‘I counted how many people went to the toilet.’
I paused, taking it in.
‘What do you mean, you counted people going to the toilet?’
‘I kept a count of how many people went to the toilet.’
I was hoping his follow-up response would have a deeper meaning than that, but it was exactly what I thought. Rather than calling over a hostie and asking them to essentially do their job and set him up with a quasi-comedy you’d never watch on the ground if your life depended on it, he sat and stared into the semi-darkness, counting people’s trips to the toilets.
Being unable to sleep for that long showed me just how nervous he was, but it also had me concerned for those passengers, not knowing some random man was watching them go to the bathroom. I made a mental note to ask him not to do that if we were sitting in a park in the near future.
But I understood Dad’s anxiety. Even though I’d travelled extensively, I still felt the flutter in my stomach every time I got to the airport. For me it was more excitement than nerves, the thought of arriving in an unexplored city and imagining what it would be like. I still had worries, but they were about minor things, like whether I’d like the city, how I’d get from the airport to the hotel, and if it would be too early for a beer on arrival.
Dad didn’t have any experience to call on. Being only two when he left Germany in 1949 meant his memories were foggy at best. I sympathised, remembering how I felt going overseas for the first time some fifteen years earlier, unsure of how a completely different country operated. Would I fit in? Could I cope with the language? Would I disgrace myself with my lack of knowledge of local customs? Fortunately, aside from not being smiled at for about three weeks, I eventually got the hang of England.
Dad and I sat in a comfortable post-flight silence, tired, looking at nothing, hoping the next leg started sooner rather than later. I don’t know exactly what Dad was thinking about, but clearly he was fascinated by this exotic locale, because the first thing he asked me was, ‘How many desalination plants do they have here?’
It was a strange question. Yes, the UAE was a desert climate, and they’d undoubtedly have them, but I’m not sure how he expected me to have the answer. Particularly as he knew my subscription to Desalination Monthly had expired years ago.
‘Dunno, Dad,’ I responded, and left it at that. I didn’t want the conversation to keep going, as I wasn’t sure I’d have the answer about the production of camel milk either.
Dad fell silent, and I pondered where a question like that had come from. Had he been waiting to ask it the whole flight? Was he trying to fill the silence? Or did it just pop into his head and he really wanted to know? This didn’t really happen at home, but I guessed it was because Dad had such a ritual that nothing was ever out of the ordinary.
I sensed it was going to be a long three weeks.
When I was younger I loved spending time with Dad. My favourite outing together was our biannual trip to the tip. The moment Dad mentioned we ‘might head to the tip next Sunday’ I started to get excited. He probably didn’t enjoy going as much as I did, because for him it meant gathering enough crap to put in the trailer to make it worthwhile. It might be pruning all the shrubbery around the house, or perhaps Mum was sick of the garage having more and more things packed into it and had demanded a clean out. But I couldn’t wait.
I’d help Dad bring things to the trailer, but wasn’t allowed to pack it. At that young age I didn’t have the Tetris skills required to make the most of the limited space the trailer offered. So I stood back and watched, tossing on a branch or two that slipped off.
Once the trailer was brimming with crap piled so high it blocked all visibility from the car, it was time to stand back as Dad tied down the load. Years later, at my first ever adult job, packing boxes in a warehouse, I was taught by truckies during pick-ups how to tie proper knots for securing cargo. Dad used none of these. He would loop the rope around and over the trailer and rubbish about a thousand times, tying knots so tight they added an extra fifteen minutes when we got to the tip because no one could undo them. And we weren’t allowed to cut the ropes because, as he’d tell me, ‘Ropes don’t grow on trees.’
But once the knots were undone, it was party time. I could throw rubbish as far as eight-year-old-humanly possible. Even though I wasn’t allowed to help with the packing of the trailer, I made sure to pay close attention to where certain items were being placed. In particular, the breakables. The moment these treasures were exposed, I swooped in. Nowhere else in the world was I afforded the freedom to break things with, as I saw it, ‘diplomatic immunity’. Glassware was the most fun to throw. Or seeing someone else’s glassware on the tip pile, aiming whatever I could at it, and smashing it into a million pieces. All without getting in trouble! For a child it was like international waters, and I was a pirate on the high seas of garbage.
The tip wasn’t all fun and games though. Well, not for the adults. When it came to reversing the trailer up to the pile of rubbish, there was immense pressure to complete it in one go. The Tip Guys who worked amongst the sweet, rotting stench all day would point to a gap leading to the pile and you’d back your car and trailer into that spot. Theirs was a smooth process, knowing exactly where to direct people so the tractor could come along and push your rubbish from one pile into a bigger pile. As a kid, it was majestic. I envied the Tip Guys. Until a time I saw one sitting on an old esky eating his sandwich surrounded by hundreds of seagulls, like a pungent remake of Hitchcock’s The Birds. As much as I loved the tip, even I had to draw the line there.
Reversing a trailer is one of those skills you don’t appreciate until you try to do it. Unless you own a boat or a horse, some people may never attempt it, making it something of a lost art. But if you have tried it, you’ll understand how difficult it is. The idea of having to turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction of where you want the trailer to go is confusing enough. In practice it’s even worse, as the front end of the car goes in one direction, the trailer flies off in another, and you have to spin the wheel like you’re in control of a tall ship.
Once, as I was enjoying the sophisticated, guilt-free pleasure of throwing breakables onto other breakables, I watched someone try to back a trailer into the space next to us. Except the trailer reversing towards me was coming at an acute angle. I stood back and watched as the car drove a good distance forward to reset the whole procedure, only to reverse so poorly the trailer nearly took out our car beside it. This was followed by one more poor attempt, which Dad halted by whistling for the driver to stop, lest there be a jackknifing and the trailer end up at a right angle to their car.
As a kid I had no appreciation of the art of the trailer reverse. Dad just backed the car in anywhere. Tips, driveways, down the street, wherever. He could do it, so I assumed everyone else could, too.
Turns out this guy couldn’t. Even at that young age I could sense the pressure he was under. One misfire, that was okay. On his second go people started to notice. By the third attempt everyone had put down their rubbish to watch the spectacle of the man who couldn’t reverse a trailer. This is what nightmares are made of.
But with a quick, ‘Jump out, mate,’ Dad took control of the situation. The guy sheepishly got out of his car, Dad jumped in and handled the wheel with casual aplomb as he backed the man’s car in for him, perfect on the first attempt.
I was impressed, and proud that Dad had these skills this other man didn’t. It was the early eighties; if he couldn’t reverse a trailer I have no doubt his manliness was brought into question. Probably after he unloaded all the rubbish from his trailer he threw his testicles away as well.
As the years went on, Dad would let me tie down a section of the trailer, always double-checking my work so things didn’t fly off on the drive down to the tip. Eventually we reached the point where I was allowed to hitch the trailer to the car. I’d completed this successfully a few times, until one day, in my haste, I forgot to push down the
handle that activates the locking mechanism and secures the trailer to the tow ball.
I’d remembered to attach the chains to the tow bar (a back-up safety measure), so when the trailer slipped off it was still attached to the car. This meant the chains went taut as we pulled away, but slackened as Dad slowed. ‘What’s that noise?’ quickly became ‘JESUS, ADAM!’ as a fully laden trailer slammed into the back of the car.
The car was fine, but Dad’s trust in me was not. Trust further eroded when only weeks later, probably distracted thinking about the trailer, I got the pause/record button wrong on a TV show we were taping on the VCR, so that I recorded the ads and edited out the program. By the time I had regained Dad’s trust, the tip had been converted into a recycling station and there was no more need for the trailer.
The tip remained a fond memory, but that love of spending time with Dad was about to be seriously tested. Dad’s competency in some areas, like reversing a trailer or removing Teflon, made him think everything else would come to him just as easily. Combined with his never really trusting my judgement, it meant he never listened to my advice on anything, no matter how out of his depth he was.
MUNICH
Twenty-three hours after we set off from Australia, we landed in Munich. I steeled myself for three weeks of solid, uninterrupted Dad.
He was excited to arrive, but not because we had touched down in Germany – he wanted to spend his money. Not in a high roller, ‘let’s buy $200 bottles of champagne and make it rain’ kind of way, but more in a ‘he and Mum made the effort of going to the bank and withdrawing euros and now he wants to spend this foreign money’ way. They hadn’t just exchanged a nominal amount to help him get by until he found an ATM, either. No, they’d decided to load him up with €2000 in cash, adding ‘target for robbery’ to his travelling repertoire.
I became suspicious when I suggested we should grab a couple of bottles of water and he didn’t respond with ‘why would I pay for something I can just get out of the tap?’ He had the same logic with takeaway coffee – why would he buy that when there was an industrial-sized tin of Nescafé Blend 43 sitting at home.
Like a modern-day Burke & Wills, we set off in search of water. On our way, Dad inquired, ‘So if I give them fifty euro, they’ll give me change?’
This question I put down to the lengthy flight and lack of sleep, for none of us are at our sharpest when we get off a flight. But even allowing for that, few forget the basic logic of the monetary exchange system we’ve employed over the last couple of centuries. I kept walking, thinking, ‘You’re not Amish! You know how money works!’ but then again he still used cheques, so perhaps he didn’t.
I answered, ‘Yeah, Dad, of course they’ll change it.’ And to the amazement of no one but Dad, they did. Not that he took anything away from that experience; I think as far as he was concerned it had been a lucky guess on my part.
At Munich airport Dad confirmed his lack of technological prowess, as though there was any doubt, when he struggled with the tap in the bathroom. Considering we both arrived at the sinks together, he exited an inordinate amount after I did. When I asked what took so long he informed me he’d never seen automatic sensor taps. Apparently he’d spent the majority of his time trying to get a water flow – touching the tap, the basin, probably the mirror, completely flummoxed as all around him washed their hands with ease.
I did my best to take this on board, wondering how sheltered a life this man had really led. Perhaps he was indeed Amish. I made a note to keep an eye out for a butter churner the next time I was at Mum and Dad’s.
Dad’s cousin Markus and his partner Hans thoughtfully offered to pick us up from the airport. This would be an incredible gesture from a friend, let alone two strangers – albeit one of them a blood stranger – from the other side of the planet. I’d put airport pick-ups ahead of organ donation in terms of inconvenience, as I’d happily cough up a kidney if it meant not having to time a run to the arrivals area.
What would be the best way to respond to such an act of kindness? Walk straight past these people, pretending not to know them, and leave them waiting even longer than they already had. This was the ‘prank’ Dad had planned, probably concocted in the twenty-something hours he’d been awake. I instantly talked him out of it, explaining that Markus and Hans probably wouldn’t find it as funny, having already committed to an airport pick-up. I also suggested his joke may not work, given they wouldn’t notice it was us walking past as they only knew us from old photos from when I was a child and when Dad was much, much skinnier and had a beard rather than his now long-established moustache. Dad acknowledged the flaw in his plan and begrudgingly relented.
Dad has always had a great sense of humour, one of the traits I picked up from him that I’m actually happy with. He enjoyed pranks that were more playful than elaborate, like putting all the clocks in the house forward, causing Mum to think she’d accidentally napped for three hours. He probably could have let on a bit earlier, rather than watching her race around in a tizz to get dinner ready and then struggle to work out why none of us kids were hungry.
Or the time my uncle Michael was fixing his car and Dad, seeing a pile of parts underneath the engine, added some random bolts to the mix. This consigned my uncle to hours of frustration trying to work out where they belonged. The pranks were fairly harmless, though looking back at them it seems Dad just enjoyed wasting people’s time.
His sense of fun wasn’t always just for evil. When I was in grade two, my primary school had a fete, and parents were invited to create a stall to help raise funds. The standard ones were put forward – craft, lucky dip, baked goods. Dad one-upped all of these, getting an old car from my beloved tip (disappointed I wasn’t invited) in the early hours of the Saturday morning and towing it to the school, placing it in the quadrangle usually reserved for downball/four-square or elastics.
His idea was simple: for $2 people could have the pleasure of smashing the absolute shit out of the car with a sledgehammer. Fortunately nepotism was alive and well, and Dad gave me first crack at the car. Not that anyone seemed to mind; an eight-year-old wasn’t about to do much damage. I think it was fair enough anyway, since clearly he had stolen the idea after seeing my joy during our trips to the tip.
Not that there are records, but I’d go so far as to say that it was the most popular stall in fete history. Not just at that primary school; worldwide. People were lining up in droves, which certainly wasn’t happening over at Scone Central. Normally reserved mums were standing atop the car, safety goggles on, dripping with sweat as they unleashed blow after blow onto this solid-steel sixties Toyota Corolla, their husbands watching on, nervously wondering where all this pent-up rage had come from.
When I was sixteen Dad took me to see Billy Connolly. I’m eternally grateful for that night, as it set me on the path I’m on today. He couldn’t have known the spark it would set off inside me, but it changed my life seeing Connolly send thousands of people – including Dad – bananas for three hours.
I’m pretty confident Mum would’ve booked the tickets with her ‘evil’ credit card, but it was Dad who took me to the show. And perhaps he did see something in me, as it was just him and me, without my brother or sister. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. I’m just thankful he didn’t take me to Bill Cosby.
Between that and his pranks, I’d picked up Dad’s sense of fun, turning it into a career as a comedy writer and stand-up comedian. And like Dad, occasionally I took pranks a bit too far.
It’s always cool to be the first and have everyone else follow your lead. I’m confident I am a trendsetter. Nut allergies are extremely prevalent these days – every child I meet is allergic to a nut of some kind. Every function is ruined by one or two children who can’t even be near a nut, parties being shut down because someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich in the previous half hour tried to make their way onto the premises.
I am allergic to nuts, but anaphylaxis awareness wasn’t a thing when I was grow
ing up. Back in the eighties it was called whingeing. I’ve never knowingly eaten peanut butter; even as a toddler, I must’ve intuited that it would make me feel unwell. Not that my allergy meant peanut butter was banned in our house; my brother and sister ate it constantly, taunting me by shoving it in my face, the smell making me shudder. Unlike the children of today, I didn’t carry an EpiPen, the lifesaving shot of adrenaline administered in times of anaphylactic shock. Nut allergies were so uncommon that they were not a thing, and I probably would have just been told to suck it up anyway.
When I eventually did an allergy test as an adult, to prove to my family I didn’t make it up, Mum was genuinely surprised. She claimed it had never been an issue when I was a baby, when she would let me chow down on as much peanut butter as I liked. But I was a fat baby, so looking back now I don’t think I was fat, I think I was just swollen.
I’d learned from Dad to never make a fuss. If there was any kind of incident, we were taught to deal with it without commotion and get on with our lives. And it was in this spirit that I refused to ruin my friend’s fortieth birthday, even though I’d clearly eaten something that contained nuts. The telltale tingling sensation in my throat and mouth let me know instantly that all was not right, and this was confirmed when my eyes began to itch.
I briefly considered asking one of my friends to drive me to hospital, but word started spreading that speeches were imminent, so I decided I’d take care of myself. Pretending to walk to the bathroom, I did a phantom and exited the pub where the party was being held, hitting the street and considering my options.
Of which there was really only one: hospital. Actually, two. Death had fast become one of the possible outcomes, the allergy symptoms coming on faster than I had ever experienced before.
Paris and Other Disappointments Page 4