Snoskred – Life in the Country

Did you know there’s actually a photo of me in that header graphic? I think a couple of readers might have guessed it because my crazy egg shows people clicking on that plane photo up the top there. I’m going to show you a bigger version today – in essence a picture of me, but it’s from the back, and it would be very difficult to recognise me from it and there;s two of us in the photo, so.. I am feeling ok about it.. The Red Wunala Dreaming was taxi-ing down to the take off point in front of us. While we were there on the beach, the big specially painted blue Qantas plane known as Nalanji Dreaming landed. This was such a huge thrill for me and my friend, we had no idea it was going to happen and no idea the two planes would be in the same spot at once. Also, two of the Customs dogs were being taken for a walk and a swim at the end of their work day – they were beautiful and happy to be there. You can read more about the Qantas Flying Art here. The Red plane is known as Wunala Dreaming and the Blue plane is known as Nalanji Dreaming. It is no easy feat to paint a 747 in a special color scheme like this. The result is incredibly moving when you see it in person.

When I was 9 years old, I was very excited about the next school year. Two weeks before school starts they would put up the lists of which kid was in which class. There was a teacher who I adored and I had been assigned to his class. For the next two weeks, I was floating in a happy daydream of the school year ahead of me.

On the first day of (Grade) Year 5, I was nervous and excited and I had butterflies. These had settled down somewhat by 10:30am, which was recess time. I happily headed out to play, not knowing what unpleasantness was looming like gathering storm clouds.

When I returned to the classroom, the headmaster was in our room and he said “I need these 5 students to follow me to my office”. My name was one of the 5. Not knowing what was going on, I was very surprised to find my Mother waiting in the office, with 4 other parents. We were told as a group that the Sunney Twins had enrolled late – on the first day of school, and this meant they had to do some shuffling of classes.

The five of us were considered the most “brainy” in the class, so they wanted to bump us up to make a Year 5/6 class. The tears began not long after this – for all five of us. None of us wanted to change classes but our parents were then told – in front of us – that if we refused to change classes we would be expelled from the school as they would be unable to fit us in as students.

Even worse, we would be made to do homework – Year 5 was the last year of freedom in this country back then, Year 6 was when they started sending work home after school. This made me fall to a crying lump on the floor and not long after that I was utterly hysterical.

The headmaster was not impressed or sympathetic, and he said we had to go to our new classroom now. The parents told him to wait until the kids had time to get used to the idea, or even let them take us home and start fresh tomorrow but he was stony faced and said no. All five of us were still in tears.

I do not recall anything about leaving the office but I do remember right in front of my new classroom there was a fence. When I got near it, I grabbed on to it for dear life and refused to move any further, crying, screaming. When the headmaster came over to dislodge me from the fence, I kicked him square in the face. Yes, you read it right, ladies and gentlemen. I kicked the headmaster in front of all my new classmates. This I did not live down.

The girls in the new class were pure evil. Beeyotches of the highest order. I hated all of them – and they hated me equally as much. I only had one friend in that class, my Chinese best friend Ellen. We tolerated the other three only because we were forced to stick together – they were boys and therefore not the kind of people we hung around with. Everyone else was an enemy.

Even the kids I used to be friends with became distant – we tried to play with them at recess and lunchtime but they were talking about things that happened in their class and we were not included in that – we had not been there. The frames of reference were completely different.

Homework was an enemy too. I refused to do it at all. When the teacher gave me homework assignments, I would scribble all over the page as soon as she gave it to me, grade it myself with a fail mark and hand it back to her with a smirk.

Mother was called in many times to discuss this, and she was enlisted in the war to make me do homework – so she soon became an enemy as well. I felt she should have told them I wasn’t going to do it and they should not expect any of us year 5′s to do it when nobody else in the other Year 5 class had to do it.

I remember many nights where she made me sit in my room until I finished my homework. I never did any of it. Not once. I would just sit there and scribble holes into the page. I was so angry. With her, with the school, with the beeyotches, with the inferior teacher I hated, with everything. I believe now this is the point at which I just gave up on caring about success or good grades – I hated everything about school. The only thing I liked was reading and the minute my Mother would leave the room, I would open a book and escape.

Mother said to me years later that she felt she should have taken me out of that school that day – I wish she had – but she didn’t know what was the right thing to do. The results caused long lasting effects in my school life, my relationship with her as a parent and my personal life. My grades went downhill and never recovered. I became angry with being smart, and decided I would simply refuse to be smart. I ignored maths completely because that was supposed to be a smart subject – and four years later in Year 9 I failed maths because I never had that solid grounding in the subject.

I was one of the brightest kids in that school but I decided to become unbright. You know what they say about use it or lose it? I lost a lot of my skills in various areas. Art was another one. Sport was when the year 6 kids got to push us around and beat us up without getting into trouble and they took great delight in it so I found excuses not to play. I began to put on weight as a result of this – and the long nights spent refusing to do homework when I should have been out playing with all the other kids my age.

The next year, I thought we would be placed back in our normal years – but no. They put us in a split 7/6 class – the five of us who clung together like rats on a sinking ship, and the same people I’d hated for the last year. This caused already shaky friendships to become non-existant with the students of our year level – so the following year when we were all in the same class, the five of us were outcasts, ignored, and teased.

This post has been a Hump Day Hmmm post. Feel free to join in the Hump Day Hmmm anytime!

While we’re all getting naked here, or at least I seem to have been, I feel there is something I need to mention. Telling you this is not something I ever intended to do.. but I think I should be honest with you now..

I don’t sleep like normal people.

There. I said it. Now we can all move on, right? Err, probably not. What does that statement – I don’t sleep like normal people – mean? How did it happen? Is something the matter with me? I’ve asked myself that many times but never found an answer other than it is possible that I am actually a vampire, without all the teeth and blood sucking stuff. I prefer the night time. I function better at night time. To try and stay on a schedule which involves getting up at 7:30am and going off to work has always been a nightmare for me.

I have been struggling with this situation like a rat in a trap, for years now. I ask myself when am I going to stop struggling, and just accept? It’s not like I am working right now. I have no reason to keep banging my head on this particular wall, other than the disapproval from my Mother. Which there is a LOT of.

Being on the night time schedule actually works out ok for The Other Half and I. I’m awake (or waking up) when he gets home from work. I’m awake when he gets up in the morning. I go to sleep when he leaves. I sleep while he’s at work. It also works out ok as far as the Internet is concerned.

I sometimes seem to function best on a up for 16-18 hours then sleep for 7-12 hours. Right now I’m apparently stuck on a 12 hours awake then my batteries run out and I sleep for 12 hours, and the 12 hours I am awake seem to be the daylight hours. It is almost as if the daylight sucks more power from my batteries like some rabid power tool.

Wednesday and Thursday morning this week, at 5am my brain woke up. When my brain wakes up, it is like a marching band just turned up in the bedroom. Going back to sleep is impossible. I could lie there and toss and turn but I’d only wake The Other Half up. So I get up, quietly put together some warm clothes, sneak out of the bedroom as quietly as I can, turn on the coffee machine, turn on the computer.

When I am on the night-time schedule, this could happen anytime between 4-6pm. I might not wake up till the other half actually gets home from work. On Saturday nights we go to dinner and I may have only been awake for an hour. I never tell my Mother because if I did she would go all berserk and stuff. I just pretend like I’ve been awake all day, and this meal I am eating is not breakfast for me.

This week I am worried I might not even make it to dinner time. I have to try and stay up longer today just so I can go to dinner tomorrow and then my batteries can run out after I get back.

This is yet another reason I do not want to bring people under the age of 18 into my life. Well, it’s not exactly normal, this vampire-esque lifestyle I prefer.

I’m looking forward to the day I can simply say – that’s the way it is – and stop fighting it. I hope that day comes soon, but only I can say that to myself. The Other Half and I have already talked about it and we’re agreed that I should stop fighting it.

Which reminds me of a song by Ben Folds. The film clip was shot in my old home town of Adelaide, so it makes me a little home sick. I used to live near that tram. In fact nothing says Adelaide like that tram.

I heard that my Dad’s new car has arrived and he should be picking it up today. I wish I could share pictures of it with you my blog friends but the paint job is pretty distinctive, a bit too recognizable.

I might have a bit of an arty day today, considering I am now back to only one West Wing episode a day.

Inspired by this post by Julie Pippert and also the Wednesday Hump Day Hmmm thingy she’s got going on, I am now going to tell you about my fear of snakes.

I live in Australia. It’s a nice place, but look at it from the point of view of a parent with a child they want to protect. In the sea, we have great white sharks, the blue ringed octopus, stingrays, many things which can kill you. On land, we have several extremely poisonous spiders, and many of the most venomous snakes in the world.

I remember only once putting more than a toe in the sea before the age of eight – I went in up to my knees, but not for long. When I was eight I saw the movie Jaws, much of the footage of sharks was filmed where I lived, in the ocean I could swim in! So you can bet, I never went NEAR the sea for a long, long time.

And now an embarrassing story I’d love to forget but my Mum loves to tell it to everyone. When I was 2, I was making very good progress with toilet training. I also was a sneaky little child who liked to be put to bed and then sneak back out to watch more tv. My parents were watching a comedy show called “The Paul Hogan Show” – containing the Paul Hogan – and there was this skit where a snake flew up out of a toilet and bit someone. I refused to go near the toilet for the next six months. In fact I would not walk past if the toilet door was open. This set the stage for me to grow a very healthy fear of snakes.

As I grew up I never encountered a snake myself, other than at the zoo from time to time, and then it was only to scream at it. There was once a red bellied black snake in our street, but one of the ladies who saw it went and got their car and then ran over it until it was dead. The canteen lady had a red bellied black snake on her doorstep, she called in a snake catcher. I heard stories but never SAW one, even so my fear never went away, and it stopped me from doing a lot of fun things like bush walking. I was too scared to go near anything that resembled nature.

I think all parents in Australia make a choice at some point between scaring their kids so much they will keep away from our dangerous creatures, and teaching them to have a healthy respect for them. I think one of the major factors in this choice is whether *they* are scared of them, or have a healthy respect for them. There were kids in my class whose parents kept snakes, and taught them all about snakes. If I could choose one way or the other, it would never be to make a child fear something, because fear is not an easy thing to get rid of.

So how did it happen that I now have a deep love for reptiles? How can you take such a fear, and change it to adoration and fascination? Education, knowledge, love and time my friends. That, and a partner who grew up in the country and knows all about snakes, an interest in photography, a zoo membership, Steve Irwin (and the snakes all seemed to want to get away from him), the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, and one very wonderful reptile keeper who I am sure was terrified of me at first because of my enthusiasm. But he loved cameras, and he often invited us photographers to get special shots or he would set them up for us. He and the other half would talk cameras while I would watch snakes.

It all began with the zoo membership. It was just over one hundred dollars and we both could go to the zoo anytime we liked without having to pay. We started going every weekend, sometimes both days, to walk around. The grounds were gorgeous, and we began to make friends with the animals. I was still a little scared to go into the reptile house, but the other half talked me into it one day, and I walked inside to find one of the most beautiful snakes I have ever encountered. He’s a green tree snake. That picture there is one of the *very* rare times he ever sat still. Each snake does have their own personality and this guy was so endearing and so cute.. I really fell in love. I could stand in front of his enclosure for hours at a time with a daffy looking grin on my face. His enclosure was supposed to have a waterfall and a pond in it, but the pond had sprung a leak and it hadn’t been fixed yet, so he would swim little loops in his water bowl.

So as I’ve mentioned before here on the blog, in the life of a zoo volunteer there are days when you get to the enclosures of the animals you love to find them empty. One day I arrived to find a different tree snake in the enclosure. Completely different color, different personality. I bit my lip hard trying not to burst into tears (and I’m doing the same now writing this) and went to find the reptile keeper to ask what had happened, I was certain he was going to tell me my favourite snake was dead.

So I found him and he could tell by looking at me, I didn’t even have to ask. He said “No, your snake is fine, another reptile park had a female the same color and we wanted to mate them, so I sent him off there”. I still miss my favourite snake more than I can tell you, but I soon fell in love with the Forest Cobra because one day he did the Cobra dance for me, and the Taipans became my good friends, and I lost my heart once again to the Taiwan Beauty Snake at Mogo Zoo.

I could tell you many facts about snakes. I could go on for days. I have books. I have information. I have knowledge. I can tell you about each kind of snake. I can tell you about the snakes I have seen and where I have seen them and what I thought of them. I can tell you about the snakes I have held and touched. I held an alligator – what a moment that was for me! The reptile house is now one of the FIRST places we go when we get to a zoo. I have seen snakes in the wild now and not been terrified. I would still be scared if they got into the house, because I once lost a cat to a snake bite years ago, but I would know what to *do*.

What it really boiled down to, what stopped the fear was learning –

- Snakes would do anything rather than bite you. They’re only going to bite you if they feel so threatened that they have no other choice, or if you accidentally step on them, or if they are in the process of shedding their skin and they can’t see as well as usual.

- Most snakes have a limited amount of venom and they would much rather use it on their next dinner than a human.

- If you give them a chance, snakes will avoid you. Stomp your feet, walk noisily and they will go to find a hiding place.

- If you do encounter one, stand still and let them go their own way. They want to get away from you – watch the Crocodile Hunter, you’ll see what I mean.

I am still scared of spiders, but I am learning more about them.. it’s only a matter of time. I recommend you check out how much membership to your local zoo would be and if you can afford it, get it. I miss my zoo time now that we’re too far from a zoo to go every weekend.