sitting next to a couple of walking ashtrays? Don’t ever come to our class reeking of cigarettes again! Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ The godfathers of Toongabbie Public were clearly going to find high school tougher going.

  ‘Now Billy, the poem if you would.’

  ‘On the Ning Nang Nong where the Cows go Bong! And the Monkeys all say Boo! There’s a Nong Nang Ning where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo. On the…’ and as Billy Nelson read the poem, Eric gave himself a low five under his desk. He felt that he had made a good start to high school, and firmly believed that he had impressed Mr Lawrence, while Billy Nelson and Greg Fern had got off on the wrong foot.

  The next period was Maths. Since it wasn’t one of his favourite subjects, Eric sat at the back of the room to avoid any unanswered questions that hung in the air towards the front.

  Being at the back allowed Eric time to have a look around. He did a brief inventory of his new classmates.

  Apart from Billy Nelson and Greg Fern, there were a few other students from Toongabbie Primary in the class, so he felt quite at home.

  Eric noticed, as he looked around the room, that there were a fair few sportheads and science brains in his new class. Labelling boys was dead easy. There were those who always got picked for teams first: the ‘sportheads’. Then the ones who couldn’t kick a soccer ball straight in a million years but could work out its circumference: the ‘science brains’. And those who weren’t particularly good at anything but just sort of drifted along and made up the numbers: the ‘veggies’. The girls were not as easy to categorise and he crudely labelled them the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Despite her goddess-like face, Sunflower Fox was a have not. On the other hand, Liz Campbell was definitely a have. It must have had something to do with her being an artist. Artists wer
e heavily into that sort of thing.

  Eric remembered the time that his parents had taken the family up to the Blue Mountains to see Norman Lindsay’s gallery. Eric had always thought himself a bit of a deviate because he liked perving at girls. He couldn’t believe it when he got to Norman Lindsay’s place. The guy was obsessed. Eric had to take a couple of cold showers when he got home.

  Even though Eric and Sunflower were a pretty hot item, she’d never let him have even the briefest peek under her sari. And all he’d seen of Liz was her naked ankles when he was hiding under her bed. He’d imagined that nakedness didn’t stop at her ankles but carried on up to her hat. Which it probably did.

  The thought about being in the same room with Liz while she was naked caused a cold shiver to run up his spine, and warm shivers to run down to other bits of his body. He decided that he’d better stop thinking about Norman Lindsay’s gallery and the women in his life, otherwise he’d have to walk to the next lesson with his backpack covering his groin.

  Instead he thought about his own position. It was a much safer subject.

  Being the athlete that he was, Eric felt more at home in the company of sportheads. But seeing his mother made him wear grey pants rather than Levis, he was certain that the other kids in the class would align him with the science brains. He didn’t care if they did. If he was going to be a pilot he would have to get involved in science and clever stuff. He was even considering investing in a compass. He wished he’d paid more attention to Ian’s ravings about science and that when they were down the creek. If he had he’d be in a better position to accept his science-brain label. He didn’t care anyway, it was better than being called a veggie.

  With this resolved Eric sat smugly at his desk with the look of someone who was destined to top every subject, except Woodwork, and then go on to be crowned school athletic champion. He was even thinking about reciting his own poetry to all the love-sick good-looking girls in the class. Yeah. Yeah and then…

  ‘Excuse me, are you with us?’

  ‘Uhh, sorry Miss?’

  ‘Apparently not. I said, “Are you with us?” ’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss.’

  ‘I agree, your body is definitely present. I was wondering if you minded very much bringing your mind back from whichever dimension it is currently in?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss, I didn’t understand wha…’

  ‘Pay attention!’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Well, if you were, perhaps you would like to answer the question that seems to have everybody else stumped?’

  Eric could feel every single eye in the class trained on him.

  ‘Well, I’m waiting. Do you know the answer?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Well, then, what is it?’

  Eric could not believe himself. Firstly he said he had been paying attention, when he clearly hadn’t. And now he said he knew the answer, when in fact he hadn’t even heard the question. He could feel the hole that he’d dug for himself getting deeper and deeper.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Pythagoras,’ said Eric.

  ‘Very good. I didn’t think anyone would know that. Yes, class, the Greek mathematician whose theorem you will study closely while you’re at high school is, as Eric has said, Pythagoras.’

  Eric could not believe it. He’d heard of Pythagoras, sure. According to Iggy he was this boring Greek dude who was heavily into angles. But he hadn’t heard the question so he’d simply taken a guess.

  Eric continued in this same vein for the rest of the day. He seemed to lead a charmed life. He knew a lot of the questions that were asked by his teachers, one of the other boys called him Einstein, and he was positive he heard one of the girls compare him to Tom Cruise.

  He practically skipped home in the afternoon, and told his parents that they should start filling out university enrolment forms sooner rather than later. He couldn’t have had a better first day if he had tried, and as he sat reading in bed that night you could have jump-started a car with the glow of confidence that beamed from his body. But there was something in the back of his mind that kept nagging, so much so he couldn’t get too excited about his first day’s performance. The next day was PE and he would have to reveal the bod.

  High school change rooms are designed to do one thing: bring mega-embarrassment to anyone who happens to own a body which he or she is slightly ashamed of.

  Eric’s primary school nickname of ‘Spaghetti Legs’ had so far failed to put in an appearance at Pendle Hill High. This was partly due to the fact that his legs were out of view in his grey school pants, but mostly because everyone was still finding their own feet and hadn’t settled in well enough to start any verbal abuse. Eric felt sure that it was only a matter of time before someone caught a glimpse of the spindly trouser fillers that he called ‘legs’ and his body would come under fire again.

  At primary school the students used to wear their casual gear to school on sports day, but clearly high school demanded a little more. Before he could show everyone what an athlete he was, he would first have to get changed in front of his peers. And that was death.

  The tension at facing the third-period PE lesson was momentarily relieved when Billy Nelson tried to give the Bunsen burner a little turbo power during Science. Unfortunately he scorched the seat of his pants and needed attention from both the school nurse and the Advanced Needlework group before he could return to class.

  Eric’s heart almost pounded through his chest when the bell rang for the end of second period. He followed his classmates in a zombie-like trance as they led him towards his moment of truth in the change room from hell.

  Like most things in life, if the worst is expected it never really eventuates. Thanks to a combination of raised towels and flailing arms, Eric was able to get changed in something like two seconds and was out jogging around the field with his legs well hidden in his tracksuit pants long before most of the other boys had undone their shoelaces.

  ‘Alrrright lads,’ said Mr McManus, the PE teacher with the immense limp. ‘I want ye to rrrun thrrree laps arrrround the oval to warm up.’ He and his limp had emigrated from Scotland about thirty years before and yet he could still pull off the sort of accent that even an Edinburgh-living, bagpipe playing, haggis eating, caber tossing, Loch Ness monster spotting Scotsman couldn’t get away with.

  When the boys had finished their three laps he called them in. ‘Alrrright, lads, pay attention! This is a ball, and this is a foot, and what do ye get when ye put them together?’

  ‘A goal,’ offered some sporthead.

  ‘Nay, that’s not what am looking fer.’

  ‘A sore foot,’ suggested a science brain.

  ‘Ye don’t get a sore foot.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well ye canna be kickin’ it rrright.’

  ‘Team work,’ said a sporthead.

  ‘Sometimes, but nay, not always. C’mon lads, it canna be too harrrd. What do ye get when you put a foot and a ball together?’

  ‘A ball foot,’ hypothesised a science brain.

  ‘A ball foot ye ijit? What the devil’s a ball foot? Football’s the word I’m looking fer. When ye put a foot and a ball together ye get football, not a bloody ball foot.’ It was clear to Eric that Mr McManus believed in starting with the basics. It was also abundantly clear that he was going to have to tolerate PE until the athletic carnival came around, where he could at least reveal his true sporting prowess. Until then he was just going to have to accept being labelled a science brain. But despite all that, he couldn’t believe he had said ‘ball foot’.

  When the lesson was over, Eric power-sprinted back to the change rooms and changed in about eight seconds.

  At lunch he sat with his new group. He hadn’t any real friends his age now that Ian wasn’t around, and found himself sitting with the three other boys from his class who shared the common bond of daggy grey pants.

  When he was a sporthead at primary school his lunchtime conversati
ons were mostly about girls, football, and avoiding school work. Now he was one of the science brains he found the conversation was centred on girls, football, and doing school work. Eric was confident that if he was going to be a pilot when he left school, this was the group to be in. He even thought about leading it.

  ‘I think we should elect a leader,’ said Eric.

  ‘Of what?’ Noel Stevenson was the owner of a heavy-duty pimple problem and Dolphin torch.

  ‘Of this. The group.’

  ‘I don’t believe in leaders, but then again I don’t really care,’ said Stephen Brown. He held strong views on both anarchy and apathy.

  Eventually Boyd Bannister was elected leader of the group. They surprisingly decided to call themselves the ‘Science Brains’. They figured if people were going to call them that anyway, they might as well take the bull by the horns and beat them to it. Eric was elected vice-president to the vice-president, Noel Stevenson. They decided to act on Eric’s suggestion that anybody who scored less than ninety per cent on a math’s test was automatically out of the gang.

  The next few weeks went smoothly, in fact Eric could not believe how great school was. He constantly impressed Mr Lawrence with his references to Chekhov and Gandhi, the Science Brains seemed to be topping every subject, and Eric’s legs or lack of them had so far remained undetected in the change rooms. He had also fallen in love again with an absolute goddess in brown socks from his class called Veronica Roberts. Life could not have been better.

  But over the following weeks the winds of change swept through Pendle Hill High and things began to slide.

  Six weeks into the first term Eric sat in class wondering where it had all gone wrong. It was his birthday, but nobody seemed to care too much, so he acted as if he didn’t either. He had hoped that Veronica Roberts would come and sit next to him, give him a birthday card and a big sloppy wet kiss with a bit of tongue thrown in as well. But of course even allowing for Eric’s wild dreams, which included all day pashing sessions with both Sunflower and Liz, this was taking daydreaming to the absolute max.