‘Well, what is it then?’ asked the desperate lecturer.
‘Aye, could be a number of things. But if I had te guess, I’d say someone is trying te make ye look like a goose.’
Come the following Monday morning, the sense of anticipation throughout the college was electric. Attendance was beyond capacity, drop-outs had rediscovered their passion for learning and pre-lecture hubbub was at an all-time high. The lecturers, too, were particularly focused. They had conferred over the weekend and concluded that they must catch the culprit in the act to put a stop to this nonsense. The lecture began and for the first thirteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds the entire class were on the edge of their seats. The lecturers turned away from their blackboards to face the students, scanning the rows for any sign of movement. And then, at exactly fourteen minutes past the hour, nothing happened. Silence. People looked at the clocks, then looked at their watches and then looked, bewildered, at each other. Disappointment hung heavy in the air, perhaps the time of the anonymous hero had passed. The lecturers, too, were disappointed. They hadn’t captured the villain and would never have the chance to bring them to justice. A little deflated, three lecturers in three theatres shrugged and turned back to their respective blackboards to resume their lessons.
Bonnnnnnnggggggg!
An almighty cheer went up, the masses applauded and, without turning around from their blackboards, the lecturers dropped their shoulders in abject defeat.
For the rest of the week, everyone’s day started the same way: laughter at 8.14. Going to early lectures had ceased to be a chore and everyone at the college seemed a little happier. Even the lecturers had found humour in the prank, post capitulation.
But soon word of who was behind the prank began to spread. People had started to whisper the name ‘Ronnie Pickering’ around the cloisters. Dad got wind of the chatter and decided the Great Railway Coupling Fiasco must come to an end. At fourteen minutes past eight that second Friday morning, the pharmacy college bell fell silent forever.
Dad was saddened because the prank had brought him great joy. But at the same time he was relieved because his spine had taken on a fairly significant lean from carrying around the coupling for two weeks. That and it was worth a small fortune in scrap metal. Best of all, at fourteen minutes past the hour, every day for two weeks, my mother had been giggling, thinking to herself, ‘There’s something about that Ronnie Pickering.’
After the Great Railway Coupling Fiasco, Mum began to notice Dad more and more around the college. On a few occasions she saw him in the cafeteria pulling one of his less honourable tricks ‘The Shifty Claw’.
In the laboratories, there were many tools and devices for attaching test tubes to things. The most common were clamps that you could attach to an upright stand at one end and grip a test tube at the other. The end that held the tube took the shape of a small square claw.
Whenever Dad was a little short on money for morning tea at the caff, he would put on a lab coat one size too big and take one of these clamps in each hand. The extra sleeve length would cover his hands and all that would show were the two claws. In one claw he would grip the exact amount of change needed for a can of soft drink, and he would set the other claw to the right size to hold a can.
When he ordered his can of drink, he would hand over the money and say, ‘I don’t suppose there’s enough there for a coffee scroll as well?’ After counting the money, the lady serving him would say, ‘Sorry, love. There’s just enough for the drink.’
‘That’s ok. Thanks anyway,’ he would say with a tone that suggested he was used to the little disappointments of life.
He would then take a seat at the table nearest the counter and, with a forlorn look on his face, make pitiful attempts to open the can. The tuckshop ladies would ignore it for as long as they could, but Dad was persistent. Biting his tongue in concentration, he would toil away at the ring-pull to no avail, occasionally sighing or looking hopefully around himself for assistance. The longer this went on, the more the ladies felt they had to do something.
If they took too long to notice him, Dad would turn up the heat. He would let the can slip from his claw and fall to the floor. He would then try a few times to pick it up, dropping it each time and shaking it up as much as possible. Finally, on the fourth attempt he would open it, unleashing a geyser of fizzy pop. He would then try frantically, but in vain, to pick up his straw and get it into the can, before giving up and simply putting his mouth over the aperture and gulping. It was never long before one of the lovely ladies of the tuckshop would come over and give him a coffee scroll.
Now, this questionable behaviour may sound like a pretty good reason to write someone off, but apparently there was something quite endearing about the whole thing. And besides, who are those cafeteria ladies to go treating an amputee any differently from anyone else? I know it was the sixties and minds were a little less open, but come on. That’s just prejudiced. The bottom line—as always with my dad—was that it was funny and it made my mum laugh.
Eventually, one act of unconventional chivalry won Mum’s heart forever.
One of the more squeamish aspects of obtaining a pharmacy degree is the necessary work you have to do with living things. As a child I would be simultaneously enthralled and disgusted with stories of the kinds of experiments my parents were forced to perform on an array of animals, living and dead.
One afternoon, on the tram home from college, my mother opened her purse to buy a ticket from the conductor. As she unfastened the snap, a large frog leapt out of the purse, onto her lap and made for the door. My mother went to pieces. She wasn’t great with frogs at the best of times. For the purpose of higher learning she had made peace with the creatures, but after hours was her time. The last thing she wanted was more frogs. Let alone surprise frogs. She shrieked, threw her purse in the air, stood up and began running on the spot, and all of this was done in one fluid but instant movement with the kind of rapid precision that can only be achieved involuntarily. The other passengers on the crowded peak-hour tram didn’t see the frog. All they saw was a mental woman do her nana and start thrashing about at frogs that weren’t there. The conductor decided that this was one passenger who perhaps didn’t need a ticket to ride.
When she went to the lab the next day, Mum’s lab partner, Mad Mack McCormack, asked her how her night was.
‘It was dreadful. I had a frog jump out of my purse on the tram on the way home. It gave me such a fright that I—’
She didn’t need to finish the sentence because Mad Mack was laughing so hard his face had begun to turn red. She responded with a stern look that seemed only to make him laugh harder. Before long his head was doing a fairly convincing impression of a beetroot and Mum knew for sure that this beetroot-headed nimrod was behind the despicable amphibious attack.
Three weeks later, Mad Mack McCormack noticed a strong odour whenever he drove his car. He tried rolling down the windows and driving faster, but the smell remained. When he inspected the car he found a dead frog wedged behind his number plate. With a suitable amount of swearing and gagging, he removed the frog and figured his problems were solved.
What Mad Mack didn’t know was that this frog was a decoy frog—a frog placed in an obvious position, to be easily found, to lull Mad Mack into a false sense of security. The whole situation was created entirely to give Mad Mack as little idea as possible that Dad had extensively hidden thirty dead frogs throughout the car in the most hard to reach places. There were frogs in the sills, behind the exhaust, above the diff, beside the radiator and under the wheel-arches. None of the frogs could be seen by simple acts like sliding under the car, and removing any of them required more than a passing knowledge of motor vehicles.
This was at a time when those students with cars would provide something of a taxi service to other students to offset their running costs. Maintaining a full car was essential both socially and fiscally, and before long Mad Mack was poor and driving alone.
; One day Mad Mack came into the lab and implored my mother to end the revenge.
‘I’m sorry, ok? I’m sorry about the frog in your purse. I’m sorry I laughed. Just please, make the smell go away.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The smell. Please just make the smell go away. It’s ruining my life.’
‘I mean it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Well, just so you know, I caught the train to college today. And I’m going to catch it again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day until the smell of dead frogs is gone from my car. So I hope you’re happy.’
My mother had no idea what Mad Mack was talking about, but she had a pretty good idea of who was behind it. And as far as she was concerned, this was the kind of man she could marry.
So, if you ever wonder why Mum never had a problem with Dad’s war with Richard, it was because this practical joker was exactly the man she fell in love with.
3 This is not his real name. From time to time to avoid litigation, I have sometimes changed people’s names if I intend to portray them in a negative light. On this occasion I have chosen the name Krauthammer, which I got from a right-wing columnist in America whose name I find fascinating.
12
A Full-sized Gavin Wanganeen
The following sentence is, I think, one of the more unique sentences I have ever written: Some time in the winter of 1992 my father came into possession of a full-sized cut-out of Gavin Wanganeen.
Who is Gavin Wanganeen? The short answer is that he was a footballer.
The longer and more satisfying answer is as follows: Gavin Wanganeen began his professional football career at the age of sixteen at the Port Adelaide Magpies Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL), a curiously named organisation which, to the best of my knowledge, consists only of sides within South Australia. He received the coveted SANFL Rookie Of The Year Award and in doing so attracted the interest of Melbourne’s Essendon Football Club, inarguably the greatest team in the history of all sport everywhere. In 1991 he began playing for Essendon in the Australian Football League, a national league appropriately titled on account of how it has teams from more than one state in Australia. At Essendon he took the counter-intuitively named position of attacking defender, where he quickly established himself as a player of distinction, with spectacular marking abilities and the ability to out-position his opponents. His quality as a player was matched only by his good looks, and it wasn’t long before various marketing and sponsorship opportunities revealed themselves, one of which was with an instant photo printing company whose stores nationwide would feature full-sized cut-out photographs of Gavin, in Essendon playing strip, holding a football in front of his crotch. The photo printing company went under soon after. While Gavin was never held personally responsible for their demise, full-sized Gavin Wanganeens did became something of a must-have for Essendon supporters with an eye for quality.
In 1993 he received the Chas Brownlow Medal for the best and fairest player in the AFL, and played in Essendon’s successful premiership team. He remained at Essendon until 1997 when he returned to the Port Adelaide Football Club who had by now joined the AFL under the bafflingly unimpressive name, the Port Adelaide Power. Rumours abounded that in order to lure Gavin back to his home town, the Power had offered him a McDonald’s franchise on top of his negotiated salary. Whether true or not, this scuttlebutt really puts Australian professional football of the 1990s in sobering fiscal perspective with its American and English counterparts. McDonald’s franchise or not, Gavin played for the Power as captain from 1997 to 2000. After relinquishing the captaincy, he continued as a successful player, coming third in the 2003 Brownlow. In 2004 he helped the Power win the premiership over the Brisbane Lions, much to the chagrin of petty Essendon fans who still owned full-sized cut-outs of Gavin Wangineen. In 2006 Gavin suffered a serious knee injury while playing a reserve grade match, poetically enough for his original club, the Port Adelaide Magpies, in the SANFL. By the end of his three-hundred-game AFL career, Gavin had amassed 3473 kicks, 1027 marks and 1588 handballs for a total of 5031 possessions. In 2002 he was voted the nineteenth best Essendon player of all time.
The one thing the stats don’t tell you is that if you put a full-sized cut-out of Gavin Wanganeen in a place where a person does not expect to find a full-sized cut-out of Gavin Wanganeen, it will, without exception, scare the bejesus out of said person. This is a fact my dad discovered almost immediately after taking possession of one.
The photo business across the way from Dad’s shop had gone under. The departing manager came over to say goodbye and brought with him a full-sized Gavin Wanganeen.
‘I’m afraid that’s all she wrote, Ron.’
‘Sorry to see you go, Phil.’
‘I remember you saying your boy is a mad Essendon fan.’
‘Yeah. He gets it from his mother.’
‘Well, I figured maybe he’d get a kick out of this.’
The unintended pun was lost on the two men, who were by this point almost overcome with pathos. Indeed the scene would have been truly emotional, had it not been for the utterly ridiculous nature of the parting gift. Where pathos leads, it has to be said, bathos is never far behind.
Dad arrived home from work, parked the car and popped his head through the garage door into the living room.
‘Pammy, can you come and give me a hand with something?’
He then ducked back into the garage, closing the door behind him. By the time Mum had walked over to the garage door, Dad had ample time to grab his full-sized Gavin Wanganeen and place it in front of the door facing in. When my mother opened the door, she was greeted by the smiling face of one of the games more tenacious attacking defenders, and promptly became airborne.
‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!’
Mothers have an unmatched ability to make involuntary noises of an infinitely entertaining quality. It’s as though three sentences want to say themselves at once and come bursting past the lips together, like shoppers at a boxing day sale who all want the same fridge. The result being that each word is completely audible but, taken as a whole, the outburst makes no sense. Invariably delivered in the key of squawk, the overall effect is nothing short of spellbinding. The sad thing is that the mother never sees the humour in it, a fact my mother had no hesitation in pointing out once she had landed back on solid ground.
By the time she had returned to earth the garage door had closed itself. When she opened the door again, Gavin was still there only now my dad was next to him, on his knees laughing, pounding his thigh with his fist. He was very pleased with himself.
After that there was no limit to the variety and frequency of the circumstances in which Dad would surprise us with his full-sized Gavin Wanganeen. He would be waiting in the toilet for you. He’d hide in the pantry. Some mornings my mum would walk into the kitchen to make cups of tea, only to find Gavin standing at the kettle. Some days Dad would leave the house, pull up out in the street, get Gavin out of the boot of his car, walk around the back of the house and leave Gavin at the back door to greet poor Sandy, our once-a-fortnight cleaning lady. Every time Gavin made an appearance, whoever found him made the same noise.
‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!’
Have you ever woken in the night to find one of the AFL’s leading footballers standing very still in your bedroom? I have. And let me assure you, that shit stays with you for life.
Then Gavin went missing. Dad was adamant he simply couldn’t remember where he had left him. My sister and I were pretty sure that Mum had had him destroyed. Either way, we would walk around the house hoping to catch a glimpse of him, asking each other, ‘Have you seen Gavin?’ For six months we lamented the loss of Gavin, saying that the house just felt empty without him and for all the trouble he caused, it sure would be nice to have him back. Then, on the first cold day in Autumn, we heard a familiar sound.
‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!’
My dad’s face lit up.
‘Of course! The cupboard! I hid him in the winter coats!’
Dad then resumed his original uncontrollable laughing and thigh punching. For six months, through spring and summer, Gavin had lain in wait in the cupboard, holding a football over his crotch with that permanent smile on his face. Just biding his time; waiting for his moment. Truly he was one of the great attacking defenders.
‘That is it! Ronnie, this is the last time. I want Gavin Wanganeen out of this house!’
To be honest, I was about to protest. I was about to say, ‘But Mum, it’s not Gavin’s fault. He didn’t do anything wrong.’ But I caught myself, remembering at the last moment that this wasn’t a real person. Dad promised to get rid of him and we all thought she’d put an end to the full-sized Gavin Wanganeen madness once and for all.
But Dad thought otherwise. In Dad’s mind this was merely research and development. He’d perfected his act; it was time to take this show on the road.
Everyone at the Opie household on Shasta Avenue looked forward to Wednesday nights. For Cheryl it was because she hosted her guided meditation workshop. Roughly a dozen people would remove their shoes at the front door and sit cross-legged on the floor of the sitting room at the front of the house. Cheryl would then walk them through visualisation exercises aimed at deep relaxation and, I dare say, spiritual enlightenment. All of this happened to the relaxing sounds of whales, rainforests, oceans and panpipes—all of nature’s aural sedatives. My mother was an occasional attendee of the classes. My father and I, on the other hand, were not welcome.
I had been barred from the group after my first and only visit because of an incident that took place while exploring the nooks and crannies of my cave. If you have never done any guided meditation, your cave is a place you go in your imagination. You are occasionally asked to walk through a made-up desert or conceptualised windy cliff-top to get there, but once you arrive it’s the ideal place to find tranquillity and peace. Or so I’m told. I wouldn’t know for sure. I wasn’t in my cave long enough to find out. At a crucial point in my journey Cheryl said the words, ‘you are entering a state of deep relaxation’. Unfortunately at that precise moment my sister, whose head had lolled onto her chest, began snoring and I, naturally enough, burst out laughing. The willing suspension of disbelief that all meditation caves rely on was instantaneously and irreparably broken for the entire session. We sure lost a lot of good caves that night. I was told that my behaviour had been inappropriate. I was adamant it was my sister’s fault for snoring near my cave in the first place, but I was banished from the group all the same, at least until I grew up and could take it more seriously. It is safe to say neither of those criteria has yet been met and I have not been back since.
Impractical Jokes Page 11