russell and the rock

Russel and the rock. 1997.

If you didn’t know already, as a younger man I was a little jerk. Some people I’m friends with now that knew me back then talk about it often.

I woke up that morning, it was the same as any other day , I had breakfast and got ready for school. When I left for school i forgot to take my Ritalin. I probably forgot on purpose considering how foul those pills tasted. Troy power took similar pills but they were flavoured, a different flavour every day. I always wondered why he was so lucky to get pills like that.

That morning dale and i decided to roller blade to school, it was the mid-late 90s and rollerblading was all the rage. We would often spend a Friday night at Skatel – the local skater rink.

upon arriving at school I put my shoes on and put my blades back in my bag. Dale went off to find his friends and I walked up towards the year 4s, I found Matt Lowe , he was a friend I had for a while until his mother said he couldn’t hang out with me anymore, I guess I was a bad influence, but if you’re so weak to actually not be friends with somebody because your mother said, then you are not worth knowing.

We spoke for a while then he went elsewhere. I noticed Russel standing down towards the entrance to the school.

I used to love to put shit on Russel because i just didn’t like him, i guess he just had one of those faces. Like i said i was a little jerk.

I crept around near the bushes and found a big rock.

I thought to myself “I’ll hit his backpack with this rock and get his attention then I’ll go over there and hassle him”

I picked up the rock and aimed at his backpack. After I through it I realised that it was flying off course. It hit Russel in the back of his head and he dropped like a fly.

Russel crying in pain I thought I’d make an escape. I ran back up to the year 4 classrooms. The bell rang to go to class.

We had an assembly out the front of the classrooms i think they did this every Monday.

A guy named Brent was passing around a playboy collector card of a woman with large breasts, best thing ever.

Then the principal arrived, we thought he had found out about the playboy card, Brent hid the card.

The principal – Mr Ballard called me out, told me to grab my bag and come with him.

At this point i was aware that i was in trouble for the Russel thing.

I followed him down to the office and when i got there Russel was still crying and both his parents were there to comfort him.

I then had to take a seat in the principal’s room, he called my dad and told him to come down.

I don’t think dad had left for work yet so he arrived in just a few minutes after the phone call. Dad sat down and Mr Ballard told him what happened and that i was being suspended for three days.

I received a folder full of work to do while i was at home.

The next three days were okay, I done the work then went back to school 3 days later.

That was the only Official time I got suspended. The second time I was sent home for making the teachers look like fools when I was in year 6 at Culburra public school. The 3^rd was in year 12 when Benji masters was smarting off at me and I bopped him on the head to show him who’s boss.

The vice Principal told me “I’m only suspending you to keep bens mum quiet” for some reason the Vice principal Mr Land seemed to like me, I guess he thought I was funny or something. This was an in school suspension during my exam period. Basically I had to sit in view of his office in between my exams other than that my exam period was like any other, I go to school on the days I have exams then I leave.

I ran into Russel at Daniel Gammages (Gammo) 18^th in 2005 and told him I was sorry and I’m not that much of a jerk anymore. He was like “what ever man, its all good” and we drank some beer.

a story from my childhood.

Currarong. January 1996 (possibly)
My parents owned a house in Currarong on the NSW south coast. so we spent all our holidays there which was pretty fun at the time apart the fact that the hole outside of the house had been painted pink.
Sometimes we were allowed to bring friends with us. I never did at this point but this year Dale had his friend John with him, Matthew may have had a friend with him also but I haven’t got a story about that.
One morning after breakfast Mum said that we should get ready because we are going over to Culburra to shop and have lunch, at this time Culburra was the best set of shops around without having to go all the way into Nowra, at this point the school in Callala bay had not been built yet and there was only some small shops there.
When we got to Culburra we all had a look in the shops and bought something small. John used the money his parents gave him to buy a small pocket knife.
This was the coolest thing to happen to us all holidays. Naturally we kept it quiet.
For days we would be finding things to cut and even carving out names into the wood down at the round house, the round house was pretty much a wooden gazebo down near the Currarong shops, towards the beach. It was absolutely covered in graffiti so what we were doing didn’t seem so bad.
A young girl started yelling at us, she was about our age maybe older. I suppose she was yelling at us about the graffiti but I can’t remember. In retaliation to her yelling John waved the knife and told her to fuck off.
The girl disappeared for about 2 minutes and before we knew it we were swarmed with adults trying to take the knife and stop us from “threatening” anybody else with it.
Obviously we started running.
We run up and around the shops, one of the adults was saying something about knowing our grandfather or uncle or something, which was probably true given that our hole extended family holiday in Currarong, dad and his brothers went there as children, their parents also visited it when they were younger and ended up living out their retirement in the house down the road from the one we owned.
We split up near the tennis courts. All the parents followed John and Dale because the knife was with them.
I ran down to the grass above the rockpool using the entrance from the street near Uncle Jonos place. Uncle Jono also has a place in Currarong.
Ran the length of the grass near the rockpool and came out in the gravelly entrance to Abraham’s bosom beach. I continued to sprint up the street and on till I got home.
When I got home it looked like my mother already knew, perhaps she received a phone call from somebody, I guess word travels very fast in a town like that.
She asked me if I was hanging with Dale and John.
Puffed, I answered, told her I was earlier but had not seen them in a while, that I was down at the beach, she believed me. Although i doubt she truly did, at least she knew I didn’t really have anything to do with waving the knife around at people.
When the boys got home she confronted them and confiscated the knife straight away.
She wanted to know their side of the story, although most of the time our side of the story is just a complete fabrication designed to make us look like innocent people that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody over reacted. This was definitely one of those times.
Their story was that they were cutting bottles and a girl walked up to them, John put the knife in his pocket without retracting the blade. During the conversation with the girl the blade started to poke him so he pulled it out to retract the blade. The girl freaked and ran off telling all these adults.
I don’t think we really got in any trouble but the knife was gone forever.
Such a shame, how were we supposed have fun without a knife?