Story: The Last Laugh

(This shot is of my

old flat the day

it snowed...)





The Last Laugh. 22 September 2006.

Lauren was not your average child; she was not your average girl. She liked to ride horses and play with dolls – she also was fascinated with computer games and cars.

Her father would often let her hang around and help in the garage when he was maintaining the car. Lauren was pretty good at changing oil now. Her favourite part was watching all the oil drain from the car into the bucket after she had unscrewed the cap underneath the engine. She had been timid about trying it the first time, but now she was agog to do most of the work herself.

As for computer games, her favourite was Car-racer on the SP4-modelXV900: the latest, coolest, most-popular game and computer-gaming console around. She could beat any of her boy friends (male pals, not boyfriends, she was only nine after all…) on it. They were partly livid about being beaten by a female; but also had a sense of admiration and held her in high regard for her attributes and uniqueness.

Some of the other girls at school noticed her boyishness. They called her “Tom-boy” and other unmentionable names behind her back – and sometimes to her face too. They had life figured out – and they were only eight and nine-years old. This was an astonishing thing: adults at the age of fifty were themselves still trying to work out what the deal was with life. They spent thousands of dollars per year on self-help courses and books, on counselling, gurus, mentors, etc, and were still struggling to work things out… Not these young lasses. Oh no. They knew it all. Life was about one thing and one thing only: being normal. That and being popular, cool, having long straight hair… you get the idea.

One of Lauren’s detractors was called Sariah. She was four and a half feet tall, had long, sandy blonde hair, wore blue jeans and a baggy pink t-shirt most weekends, and had the coolest Bratz collection in the world. She had of course verified this as a fact. Her best friend was Abigail: a prissy-looking brunette whose favourite clothing was black tights and a purple cardigan. She adorned herself also with some pink Doctor Martin boots. She was the envy of the town when hanging out with her comrades down at the mall.

Most lunch times Lauren would be out in the field with the boys, playing soccer or cricket; sometimes rugby, but the boys tended to play that game to be manly and get away from feminine homo-sapiens, so she was often left out. She did not look much like other girls; she was not considered normal by her peers at all. She had short black hair, wore ripped jeans and a black Limp Bizkit t-shirt outside of school, and tended to have a tough-looking, boyish face too.

Today was your ordinary day.

“What game are you goin’ a play today eh Tom?” enquired Sariah.

“Oh, I thought I’d be game for some footy today Sariah. What about you: playing with Bratz in the classroom again today; resting your unfit body and avoiding any strain to your legs?” Lauren suggested.

Abigail looked affronted:

“Are you getting’ smart to my mate Sariah eh Lauren - sorry - Tom? Are you cruisin’ for a bruisin’ this lunch-time?”

“I just suggested the obvious, Abs, take a chill pill girl. Well, I’m a off to play some football with the lads, have fun with Barbie – you know what I mean. See ya girls.”

And with that, Lauren was out in the field, at the speed of lightning; faster than the speed of light in fact. (Apology: that could not be a fact, not even in a narrative: all scientists agree that nothing in the Universe can exceed the speed of light. Sure, some things happen in stories that have a one-in-a-million chance of happening; but never things that are entirely impossible and improbable. There’s narrativium, and then there’s just plain lies.)

Abs and Sariah settled down for a nice game of “Thorrington Super-model” with their Bratz dolls, and were quickly immersed in intense dialogue and totally removed from any kind of what people normally call “reality”. About half an hour later, Abigail had an idea which brought her back to the real world temporarily.

“You know, we should teach old Lauren a lesson. It’s just not right that she refuses to be normal; I hate it how she keeps her hair short and plays with the boys. Boys are gross…”
“I’m with ya there Abs”, responded Sariah. “She’s a real weirdo. She needs to learn a thing or two about life; she needs us to bring her into the world of conformity and popularity. Then she can be happy like us, and we can fulfil our dream of a homogenous society. Our motto should be: ‘Everyone must think the same.’”

“That’s a cracker of a slogan Sariah. I’ll just write that down. Now here’s what I think we should do to Lauren…”

After about ten more minutes’ discussion, and with about ten minutes left of lunchtime, the girls had their plan ready, and they set out to teach Lauren the Meaning of Life, once and for all.

“Hi there Lauren, we were wondering if you want to come to a sleep-over at Sariah’s place this Saturday,” said Abigail.

“Uh, aren’t you the same two girls that always pick on me?” challenged Lauren, wary of this sudden kindness.

“Yeah, we know. You see, that’s the thing: we feel bad that we treat you so badly, and would love to make it up to you. You seem pretty cool really; we want you to know there are no hard feelings between us,” offered Abigail. “Go on, it’ll be heaps of fun. All the girls in the class are coming: Sandy, Bobbie, Joanna, – the lot.”

Lauren contemplated this for a few seconds. Hmmm, she pondered, these girls are up to something; no wait, maybe they do want to be my friends. Oh! Who knows? The best way to find out is to just go along, and then see what happens. You do need friends, she thought to herself. “Okay, what the heck. I’ll go. What time?”

“Around seven, bring a plate of food and your pyjamas,” advised Sariah.

“Okay, cool. See you there I guess. Well, I’ll also see you for the rest of the day, and the week; I will also see you there… Oh, you know what I mean.”

“We certainly do,” Abigail winked subtly to Sariah, who smirked back at her. “We do know what you are like – sorry, what you mean.”

The days came and went, and soon enough it was Saturday night. Six-thirty pm and Lauren was having an anxiety attack, and fretting to her liberal, happy-go-lucky mother.

“What could possibly go wrong?” (Famous last words…) challenged Lauren’s mother. “You just go along now; you’ll have fun, you’ll see. Maybe they just want to be your friends."

Sure, and I’m an echidna, thought Lauren to herself. “Okay, whatever. Can we just get this over with?” Lauren was timorous, yet felt skookum enough to brave the party all the same.
Little did she know this was character-building, and that this was the early formation of the strength and determination – bravery even – that would later carry her through the tough times in her life.

The drive to the party was short (it was the fact that Lauren had to walk there that made her take forty minutes to get there.) Enter Lauren, 7.10pm Saturday night.

The party went really well. All the girls chatted to Lauren all night. She joined in Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Midnight, and a plethora of other fun party games. She was having the time of her life; to let the truth be known. Yay, she thought. I have friends, at last.

The party ended quite late: around nine pm. Lauren was first to sleep, being bone-tired from all this new excitement.

She awoke feeling refreshed. She got up and had breakfast with the rest of the lasses, and didn’t notice anything strange until, when washing her face, she stopped short and stared in
horror at the monstrosity staring back at her: they had dyed her hair bright green.

When she finally regained her composure she left the party, still crying bitterly into her now soaked sleeve. She walked home, and would have got there quickly, at the pace she was walking, except that someone stopped to talk to her.

“Excuse me. Hey there, you, girl. Excuse me – yes, you. What’s your name?” came a voice from the bright-red, sleek Alpha Romeo sports-car.

“Go away! Get lost,” sobbed Lauren. “I want to be left alone.”

“Okay, I just thought you’d want to be in this TV show I’m making, you look just the part – your hair looks so cool by the way, who dyed it for you?”

“What?! Oh, that. You like it - really?”

“Like it? No. I love it. We’re filming this new show, you see, and we have not been able to find a young girl with green hair. It’s not that common, you might like to know. And then, on the way to the auditions today, who do I pass but you? Do you think your mummy would let you come audition for a show? It’s called The Rebels. It’s full of punk kids who’ve run away from home and live a life of freedom and independence under the bridges of this wonderful city we call home. It’s just marvellous; as are you. I was looking for someone that bit different; someone unique, to play the leader of the pack, so to speak. You fit the exact description of the character I want you to audition for. We’ve had no luck so far: all the girls look too plain.”

By then, needless to say, Lauren had forgotten about the delinquent girls who had ruined her hair – ruined it? They’d just kick-started her acting career. She’d always dreamed of this. If only Mum says yes…

RIDDLE

(I wrote this to inspire my class - hopefully.)

There was once a school, in a town, not far from here. In that school was a class, much like this one. The children were fairly normal, so was the teacher. The only odd thing was that, unlike some schools, the children had special powers.

They were able to concentrate harder, and for longer than other children. They were able to draw amazing pictures. They were fast runners, excellent writers, great mathematicians, and were enthusiastic about everything, from singing to reading and swimming.

This was not your ordinary class. The teacher was a bit musical, like many teachers. He played the children music that they knew and liked. The children found almost everything he said funny. He enjoyed his new-found ability to make people laugh all the time. It made his day.

These children were good at some things: some were good at sports, some were better at writing; some were musical; others were artistic. The thing that was special about these children, along with their abilities, was that if they put their minds to anything, they could do it. Those who could not run could learn to if they tried. Those who were timid could learn to be brave. Those who could not write could practise and become excellent at it.

These children could do anything they wanted with their lives. Some would become doctors, others lawyers. Some would be builders, others nurses. Some would be teachers, others might even be astronauts. Some might become artists or musicians; others might become mechanics or brain-surgeons.

It did not matter what these children chose to do when they grew up. They lived in this world of infinite possibility, where anything and everything was possible.

They could beat any of their fears, if they chose to face them head-on and be brave about it. They could become a hundred times better than they already were at the things they were already excellent at.

They would grow up one day. When they did, they would make their parents, teachers, aunties, uncles, granddads, grandmas, friends, country, town… – basically everyone they’d ever met – very proud. They would succeed at everything they put their minds to. They would only really fail when they decided to give up and stop trying with things. They would do so well in life because they knew this little secret:

There are two sides to every coin. What? I hear you ask. Just like a coin may have a ship on one side, and the Queen on the other, similarly, failure is one side of the coin; success is the other side of it. You cannot succeed without failing many times first (in most cases), and each failure is really learning how to succeed. Every time these children encountered failure or difficulty in their life, they recognised this fact, and remembered to look at the other side of the coin, and see their success waiting there, waiting for them to discover it. They started out sounding terrible; then became excellent musicians. They’d started unable to read, write or count, and were now getting better and better at it. They started out shy and scared, and discovered that they were actually brave, courageous people after all. These children were unstoppable.

To the astute reader: who were these children and where was the school?

THE STRANGE EVENT

(I wrote this story to demonstrate to my class ways they could some of our vocabulary words...)

There once lived a pallid, wrinkly, unhappy elderly man. He was sick, tired and lonely. He was tall and lanky, wore a grey suit, and walked with a brown cane. He lived in a decrepit apartment building, three blocks from where he had gone to school.

In his youth he had been a skookum stripling; in his middle years he had been agog to study the world and to improve his skills in all sorts of things. He claimed to have invented the first space-ship, but that was not literally the case. His ship had not worked.

He wrote allegations in letters to papers about the reputed inventor of space ships, only to be fined for libel, since his claims were untrue. The judge said his lurid allegations were not well-founded and that he’d have grown up better had his mother been a martinet and not a liberal softie.

Jones had his theories about space. He predicted that aliens would land on Earth in 2009. He was sure that all the planets in the galaxy had already been taken over, that it was an easy conquest, since they had no significant or intelligent inhabitants. The meteorologists at Canterbury University were dubious about Jones’s predictions and speculations, saying that, in their former vocations of astronomers, they had never seen a single space-ship of extra-terrestrial origin.

Jones had been poor in sport in school; and very timorous too. All he really had was his writing. In PE his teacher would yell, “Oma Jones. Kati, kati - not like that. Oma potopoto, huri then finally hora and rarangi behind your team-mates. When you learn to peke, maka and rau properly, then and only then will you be chosen by your class to be on their team. Until then, I will have to make one side have you on it each time we play.” This did wonders for Jones’s self-esteem: it convinced him he was a great writer.

(He could have actually learned to get better at sport, if only he had spent less time in the Land of Nod while on the field. However, this was trivial, because he developed his writing to compensate for his lack of sporting prowess, and it was a good thing, because his books were famous and would be around for years after his demise. No-one would remember that he could not catch a ball.)

Jones had a secret of sorts: unbeknownst to the meteorologists-who-used-to-be-astronomers, he had in fact been visited in his dreams by the aliens; they were coming alright. The meteorologists-who-used-to-be-astronomers had not seen their ships because they were cloaked in invisible ink.

On this particular fine midsummer’s day, this elderly gentleman was going about his business, trying to teach the youths in his apartment block about Universal Law.

“It’s simple,” he was saying.

“If you may do it, then everyone else may too; if no-one else is allowed to do it, then nor are you. Now think about it: what would happen if the two-thousand people living in this neighbourhood went about tagging the walls?”

“Idunno,” mumbled the taller of the striplings, who was standing wearing baggy-as-a-blanket blue jeans, and a run-of-the-mill cap.

“Er, the walls would become a bit messy?” the shorter delinquent, who also wore blue jeans baggy enough to fit a car in, a homogenous cap, and dark-as-night sunglasses, suggested.

“Bah! You kids,” Jones exclaimed. “You will not have to worry soon. Universal Law will be imposed by the aliens, you will not have to think – you will not be allowed to think for yourselves once they get here. Now scram, haere waho, hanatu, vamoose. Before I…”

A seemingly supernatural beam of light came from out of nowhere (well, that’s not strictly true, it must have had a source, or it would not have existed, but no-one saw whence it came from) and Jones mysteriously floated into the air above the silvery dreamy sheet of clouds – never to be seen again.

“Wow, maybe he was right,” attempted the now flabbergasted shorter boy.

“Yeah; wanna go get some fish ’n’ chips?” replied the other.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

Life went on like this for quite some time, until one day…

THE END
9 September 2006