My Life and Other Exploding Chickens

by Tristan Bancks

  20. Eating really slowly to annoy the nurses.

  21. Eating custard and jelly in little plastic containers after every meal.

  22. Annoying people with stupid requests like, ‘Be a dear and peel those grapes for me, would you, love?’

  23. Spending all my superannuation money on corn chips and ginger beer at the vending machine down the hall.

  24. If there’s an awesome room with a great view that I really want, I probably won’t have to wait too long for it to become available.

  25. Unlimited time on my hands. (Ish. I’ll be 97.)

  Pop’s most spectacular nursing home breakout attempt is documented in ‘The Great Escape’ in My Life & Other Massive Mistakes.

  NB: Some of my friends helped brainstorm this list. Their names are in the back of this book.

  The Clappers

  Jack and I have started a band. It’s not like any other band you’ve ever heard. It’s edgy, it’s experimental, it’s ahead of its time. See, we can’t really play any instruments. And we can’t sing. But we can clap.

  You might think that an all-clapping band sounds kind of terrible, but you would be wrong. We’re awesemic. We’ve always been good at clapping, ever since we were little. When we were about six, Jack would start clapping a simple beat, then I’d join in, and pretty soon we’d have a song. Until now, we’ve kept this extraordinary talent to ourselves.

  It was just something we did. But something this good can’t stay a secret forever.

  Our chance comes just before lunch today when Mrs McDonald makes an announcement over the crackly PA system at school: ‘Due to an unfortunate outbreak of hypochondria, the Year Three riverdance troupe is unable to perform at tonight’s Christmas Concert. Anyone who would like to stage a skit or musical number should report to Mr Skroop’s office at the beginning of lunch. Thank you.’

  Jack and I are sitting at the back of the classroom. I look at him. ‘Did you know that if you perform in the show you get the day off tomorrow?’

  Jack grins. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the year, and we’d do pretty much anything to skip it and get a head start on summer holidays.

  ‘Shame we don’t have any talent,’ Jack says.

  The bell rings.

  ‘You may quietly pack up your things and go to lunch,’ Miss Norrish says.

  ‘What do you mean we don’t have talent?’

  We start packing up our stuff.

  ‘I mean, we can’t –’

  ‘The Clappers!’ I tell him.

  Jack looks at me blankly. Kids spill out of the classroom while Miss Norrish cleans the whiteboard.

  ‘We are not doing The Clappers in public,’ he whispers firmly.

  ‘Yes, we are.’ I grab him by the arm and try to drag him out the door, but he won’t budge. ‘You love doing The Clappers.’

  ‘Not in front of actual people,’ he says.

  ‘It’s time we unleash our insane skills on the world,’ I tell him.

  ‘People will laugh at us.’

  ‘Laughers gonna laugh,’ I say.

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘It means who cares what they say!’

  ‘You actually believe that?’

  ‘No, but do you want the day off school or not?’ I ask.

  ‘Outside please, boys,’ Miss Norrish says, grabbing a stack of books from her desk and heading for the classroom door.

  Jack looks at me.

  I look at him.

  Jack growls.

  We head for Skroop’s office.

  The deputy principal’s door is big and dark, and we are almost alone in the dimly lit hallway. There is just one other contender for the last available Christmas Concert slot: Scarlet Grady, a Year Two girl who eats grass in the bottom playground every lunchtime. She has a creepy ventriloquist’s dummy on her lap, and she’s making the dummy speak in an annoying high-pitched voice: ‘Season’s greetings, my pretties.’ It makes me shiver, but she’s actually pretty good at not moving her mouth.

  ‘You ready?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ Jack replies.

  I clench my fist and knock quietly on Skroop’s door. We wait. The red carpet beneath our feet is like a river of blood flowing down the hall. Maybe from all the other kids who dared disturb Walton Skroop from his lair.

  ‘This is a bad idea,’ Jack says.

  The door screeeeks open and a dark, cloaked figure appears. His face is half in shadow. His eyes glow red. He laughs a hideous, twisted laugh, like a train crash.

  That’s what I hear and see anyway.

  What actually happens is that Skroop appears eating an Iced VoVo biscuit and holding a World’s Best Teacher mug (which I’m pretty sure he bought for himself). He is wearing his maroon jumper, shredded at the shoulder from the claws of his evil cat, Mr Fatterkins.

  ‘You two …’ he says, disgusted.

  We stare up into his large nostrils. They are like black holes that could swallow us if he were to sniff.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Well, w-w-we we –’ I begin.

  ‘Wee wee wee,’ Skroop mocks. ‘If you need to do a wee-wee, I suggest you use the latrines. Now spit it out, boy.’

  I swallow hard, finding it difficult to breathe.

  ‘We w-would like to perform at the Christmas Concert,’ I stammer.

  ‘Really,’ he says, lowering his voice. ‘And what would you two insignificant, flat-footed, jelly-back-boned, knock-kneed little prawns like to perform?’

  This really makes me nervous. The last time Mr Skroop called me that name was when we accidentally burnt down his fence with a tiki torch, nearly set fire to his cat and had him arrested by Sergeant Hategarden.

  ‘The C-Clappers,’ I say.

  I can feel Jack shrivelling next to me.

  ‘What is The C-Clappers?’ Skroop asks.

  ‘Well, you see, Jack and I have a band and –’

  Jack treads on my toe, begging me to stop, but I won’t. This is The Clappers’ chance to go public and nothing – not even Skroop – will get in our way.

  ‘We clap,’ I finish. ‘We clap songs.’

  Skroop smiles, baring those brown, gappy teeth and wheezing stale coffee breath right in our faces. ‘Wonderful!’ he says.

  I smile, relieved. ‘Really?’

  Even Jack smiles.

  ‘No. Not really,’ Skroop snaps. ‘You’ll make fools of yourselves but, as there appear to be no other takers for the slot …’

  His eyes darken and he smacks Scarlet Grady with a glare of pure evil. Her dummy squeaks, ‘Help!’ and she scurries off down the hall.

  ‘I shall see you tonight,’ Skroop finishes with a smile. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  He slams the door in our faces.

  Jack and I stand there in the darkened hallway for a moment, silent, the river of blood lapping around our ankles.

  ‘We’re in!’ I say, grinning.

  It’s 3:34 pm, and Jack and I are in my garage for our first and only rehearsal before tonight’s concert. We’re squeezed between Mum’s car and the wall, which is pretty uncomfortable. Jack sits on a bag of stinky garden manure, and I’m sitting on the mower. Mum has asked us to be quiet three times so far. She’s trying to watch a recording of Australia’s Got Talent, her favourite show. She says we sound terrible.

  ‘We’ve got to expect people not to “get” us,’ I tell Jack. ‘All geniuses are misunderstood. Did you know that Colonel Sanders’ chicken recipe was rejected over a thousand times before someone agreed to buy it and KFC was born?’

  ‘There was a reason it took so long,’ Jack says. ‘Have you ever tasted it?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t even know you anymore.’

  Ever since he fell in love with Aurora, the new girl who’s a vegan, he’s been making snide remarks about meat and junk food.

  ‘Let’s take it from the top. Okay … one, two … one, two, three …’ and I start in on ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’, but it’s out of time and
Jack just sits there, glaring at me.

  I stop.

  ‘The show’s in three hours. If we don’t rehearse, we’ll –’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a clapping band?’ Jack asks, poking his finger into the bag of garden manure he’s sitting on. He pulls out a chunk, sniffs it, then almost chokes on his own tongue before dropping the manure to the floor.

  ‘What did you expect?’ I ask.

  He ignores me. ‘Do you know why you haven’t heard of a clapping band?’

  ‘Because we’re bold, radical dudes and this is a world-first?’

  ‘No, because we’re idiots, and clapping is what you do after someone has played a song on a real instrument!’

  ‘But you’ve always said how good we are.’

  ‘I was joking. I mean … we were, like … six. We’ve got to think about our reputations at school.’

  ‘We don’t have reputations.’

  ‘Yeah, but I want one – and not as the freaky clapping guy.’

  ‘C’mon, let’s do “Rudolph”, just for old time’s sake. People didn’t believe in Rudolph either, and then look what happened one foggy Christmas Eve.’

  Jack gives me a withering look and stands. ‘Sorry, Tom.’ He pushes past and opens the garage door.

  ‘Mum’s making apple-and-rhubarb mini-muffins for after the show,’ I say to his back.

  He snaps his helmet on and rides off down the driveway.

  ‘And warm cocoa,’ I call out. ‘I could ask if we can have marshmallows, too?’

  I wait.

  ‘See you tonight!’ I shout into the street.

  Jack does not look back.

  I am side of stage, waiting. I’m surrounded by a bunch of Year One kids dressed as pumpkins, broccoli, zucchinis, carrots, kale and turnips. Their teacher, Mrs Mac, whispers loudly to them, ‘Remember, root vegetables in the back row. And follow my cue for that tricky key change.’

  ‘Would you please put your hands together,’ says Mr Skroop, standing in the middle of the stage, ‘for our next act … The Vegies!’

  The little kids scurry onto the stage and I am left alone in the wings. I peek out, hoping to see Jack, hoping he’s just trying to scare me by showing up at the last moment. Because he’s doing a pretty good job. I can’t see him, but I can see Sasha with her dad, sitting in the third row. Last time I performed for them I almost got chargrilled by a clown.

  I can’t do this. But I’m too scared to pull out because of Skroop. The Christmas Concert is his baby. (Before he became a teacher he aspired to become a professional bagpipe player.) Only a maniac would mess it up.

  The Vegies perform ‘We Wish You a Vegie Christmas’ and ‘Jingle Bell Wok’.

  The audience explodes. Mothers dry their eyes. It’s a standing ovation. No eggplant or brussels sprout has ever been loved like this. I’m poked in the eye by the tip of a carrot as the kids rush offstage, buzzing.

  ‘Ready to go?’ the stage manager asks. He’s a teenager with a beard of pimples. He clips the microphone to the neck of my tuxedo T-shirt. ‘Run this cord down there and put the mic pack in your back pocket. Aren’t there supposed to be two of you?’

  ‘No,’ I say, my stomach churning like a wave pool. ‘Just one.’

  ‘Weren’t they just wonderful?’ Mr Skroop says to the audience. ‘Now, a last-minute inclusion. The much-loved Year Three riverdancers are, unfortunately, unable to perform this evening so, instead, we have …’ He lowers his voice to a snarl. ‘The Clappers.’

  He struts offstage in the other direction. The crowd doesn’t know whether to clap or not. Some of them do. The wave pool in my stomach grows into a tsunami.

  ‘That’s you!’ the stage manager whispers, nudging me in the back, but my feet feel like they’re bolted to the floor.

  Skroop, in the other wing, motions angrily for me to get out there, but I can’t move.

  The school hall is silent.

  ‘Go!’ the pimply kid behind me whispers. I feel a hard shove from behind, and I fall out onto the stage on all fours. I look up at the crowd. There is scattered laughter. A teacher in the front row gets out of her seat to check that I’m okay. I stand. I gaze into the crowd, blinded by the stage lights. I can only see the first four rows clearly. Then an ocean of darkened heads.

  If you ever have the chance to skip a day of school in exchange for performing solo in front of hundreds of people, I recommend you go to school.

  ‘Go, Tom!’ a kid calls from up the back. It sounds like Jonah Flem. A bunch of kids laugh. ‘Whoo! I love you, Tom!’ a girl screams. I’m pretty certain it’s Stella Holling, the only girl who has ever loved me.

  My brain tells me to start clapping but my body is way too smart for that.

  Brain: Do it! They’ll think you’re an idiot if you just stand there.

  Body: They’ll think I’m a bigger idiot if I clap by myself and it’s terrible.

  Brain: Well, you need to do something. Do you know any jokes?

  Body: Do you know any jokes?

  Brain: Not off the top of my head.

  Someone at the back starts a slow clap. At first it’s just a few kids, but pretty soon it’s parents, grandparents and teachers. It gets faster and faster and faster. I turn to Mr Skroop in the wings, and he’s clapping and grinning that evil grin like this is the best night of his life. He’s finally got me.

  I feel like I’m about to bawl my eyes out when the audience abruptly stops clapping. There is a single clap from behind me, on the stage. I figure it’s Pimply Stage Guy, the genius who pushed me out here. I turn to scowl at him, but …

  It’s Jack Danalis.

  My ex-best friend.

  And possibly ‘best’ again, depending on how this goes. Jack moves to the centre of the stage, clapping the opening bars of ‘Jingle Bells’ and, without thinking, I join in.

  Jack thunders the baseline with big, cupped hands, and I patter over the top with a snappy, rapid-fire beat. Jack doubles his pace and I halve mine. Pretty soon I forget about the crowd. I forget about the day off tomorrow. I forget about Mum telling us we stink. I forget about Skroop in that dark cloak with the red eyes telling us we are ‘insignificant, flat-footed, jelly-back-boned, knock-kneed little prawns’. I disappear inside The Clappers.

  We finish with a punch – the most ferocious 30 seconds of Christmas carol clapping the world has ever seen. And then we’re done.

  I look out and notice the crowd for the first time in a couple of minutes. They stare at us – not in a good way.

  Jack whispers, ‘I’m going to kill you for this.’

  They start booing. Raph Atkins, one of my friends, throws a hot dog at me. Then Luca Kingsley, the kid next to him, throws a half-eaten meat pie with sauce. Food rains down on the stage. The booing is so loud –

  That’s what I see and hear anyway.

  What actually happens, after that stunned pause, is … they clap.

  All of them.

  The whole audience.

  They stand and clap and scream and whistle twice as loudly as they cheered for The Vegies. The roar of it all echoes off the aluminium ceiling of the hall. Jack starts laughing like a madman – and so do I. We take a bow and they cheer us as we head offstage. We pass Skroop on our way to the wings. I swear I see flames leap from his deep, red eyes, but in real life this time.

  ‘Quiet. Quiet please!’ Skroop barks into the microphone. ‘That’s quite enough. Now, our final act for the evening –’

  But the crowd won’t quieten. The applause swells again, louder than before, drowning out Skroop’s voice. ‘Our final act –’ he begins again, and someone in the crowd calls, ‘More!’ A bunch of others join in. From the side of the stage I can see Sasha and her dad and a bunch of kids from our class calling for more, so we head back out onstage. Skroop turns and waves us away, but the audience keeps shouting ‘More!’ until Skroop throws up his hands and returns to the wings.

  ‘Um …’ I say. ‘We’ll play you one of our favourites, “Rudolph the Red-Nos
ed Reindeer”.’

  The audience cheers again until Jack and I start up, and they fall silent. They watch. We haven’t played it in a couple of years, so we’re a bit rusty in the opening bars, but we give it everything we’ve got. We go like the clappers. I have to say, it feels pretty good up here. Dark room, bright lights, big crowd. I could get used to this. If I squint we could be playing Madison Square Garden or Wembley Stadium, and when the song is done, we swim offstage on a tidal wave of applause.

  We sign kids’ hands for them outside the hall after the show, and some audience members ask if we’ll have photos taken with them. Most kids want a high-five, but Jack and I really need to be careful with our hands. Lots of people tell us we were the best act of the night, and Jack and I decide that this is the greatest day of our lives so far.

  We meet up early the next morning at Jack’s to shoot a Clappers video of us doing the Pink Panther theme song. It rocks. We upload it and then go to school, even though we don’t have to. We figure we owe it to our fans.

  Jack puts gel in his hair in case anyone wants a photo with him, and we each have a pen to sign autographs. (It’s really annoying when someone wants an autograph and they don’t have a pen.) We’re both wearing gloves to protect our million-dollar palms.

  But things seem kind of different today. By that I mean no one even mentions the concert. Except us.

  We tell everyone about our video, but they’re all watching a dumb video of Luca Kingsley’s shaved, pink-skinned cat having a fight with a cactus instead. The cat is wearing mini red boxing gloves.

  Jonah Flem says, ‘You guys were great and all, but that boxing cat! Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.’

  By the time I go to bed that night we have had 12 views. Most of them by us. Not exactly viral. ‘Cactus Cat’ has had 732. Life is unpredictable and sometimes cruel.

  Still, we’ll always have the Christmas Concert. Almost every day of the school holidays Jack says to me, ‘Remember that night when we were stars and everyone loved us and we got to sign autographs?’

  And that feels good. It really, really does.