Things I thought I'd never do

When I was in primary school my mother would often take me and my older brother to the oriental plaza for the afternoon. In exchange for granting her the personal freedom of curtain shopping, we would be rewarded with some unidentified meat samoosas and an ice cream from Suzie the soft serve queen. It turned out Suzie also peddled LSD from her little ice cream van, but back then it was the ice cream I was interested in. Anyway, it was on one of those days I found myself standing in the main plaza under those huge coloured paper lamps, waiting for my turn to play Elevator Action, quite possibly the greatest arcade game of 84. I was hoping I wouldn't get a high score so I wouldn't have to type my initials (AWB) in, in front of all the black kids.

So while I'm dealing with this racial dilemma, my gaze wanders, then settles, quite horrifically, on the AC/DC 'Back in Black' poster outside the Heavy Metal/Curry n Rice shop. And I'm looking at Angus Young, horns protruding from his satanic cranium and eyes sunk deep as hell in his unholy head, and I'm thinking, 'Well theres something I'll never do..'And I wasn't thinking I was going to superglue some klipspringer antlers on my head or anything, I was just thinking I'd Never Ever Ever get within earshot of such wicked, and obviously dangerous music.

And like many other Things I thought I'd never do, I was proven wrong by Lee Darby my best mate in standard six. Lee moved to Boksburg in standard seven and smoked alot of pot, I used to visit him and it was fun, but my mum said it was too far to drive after a while. Also alot of his new friends scared me. They must have scared other people too because a few of them landed up in an asylum. This was quite consoling as I realised that listening to AC/DC wasn't bad or satanic. Boksburg was. AC/DC just liked scaring kids and kids love to be scared.

Now this is a blog, so I think I'm supposed to tie this into something alot more current in my life? Okay, so come last friday night I'm loving life, hanging with my best mates, one of whom has been away for a whole long time. We're at Cantaloop winning the rowdiest table contest by many a long island tea, and then we're in the car wailing along to Astrid's cd collection, and then.. uhh.. Then its saturday morning and I'm having flashbacks to highschool Guidance class, and Mr Epstein is putting the risks of alcohol abuse into perspective. He's saying if you start blacking out cos you just drank too much booze, then you're in big kak, and I'm sitting there thinking 'Ha! Thats one thing I'd never do!'

Epilogue:
There will always be Things I thought I'd never do, that I actually never will, (never be Liz Hurley's excercise bike seat for example..), but for the rest of my ill-fated assumptions I can only claim naivety and temporary humanity.
For it is better to be just a little human, than it is to live in Boksburg.
Fin.

Being happy with what you've got

On boxing day one of my friends' brothers and his girlfriend where snorkelling off Phi Phi island. They decided to take the more expensive, but faster, speedboat back to mainland Thailand which wasn't too far away. The other 150 folks who took the ferry where hit an hour later and all passed away, may they rest in peace. He and his girlfriend however continued to snorkel the reef, but it all went a bit manky when 4 metres of water suddenly disappeared and they found themselves next to a capsized speedboat walking amongst coral.The rest plays out like a movie, thats the only way to describe it. Them running past starfish being chased by The Tsunami, him eventually putting her on his shoulders and climbing the beachside cliffs just as the wave hit. The misery this quake brought was terrible, no denying it, but you gotta admit thats one amazing story too.

About the same time I was looking at beds. The King size Simmons Saphire extra length medium firm looked good. It can be awkward sharing a bed with someone you met the previous night through your mutual friend Jose Cuervo, but try doing it sober in front of strangers. Me and the elderly woman spread out beside me where equally impressed with the Simmons. I would like to work in a bed shop one day, its quite intimate.

I played out the two scenarios in my head, there was some unconscious need to: Tidal Waves vs Simmons, True Romance vs American Beauty, Madonna vs Meryl Streep, Life vs ... And then I stopped, saved, sucked from the sinus passages of depression by that little trick thats taken so long to learn: Being happy with what you've got.

And you know what, its true. Theres a time and place for everything, even blue collar capitalistic mediocrity. I've been through a few of my own tsunami's in my time, and yeah it was amazing, but there was no soundtrack in the background, no lighting effects. And only once did I ever sit with a bewildered feeling that what I'd just done was probably one of the most significant things I would ever do. And sometimes the grass is greener on their side cos their loo is leaking poo onto the lawn.
So Being happy with what you've got makes alot of sense right now, this is the first time in five years I've been in one place for very long, and things are good. I've also got another philosophy in case the first stops working, I call it "Being Unhappy with what you've got", just in case you know?