Melbourne -
I arrived after the long flight, which was comfortable enough -- so much so, in fact, and so rare an opportunity simply to sit, that I found myself wishing it would last longer (I slept comfortably in the this-way-that-way business-class seat, aided by one lovely Ambien). I must admit that the airline's treatment of its business-class passengers, with tasty food, replenished water supply, and so forth, was exemplary. Exemplary, that is, of the way they should treat everyone and anyone who flies their friendly skies, including the herded masses to the rear of which I am usually a part.
I'm at my brother Paul's, with his two highly engaging children.
Neddy, 6, is as compelling and diverting as diminutive.
He is given, for example, to counting out his money with actuarial precision and attention. He keeps an impressive stash of it ina chest that he places carefully in a corner of the space under his loft bed (which he can mount by a variety of methods, all using adjacent furniture, as he proudly will demonstrate). He opens the box and the contents glitter like a pirate's chest of children's adventure tales, and then he lifts out of pièce de résistance, a small wallet in which he stows his banknotes. He in fact has fewer of these than he thinks, although their number recently swelled by 50%. He had two carefully folded five-dollar notes, but then his mother, in a pinch, borrowed them, to pay a bill. She thought she could have them back before Neddy returned that afternoon. Alas, he got to the cache before her, and immediately discovered the disappearance. When the incident is discussed now -- and it's very fresh in his memory -- his mother tries to explain that she borrowed the notes, but he interjects ”stole!” He finds occasion to repeat this accusation several times as the story is told, and when his mother explains that she was going to return the money, that day, so it really was borrowing, he reiterates ”stealing!” and then embarks on a disquisition on the evils of theft, particularly as committed against him. If you take someone's money, he explains, that's wrong; in fact, it's a crime. When he discovered the infliction upon him of this serious infraction, he descended into two hours of unconsolable grief -- lots of waterworks -- and his mother was able to assuage his loss of faith in motherhood, humankind... or at least the security of his strongbox, only by offering him a third $5 note, as a kind of interest. Neddy now agrees that in future, any impecunious members of his family -- which is to say, any of the other three -- will at the very least leave him an IOU so that his faith isn't further compromised.
Ideally, however, they will keep their hands off his treasury, altogether. After the Loss of Faith in Motherhood incident, he was so outraged that, although he cannot spell, although he can spell out words and even many pages in books, he penned an erratically spaced sign reading:
Nobode a lahad to
go en my
barade
He allowed, to me, that the last word, “bedroom,” had given him particular trouble.
He posted the sign on his door, filling some of the spare white space beneath by affixing a playing card of Shakira, the grandiosely blond, polyester-wrapped-curvaceous, and generously bosomed pop star.
He does a very serviceable Elvis impersonation, and in any case is impressively dramatic, as I expect many children of his age are. He combines this with an ability to completely shut out the world, especially when it suits him, as when asked to get ready for school. (In this, he resembles my brother Michael, in whose ear, when he was, say, reading, I could shout “MICHAEEEL!” and still he wouldn't notice, which used to drive me to utter distraction, while also stunning me, who was utterly distractable). If he happens to hear, say, a very mildly stated request to get his clothes on, he may launch into an extraordinary series of exclamations, such as “YOU HATE ME!” or “OK, OK, I'm gonna have to eat five Mars Bars.” Why, is unclear. His melodramatization is so grand that his big brother Harry, 12, may simply stand back, openmouthed and awestruck.
He swears freely, from plain “That's crap” to full-bore “Oh, fuck!” - all used with unerring context appropriateness.
He is football crazy. His room is a shrine to his beloved Essendon Bombers (he inherited the preference from Harry), many of whom he can name before elaborating on their accomplishments. He likes to watch the early morning news (at 7am) and last week, I'm told, he reacted with huge, voluble dismay when it was reported, as he subsequently reported to his then-no-longer-sleeping parents, that the Bombers' superstar fullback, Dustin Fletcher, had been suspended by the league tribunal for 3 weeks, for striking. The Bombers then lost badly in the quarterfinals to Port Adelaide, whom Neddy considers a lock for the premiership. Yesterday he hauled up his neighbor, a middle-aged woman and also a die-hard Bombers fan, on her way into her house, and inquired whom she would now back for the flag. He told her he considered Port the likely winners, and then proceeded to show me how to do a “snap” (for goal), by holding the ball at an odd, reverse angle, and then kicking across one's body. At the park, I notice, he employs no other kick, consistently, but when the ball flies only a few yards and then bounces in any direction but mine, he pursues it like a terrier after a manageable rat.
He is given to the expression, “it scared the fleece out of me,” which he finds quite a versatile punctuation to all kinds of reports from his daily life. It's an oddly antiquated Australian turn of phrase that hasn't been current since about 1965, when the country started to depend on sheep for fewer than all its fortunes.
Today I visit, again (after semi-successful visits fuor years ago), to the highly reputed Dr. Sarjit Siddhu, hypnotherapist to half of Melbourne, from what I can tell. He can do it all: stop you smoking in about 20 minutes, never to start again; help you overcome insomnia or any other form of habitual anxiety...; lose those extra 50 pounds. I'm banking on remedies two and three. Although high unsuggestible, I have faith in his magic method of counting backwards from 10 with incomprehensible mutterings between the digits.
I arrived after the long flight, which was comfortable enough -- so much so, in fact, and so rare an opportunity simply to sit, that I found myself wishing it would last longer (I slept comfortably in the this-way-that-way business-class seat, aided by one lovely Ambien). I must admit that the airline's treatment of its business-class passengers, with tasty food, replenished water supply, and so forth, was exemplary. Exemplary, that is, of the way they should treat everyone and anyone who flies their friendly skies, including the herded masses to the rear of which I am usually a part.
I'm at my brother Paul's, with his two highly engaging children.
Neddy, 6, is as compelling and diverting as diminutive.
He is given, for example, to counting out his money with actuarial precision and attention. He keeps an impressive stash of it ina chest that he places carefully in a corner of the space under his loft bed (which he can mount by a variety of methods, all using adjacent furniture, as he proudly will demonstrate). He opens the box and the contents glitter like a pirate's chest of children's adventure tales, and then he lifts out of pièce de résistance, a small wallet in which he stows his banknotes. He in fact has fewer of these than he thinks, although their number recently swelled by 50%. He had two carefully folded five-dollar notes, but then his mother, in a pinch, borrowed them, to pay a bill. She thought she could have them back before Neddy returned that afternoon. Alas, he got to the cache before her, and immediately discovered the disappearance. When the incident is discussed now -- and it's very fresh in his memory -- his mother tries to explain that she borrowed the notes, but he interjects ”stole!” He finds occasion to repeat this accusation several times as the story is told, and when his mother explains that she was going to return the money, that day, so it really was borrowing, he reiterates ”stealing!” and then embarks on a disquisition on the evils of theft, particularly as committed against him. If you take someone's money, he explains, that's wrong; in fact, it's a crime. When he discovered the infliction upon him of this serious infraction, he descended into two hours of unconsolable grief -- lots of waterworks -- and his mother was able to assuage his loss of faith in motherhood, humankind... or at least the security of his strongbox, only by offering him a third $5 note, as a kind of interest. Neddy now agrees that in future, any impecunious members of his family -- which is to say, any of the other three -- will at the very least leave him an IOU so that his faith isn't further compromised.
Ideally, however, they will keep their hands off his treasury, altogether. After the Loss of Faith in Motherhood incident, he was so outraged that, although he cannot spell, although he can spell out words and even many pages in books, he penned an erratically spaced sign reading:
Nobode a lahad to
go en my
barade
He allowed, to me, that the last word, “bedroom,” had given him particular trouble.
He posted the sign on his door, filling some of the spare white space beneath by affixing a playing card of Shakira, the grandiosely blond, polyester-wrapped-curvaceous, and generously bosomed pop star.
He does a very serviceable Elvis impersonation, and in any case is impressively dramatic, as I expect many children of his age are. He combines this with an ability to completely shut out the world, especially when it suits him, as when asked to get ready for school. (In this, he resembles my brother Michael, in whose ear, when he was, say, reading, I could shout “MICHAEEEL!” and still he wouldn't notice, which used to drive me to utter distraction, while also stunning me, who was utterly distractable). If he happens to hear, say, a very mildly stated request to get his clothes on, he may launch into an extraordinary series of exclamations, such as “YOU HATE ME!” or “OK, OK, I'm gonna have to eat five Mars Bars.” Why, is unclear. His melodramatization is so grand that his big brother Harry, 12, may simply stand back, openmouthed and awestruck.
He swears freely, from plain “That's crap” to full-bore “Oh, fuck!” - all used with unerring context appropriateness.
He is football crazy. His room is a shrine to his beloved Essendon Bombers (he inherited the preference from Harry), many of whom he can name before elaborating on their accomplishments. He likes to watch the early morning news (at 7am) and last week, I'm told, he reacted with huge, voluble dismay when it was reported, as he subsequently reported to his then-no-longer-sleeping parents, that the Bombers' superstar fullback, Dustin Fletcher, had been suspended by the league tribunal for 3 weeks, for striking. The Bombers then lost badly in the quarterfinals to Port Adelaide, whom Neddy considers a lock for the premiership. Yesterday he hauled up his neighbor, a middle-aged woman and also a die-hard Bombers fan, on her way into her house, and inquired whom she would now back for the flag. He told her he considered Port the likely winners, and then proceeded to show me how to do a “snap” (for goal), by holding the ball at an odd, reverse angle, and then kicking across one's body. At the park, I notice, he employs no other kick, consistently, but when the ball flies only a few yards and then bounces in any direction but mine, he pursues it like a terrier after a manageable rat.
He is given to the expression, “it scared the fleece out of me,” which he finds quite a versatile punctuation to all kinds of reports from his daily life. It's an oddly antiquated Australian turn of phrase that hasn't been current since about 1965, when the country started to depend on sheep for fewer than all its fortunes.
Today I visit, again (after semi-successful visits fuor years ago), to the highly reputed Dr. Sarjit Siddhu, hypnotherapist to half of Melbourne, from what I can tell. He can do it all: stop you smoking in about 20 minutes, never to start again; help you overcome insomnia or any other form of habitual anxiety...; lose those extra 50 pounds. I'm banking on remedies two and three. Although high unsuggestible, I have faith in his magic method of counting backwards from 10 with incomprehensible mutterings between the digits.
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