11 July 2005

Monday morning: the very beginning of my work experience week and almost certainly the most important day to make a good impression. I wake up with an oddly disconcerting feeling, soon discovering the reason as I glance at my alarm clock and realize that the bloody thing hadn’t gone off, meaning I had already fallen fifteen minutes behind schedule and I’d just gotten out of bed. Elapsing into full-fledged panic, I pull on a random jumper and a borrowed pair of my mother’s black work pants, which are at least two inches too small around the stomach (damn them petite women with tiny waists).

I throw my breakfast and lunch into a bag and prepare to run out the door. Black socks, black socks… all too late, I discover that I do not in fact own any black socks, and as time is rapidly running out before the train leaves the station, I grab a (very possibly) hideously mismatched handful from the sock drawer and shove my tootsies into my school shoes, wincing as I take in the greenish patches on the insoles that have long gone unpolished. Walking briskly along and taking in my appearance in the reflection of the shop windows, I notice something looking strangely out of place with my outfit. On closer inspection of my socks, I realize that of all the sensible pairs in my closet, I had picked the one with red teddy bears clutching handfuls of balloons printed all over them.

(God, now I truly see what they mean when they say that white socks with black pants and shoes are just about the gravest fashion mistake you can make. It was horrible. Truly horrible. I still wake up in the middle of night shuddering at the thought of it.)

In damage control mode now, as I’d reached the station just in time to miss my train, I stare in horror at the appalling state of my footwear, tossing up whether to leave the socks on or to take them off. Teddy bears, or bare ankles? Bears? Ankles? Ankles win out, and I manage to slip my shoes back on as the next train approaches the platform. Stumbling on with one shoelace untied like a demented loony, convinced that everybody in the carriage is staring at my feet, it is my wonderful luck that the train is absolutely packed, standing room only and no elbows allowed.

As reluctant to show my ankles as a conservative Victorian lady, I discreetly pull the waistband of my pants down so that the bottoms completely cover my shoes. While walking I tiptoe gingerly along so the pants flutter up as minimally as possible. This leads to my almost missing the tram, which eradicates all the hard work I’d gone to to keep people from noticing the ankles, as I had had to run halfway across the street while the tram was about to leave the stop and staggered onboard, now positive that everyone is indeed staring at me and my dubious choice of footwear.

As it turns out, I shouldn’t really have bothered as the other chick who was there for work experience rocked up in a hoodie and Converses. Who by the way acted about eleven years old, coming up with such gems as ‘I don’t know, if I get it wrong it’s his fault’. No, you ass, it is your own bloody fault if you get something wrong because you were too stupid to ask for instructions, and you should be grateful that they’re even letting you tag along for a week. Ignorance and stupidity really shits me. Especially when combined.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day with my feet behind desks or tucked underneath a chair, always going last up the stairs and edging slowly past people giving me funny looks. (What, you’ve never seen a professional outfit with no socks before? Weirdo…) The moment I got home I polished my shoes and headed straight to the shops to purchase a proper pair of plain black socks.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//4:24 pm

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7 July 2005

One of those typically miserable winter evenings – subzero temperature and sheets of rain absolutely pissing down. If God existed he’d be taking a shower. Piano lesson over for the week, Daddy Dearest and I race through the semi-utter darkness (suburbia sucks without streetlights) and dive into the car, slamming the door before both of us are completely drenched. He turns the key in the ignition.

A splutter. The engine dies.

DD tries again. This time, the dashboard flickers for a second before blinking out. Then nothing. We look at each other.

“Shit,” says DD. (Rather unnecessarily I think.)

Let me give you some background information on our car. Manufactured in the heady days when oversized shoulder pads were the height of fashion and Michael Jackson still had his original face – i.e., before I was even alive – this shining example of nondescript bland would blend completely into the crowd were it not for its ancientness and sheer ugliness. In possibly the cheapest shade of white available, with a carpet so hygienically doubtful I don’t even want to know what’s living at the bottom of it and noxious fumes pouring out the back – this is a car that wasn’t even cool back in its heyday. In fact, it’s so pathetic that one time, when we accidentally parked it with a door open, no one even bothered to rifle through the glove box. My mother and I have been lobbying DD for the last five years to just for Christ’s sake get a new car. “A new car? What on earth for?” he replies, patting the bonnet affectionately, “she’s still got a few years left in her.” But doesn’t it suck, we implore, to spend hours on end on forty-degree days in a vehicle without air-conditioning? My father, the eternal cheapskate, laments the fact that, when we do eventually get around to trading up, such a “prime-condition vehicle” will fetch next to nothing, which means he will keep postponing the purchase of a new car until the old bomb’s wheels fall off and it literally collapses onto itself and is rendered completely undrivable.

Anyway. A new car battery had been recently purchased for the bomb and some way or another there’s been a leak in the system and now DD has to disconnect the battery every evening or else it just refuses to start the next morning. That’s all fine when you’re five metres from a warm, snug house and there’s always another way to reach your destination. Not so fine when you’re virtually in the middle of nowhere and the stars are out and it’s bucketing.

Raindrops are still splattering painful deaths on the windscreen so DD attempts once again to shock the car into jump-starting by revving the engine and hitting the gas simultaneously. Alas, it just wasn’t going to happen as the vehicle veers crazily across the street, does a 180-degree donut, bunny hops in reverse up some poor sod’s driveway and dies just before it smashes into the garage door. (The poor sod in question immediately switches off his living room lights and double-bolts the front door.) DD eventually manages to steer us back onto the middle of the street but the slight problem of the car being completely useless still remains. DD glances at me sheepishly. “I think we’re going to have to push.”

So I’m out on a deserted, freezing street pushing the bomb uphill in a flimsy jacket, wincing as my pristine corduroys drag along in the mud. The ground squelches in a most ungodly manner and I give a mental apology to my poor pink flats that so weren’t made for that purpose. Just as we pass under a particularly leafy tree a really opportune gust of wind transfers all the rain on its branches in a bird-shit-like manner onto my head and thoroughly down my back and shoulders. A perfect ending to my perfect evening.

At last, after huffing and puffing the entire neighborhood down the car reaches the precipice of the rise. In the five-second opening we have of getting it to start I race back inside and pray like hell that tipping it downhill had worked and we wouldn’t have to spend the whole evening camped out like stalkers in front of my piano teacher’s house. DD revs the ignition and the whole city holds its breath as we wait for…

…the sweet, sweet purr of the engine and we are as ready to go as we’ll ever be. I collapse into the seat with relief and we sit in silence but for the engine for a little while, warming it up so there’s absolutely no chance it’ll stall on us again. In the glow of the headlights I can hear DD breathing deeply in the driver’s seat.

“I think it’s time to get a new car,” he says.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//7:18 pm

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