Secret Girls' Stuff

by Margaret Clark

  3

  Family

  Families can be fantastic. Families can be hell. Most people have families.

  Some families are close and never fight, like the Brady Bunch. They’re almost too good to be true, but it would be nice to live in a family like that. Maybe you do. Maybe you get on very well with your parents, your sisters, your brothers, your grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and you’re one big happy family. But judging by all the letters and emails I get, lots of you are having hassles with family members, especially during this thing called puberty.

  You see, in the cavemen days you would have been having hordes of babies from the age of twelve. Nature says, ‘You’re a woman.’

  But our society says, ‘You’re still a kid. You have to live with your family till you leave school.’ If you go to uni and do a first degree and then a Masters degree this could mean you’re twenty-five or more before you can leave home and support yourself. So you might be in a situation where you are an adult living in the family home and still being treated like a kid, because to your parents you are still a kid. And this is where a lot of the arguments start.

  You want to go out. You want to stay over with friends. You want to have a boyfriend. You want to sleep with him. You want to buy your own clothes, make-up, jewellery, CDs, but you haven’t got any money, unless you can get a part-time job. So you’re financially and emotionally still, ‘Tied to your mother’s apron strings,’ as my granny always said. Actually, when you look at it from a social point of view, it’s quite an unhealthy situation to be still living at home at age thirty!

  Dear Diary,

  I asked Mum if I could go camping at Kennet River with my friends. Dad could bring down the tent in the trailer. She said yes. I was so rapt.

  Then when I told Faith, Helen, Dana, Ally and Jan they said their parents wouldn’t let them do it because we are only fifteen and we’d get raped, murdered and pillaged. I was actually amazed that Mum had said yes. But then when I told her the camping was off, because the others weren’t allowed to go, she said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and I said, ‘You said, I could put up a tent at Kennet River with my girlfriends,’ and she said, ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid, Margaret. I was only joking!’

  Families have different rules. I wasn’t allowed out on an official date with a boy till I was sixteen and neither were my friends. But we were stuffing around behind our parents’ backs going to the pictures (movies) and meeting boys at Eastern Beach and at the youth club dances.

  Dear Diary,

  Today I was sixteen. Dad and Mum gave me five pounds, a nightie, slippers and a book. Granny gave me some soap and talcum powder. Aunty Claire sent me a necklace. Ally gave me a silver horseshoe charm for my bracelet. Yvonne gave me one of those white pencils you do your nails with. Jan gave me a record, Elvis singing ‘Little Sister’, only I haven’t got a record player so I have to play it at her place.

  And I went on my first official date. With Alphonso Giruatis.

  He’s a sort. He was going with Marion B but he’s dropped her. We went to see Geelong play St Kilda at Kardinia Park and we kept bumping into my dad. It was so embarrassing!

  From then on I was allowed to go to the dances. There was no alcohol at dances. Girls didn’t go to pubs. There were no nightclubs, only The Embers in Melbourne (which I think got burnt down — bad choice of name, eh). Ally was already sixteen and so were Jan, Yvonne, Minnie, Flora and Susan. But Barbara wasn’t. Her parents were very strict. She wasn’t allowed out and that was that!

  Dear Diary,

  Last night Barbara wanted to come to the dance but she wasn’t allowed by her father. So we lent her some fab clothes, Ally’s black pencil skirt, (so tight she could hardly walk,) Jan’s stiletto shoes, my tight pink fuzzy wuzzy angora jumper and Yvonne’s hair spray so she could do her beehive. She climbed out her bedroom window and came to the dance. But her father found that she was missing and he came to the dance, marched onto the floor and dragged her out in front of everyone. It was shocking! I’ll never forget the look on her face!

  But parents can be the opposite. Too easy. That’s nearly as bad as parents who are too strict! I remember talking to a girl, Sonia, age fifteen when she came to see me at the Alcohol and Drug Centre. The conversation went like this:

  ‘Mum was going away for the night with her boyfriend. She said, “Stay here in the house, and don’t go messing it up, Sonia, or I’ll brain you. I’ve just cleaned it.”

  So then, like, these two other girls came round, Sally and Lisa, see, and they brought these boys and they had two slabs, you know, and three bottles of bourbon. So we drank it all and then the boys spewed and then we spewed and then we flaked out on the carpet and then Mum came back at 3am because she had a fight with Joey and she goes, “Wait till tomorrow. You just wait!”’

  I said, ‘What happened then?’

  Sonia grinned at me. ‘Nuthin’. She didn’t do nuthin’. As usual.’

  I said, ‘So how do you feel about it?’

  And she went, ‘Dunno. Yeah, I do. Pissed off. She couldn’t care less what I do.’

  This was not good parenting. When Sonia disobeyed the rules there should have be consequences, otherwise she would never learn to take responsibility for her actions. Which she didn’t. She ended up doing a RWV (robbery with violence) with two of the guys and going to a youth detention centre for twelve months.

  When I worked in the Alcohol and Drug Centre I discovered that there were a couple of teenagers who acted like total ferals but who seemed to have very nice parents. They thought they were cool, but they were serious nuff. Most of the teenagers weren’t really bad. Not many at all. Even the wildest, toughest street kids had good qualities when you sat down and talked with them.

  But there were some real crappy parents! You see, sometimes the adults have so many problems of their own that they can’t be bothered controlling their children or giving them rules or following through when the kids mess up. Some are going through messy breakups and divorces. Some parents are ill. Some are working three jobs to try and earn enough money to live decently and repay debts.

  Because of where I worked I met a lot of parents who were alcoholics or on drugs. Sometimes they were so out of it they didn’t know what was going on with their children and teenagers. I even wrote a book called Onya Sonya based on my observations of a twelve-year-old girl whose mother was a heroin addict and a prostitute. That girl was actually forced into the role of mother! I would hear her reminding her mum that they needed to buy food, pay bills, buy new school shoes, etc. I thought she was an amazing girl!

  Sometimes teenagers are spoilt rotten and they grow up thinking the world owes them something. It’s not their fault that they think like this: they’ve been given their own way too much and often given too much money. These teenagers are often very unhappy.

  The main thing to remember about parents is that usually they are trying to do the best they can at the time.

  It also seems to depend on whether you are the first-born child, the middle child or the last-born child, too. Often the oldest child is more strictly supervised re curfews and dating and is also given responsibility for looking after the others. The middle ones might feel that as they are in the middle they may not be so important. The youngest one is sometimes spoilt by everyone else and “babied” so he or she can feel resentful.

  The middle and youngest ones are often given more freedom earlier if the oldest one hasn’t messed up. If the oldest one has messed up, the parents might be fearful that the middle and youngest will do the same thing and be even stricter.

  Another problem is the thing called sibling rivalry.

  No two children are ever the same in behaviour because they are different. They are good at different things, they have different talents, different temperaments and different personalities.

  We become what we’re told we are. Did you know that? If you’re told you’re clumsy, you will be. If you’re told you’re pretty, you’ll
think you are pretty. If you’re told you’re ugly, you’ll think you’re ugly even if you are pretty.

  Some parents might put you down to, ‘Keep you in your place,’ as my granny always said. They are trying to stop you from being conceited because you’re not supposed to get up yourself. They seem convinced that this topsy-turvy sort of thinking will make you try harder!

  This is an extract from a letter sent by Clare, age thirteen:

  Mum is always telling me I’m useless at doing things and I’ve lost my confidence. When I try to sew she tells me it looks like a pig’s walked through it. When I cook something Dad tells me it tastes like shit and when am I going to learn to cook. They both say my homework’s a disgrace. My younger sister is a real brain. She gets A’s for everything.

  It’s real embarrassing having a younger sister who’s brainier than me.

  Sometimes I feel like I hate my family.

  Some parents give lots of praise but when you get out into the real world you find out you’re not as good as you thought you were, so you have to try harder.

  Here’s part of an email from Erin, age thirteen:

  >From: Erin

  >To: Margaret

  >Date:

  i’ve just started going to a private girls’ school and i was top in my class in grade six in primary school and now i’m in year seven at this school i’m just one of a hundred and twenty girls and mum and dad think i’m really cute and clever and so does nana and i feel dumb and stupid here. There’s heaps of girls more brainy and good looking than me.

  Then there’s the problem of being a twin.

  An email from Susie age fourteen:

  >From: Susie

  >To: Margaret

  >Date:

  My parents think I can do no wrong. I’m a twin. My sister Sally is always in trouble with them and sometimes I feel sorry for her, but she does these dumb things, like running away from home and sleeping under a railway bridge, and sneaking out with boys, and jigging school. I don’t want to do these things but I’m not an angel either. I’m starting to feel that I HAVE to be good all the time to make up for Sally!

  So you can see that in families the problem is sometimes sisters and brothers and your relationship with them. The best thing you can do is not to compete for attention and build on what you are good at doing.

  Most parents want their kids to succeed. This means different things in different families. Some parents want their children to be rocket scientists and brain surgeons and prime ministers but the reality is that most kids won’t be these things. They may not have the talent or the interest. Success in some families might mean being groomed to take over the family business one day. You might love that idea or you might hate it.

  I’ll let you into a secret. It’s simple. You are good at what you like doing! In other words, people tend to be good at what they enjoy. Think about it. If you love reading, you’ll be good at it.

  If you love playing tennis, you’ll be good at it. If you love doing stuff on computers, you’ll be good at it. I’m not saying you’ll be the best, I’m saying you’ll be good.

  And your brother or sister might enjoy the same thing and be better at it than you are. It doesn’t matter! Like I said, it’s not supposed to be a competition! Lax up and enjoy life.

  Sure, Margaret, like, I’m supposed to enjoy life when I’ve got this craphead of a brother whose main mission in life is to make my life a misery.

  Dear Diary,

  Ally’s brother Menzel stole her diary and said he was going to tell the whole school what was in it. She had to pay him ten shillings to get it back. Then he said, ‘ha ha, I couldn’t read your writing anyway.’ He is a real little brat.

  Most families hide their house key under the doormat or the pot plant but Ally’s gets hidden under the drainpipe on a bit of Blu Tack. And Menzel told the whole world it was there because six boys were in Ally’s lounge room drinking coke and eating chips and watching TV when she got home. They said Menzel said they could come in any time. And she got the blame for it. And now they’ve hidden the key and she’s not allowed to tell anyone not even ME, her best friend!

  Dear Diary

  Ally said that her piggybank is feeling lighter and she thinks Menzel is stealing her money but she doesn’t know how because her piggybank’s locked and she wears the key (and her house key because I saw it with the other key) round her neck on a thin chain. This afternoon when I rang Ally up after school Menzel answered and yelled, ‘It’s for you’ and when Ally finally came and put the phone to her ear it stuck because he’d put glue on it and she thought she’d have to go round for the rest of her life with a phone stuck on her ear, but her dad got it off with solvent. Menzel’s in deep trouble. Ha. Serves him right the little creep.

  Maybe you’re one of those girls whose little brother gives you grief on a date.

  Dear Diary,

  Poor Ally. She wants to leave home. I said she could sleep top to toe in my bed. She said she’d sleep under it so no one can find her. I looked under my bed. There’s an old training bra, bits of a jigsaw puzzle, the dog’s lead, fifteen odd socks, three pairs of unwashed undies, two earrings, a heap of Pop magazines, my red top, my home eco homework from three weeks ago that I couldn’t find (it must have slid down the side of the bed), and a torch that doesn’t work. I chucked it all in my wardrobe. So I’m ready for Ally.

  See, what happened was that she asked David Hampton to her place on Saturday to watch Bandstand. He’s got the most gorgeous dimple in his chin. So sexy. And Menzel said, ‘How come you’ve got a hole in your chin? Are you an alien?’ She was so embarrassed.

  Well, Ally didn’t move in under my bed because Menzel went off to school camp and things calmed down. But worse. Parents can be an embarrassment too:

  This is part of an email from Katie age fifteen:

  >From: Katie

  >To: Margaret

  >Date:

  hi margaret, this email will be quick, i love ur books especially the studleys and how the mother is sooooo i know that scene. like, it was sooooo bad last saturday. dad was making me help in the garden and i dropped this HUGE rock on my foot, i swear it was a BOULDER, and when i looked at my foot it had this massive indent in it as it was flat AS. and i was in so much pain and i started crying because it hurt.

  bad move. dad said ‘get in the car’ and he was in his old shorts and singlet and these massive boots, looking like something out of The Castle, u know, the movie, so we drove to the dandenong medical centre.

  i reckon we should have some sort of lifelong membership or bonus points like frequent flyers or something there because we go there so often as i’m always getting injured, not seriously, but dad or mum drag me there for just a splinter. only this time it WAS an emergency because my foot was, like, agony. anyway we waited the usual three hours till some lady wheeled me off to a tiny room and mum and my sister turned up. mum was in her old red trakky daks and her hair standing on end and my sister jessie was in her ballet gear, u know, the tutu. we looked like the family from hell. we sat there for another half hour playing … get this … i spy. i won most of the time, like they couldn’t guess my weird words like ‘ceiling sprinklers’ and ‘i need help’ button and ‘doctor’s thingo’. then finally this really fat irish dude came up and said to me, with ice on my foot, ‘so what seems to be the problem?’ i don’t get it.

  doctors always say that. last time i went there when i ate something off. i looked like absolute shit, vomit on my t-shirt, bags under my eyes and a plastic container just in case, and the doctor goes, ‘ how are you today?’ – are doctors BLIND?

  anyway this irish dude started poking at my foot going ‘does this hurt?’ and i yelled, ‘yesssss’, so this granny rolled up and wheeled me off for xrays and by then dad, mum and jessie had gone to stuff themselves at the canteen. eventually i was finished with xrays and she wheeled me back to the cubicle. mum and dad came back with jessie eating all eating icecreams and dad had slopped tomato sauce all
down his front. i swear he looked like he’d had a date with a vampire. then the dude came back and said, ‘nothing’s broken in ur foot, put ice on it’ then pissed off. jessie started doing ballet stuff in the passage and i was like, ‘oh NO!’ when this creepy guy came in. he was like a full-on ferret … shudder … looked at me then came back with a pair of crutches, went away again and didn’t come back. so we assumed we could leave. crutches were dangerous. on the way i nearly killed some grandpa walking along with one of those drip things and got a massive greasy from the crutches guy back in reception because mum was filling out the forms and eating an apple slice at the same time and putting crumbs and bits of apple on it. jessie was doing handstands and dad was scratching his belly and sighing and i wished i’d crawled under that rock when i dropped it. it was sooooo bad. and then finally we went home.

  Yes, parents can be embarrassing. I can remember holding hands with my husband when our kids were teenagers and they’d yell, ‘Stop that. It’s disgusting!’ And also driving the car when my kids were teenagers and they’d be lying on the back seat or the floor so people couldn’t see them with me because it was so uncool. I felt a bit hurt about it but then I dragged out one of my diaries and read this:

  Dear Diary

  Why have I got such OFF parents? They made me go away with them for the weekend in this dumb caravan to Lake Tyers. Jill was on the bottom bunk and every time I climbed down to go to the loo she yelled that I trod on her face. And Mum and Dad kept whispering and making funny noises. God.

  Maybe they were doing IT. Oh, GOD. I’d never thought it was them having sex. I’d kept hissing, ‘Be QUIET will you!’ Oh God.