Par For The Course (2)
I hadn't. The phone had been cut off. Michael had moved house, and changed his phone number. Without telling me. The message couldn't have been louder, or clearer. After five years, our friendship was finished. Sayonara Michael. Moving swiftly on... The hot gossip of the week was Bianca and Elton. They'd clearly been becoming close friends since the start of the course, but now Bianca had apparently dumped her boyfriend to be with Elton. The first I knew of this (I'm always the last to know) was when I returned from class to lunch one day to find Bianca and Elton with their arms wrapped each other on a table. I was somewhat surprised by this. It also got me thinking. I had no interest in Bianca, so I wished Elton all the best, but it did make me wonder - if Bianca could dump her boyfriend for Elton, might Tracey dump HER boyfriend... for me? After a few days pondering this question, I came to an answer. Probably not. So there went that idea. Just as well, as "a couple of days" was about as long as Bianca and Elton's relationship actually lasted. Yup, with shocking speed Bianca and Elton's romance went belly-up, and Bianca went back to her old boyfriend. This, to put it mildly, created a bit of tension in the up-to-now quite friendly (compared to Muirden, anyway) atmosphere of the course room. Elton was clearly devastated by what had happened (so would I have been, I think) and soon started being absent for days on end and going home early on the days he did turn up. Frankly, I couldn't blame him. On the Work Experience front, I was able to score 1 but only 1 week's Work Experience at Noarlunga Library. Elton grabbed the other (bastard - Bianca did right!). Elton was taking the 1st week at the library, I the second. Which meant I now had to find somewhere else to go for my 1st week's Work Experience. Which wasn't going to be as simple as you might think. But before I get onto that, an amusing anecdote: After another entire day of doing and redoing resumes that didn't need doing in the first place and definitely didn't need RE-doing (Elton had, entirely understandably, I felt, simply not turned up that day), the following day we were, excitingly, practising writing MEMOS. The following is one such memo that I completed: MEMORANDUM Date: 5 June 1997 From: Ian Kidd To: Maud Subject: ABSENT DAY With regard to my absence from TAFE yesterday, I am writing to inform you that I did not attend yesterday as I could not be bothered. I found yesterday's timetable extremely tedious and uninteresting, and had no wish to be bored senseless that day. I thought my time would be better spent watching television at home and learning about real life from such documentary series as "The Bold and the Beautiful". I am sure you will agree this was a much more productive use of my time than another interminable three hours of "RESUMES". I apologise for any inconvenience and trust this will be the end of the matter. I showed this around the course room, to general hilarity. I was intending to hand it up to the lecturer, but as was becoming depressingly usual, she didn't even bother to ask for the work to be handed in. As Bryan Adams would say - "Wastin' Time"... CHAPTER 6 : Mission : Not A Chance As reported earlier, having secured only 1 week's Work Experience at Noarlunga Library, I was looking for somewhere else to take me on for the first week. The one place that returned my application, accepting me, was Mission Employment. In these cases, the interview is really just a formality, so, getting a couple of hours off from TAFE one morning, I showed up at Mission Employment at 10 o'clock, expecting that this was where I'd be spending the following week. It turned out to be anything but. They didn't turn me down, oh no, I turned THEM down. At the beginning of the interview, after making me wait in a corridor for nearly half an hour past the interview time, a seemingly nice lady with a worrying gleam in her eyes showed me into her office. The conversation started normally enough, talking about my resume and my experience (hah!) and all that, but soon became disturbing. "I'll tell you about us," the lady said. "We're a Christian organisation." Alarm bells started ringing in my head. "But we don't push our religion onto anyone or anything," she continued. Fair enough, I thought, still willing to give it a chance. "What time do we start?" I asked. "Nine?" "Yes," the lady began. "But we're treating you as an employee, and all employees have to be here at 8:30 every morning for our compulsory half-hour prayer meeting." I almost choked. What HAD she just said? A compulsory half-hour prayer meeting?! "You don't have to pray if you don't want," the lady's smile was becoming alarming, and now I recognised the fanatical gleam in her eyes. Bible-bashers - you can spot 'em a mile off. "But attendance is COMPULSORY." I half-expected to be dragged off at any moment for electroshock therapy and compulsory brainwashing. "See you on Monday," the lady beamed with frightening cheerfulness as she showed me out. "Yeah, I'll see you," I replied, having already decided that I would be doing no such thing. I marched immediately up to TAFE, found Maud, and said "Not a chance!" Surprisingly however, Maud agreed with me that compulsory half-hour prayer meetings were a bit on the weird side, as did everybody else. "It's one for the memoirs," one lecturer remarked to me. "I wouldn't last five minutes," I remember telling Rachael. "First prayer meeting and I'd be telling 'em what a bunch of prats they all were." I rang Mission Employment later and told them I'd had a better offer. They sounded peeved, as there was now little time to find a replacement for me. I couldn't care less. If I'd saved just one young kid from 2 1/2 hours of that bullshit, then I was doing my patriotic duty. The task now was to find somewhere else to go. Maud arranged another interview, with a Steve someone from Copyfax. I was to go there the next day. It seemed like a done deal. But the idiocy hadn't ended at Mission Employment. Within less than a minute at Copyfax, I knew the answer was no. For a start, it wasn't really CLERICAL work experience. Most of it was shop assistant work. And I didn't WANT to be a shop assistant. True, I didn't want to be a clerical worker either, but I sure wasn't going any lower than that. Second, the office I WOULD be in only a tiny percent of the time was tiny, claustrophobic, and a complete mess. And lastly, and most importantly, the father and son team who ran the business were a pair of complete berks. I'm not exaggerating here, but these two made Bill and Ben look like intellectual giants. The father wasn't so bad, just a bit slow on the uptake, but the middle-aged son was, to put it bluntly, completely and utterly clueless. He had no idea how the computer worked, and was clearly hoping I was going to teach him. Forgive me, but I was going there to BE trained, not DO the training. And mostly, I just didn't like him. Instantly. His whole manner indicated someone who just didn't have a brain. He was like one of those kids in high school who were just so gormless even the nerds picked on them - hell, even the teachers did! I couldn't spend a week alone with THAT! I told him the 'job' wasn't really what I was looking for, and made my excuses and left. Maud was less than pleased. I didn't tell her I thought the pair of them were brain-dead idiots (they were probably close friends of hers) and concentrated on the shop assistant reason. This was now Friday morning, and I was supposed to be starting WE the following Monday - nowhere, at the moment. Maud clearly didn't like my reasons. "Couldn't you have just put up with it for a week?" she demanded rudely. "I could have," I replied. "But I didn't want to." I can't think why, but Maud was giving off the impression that I was starting to annoy her. Chapter 7 : Quite An Experience Neither myself nor Elton had anything other than 1 week of WE at the library, so Maud drafted us both to a week in the office at TAFE - O'Halloran Hill TAFE, that is. Elton would be there week 2, myself the coming week. Tracey, on the other hand, would be doing nothing next week. She had 2 weeks of WE lined up, but starting the week after. But she still had to come into TAFE to do the work we'd be doing the week we came back. Confused? You will be. What with all of us on WE, and everyone else on holiday, Tracey commented "I'll have the whole place to myself. I'll be able to run around nude!" "I'll have to pop back in and see that," Keith quipped. Me, I just stared at her and goggled at the very idea. So, Monday morning, I toddled off to O'Halloran Hill TAFE to begin my work experience. It was TEWWIBLY exciting. There were two women in my office, middle-aged Judy and the young, rather cute (but married) Katina. After ten minutes watching Katina use the switchboard, I was unceremoniously thrown onto the switchboard to sink or swim. I think I coped admirably, although I did cut a couple off (both accidentally and on purpose). One time, when I was alone in the office, some geezer wanted to know about engineering courses. I tried to put him through to the engineering department, but no one was answering. I tried all other departments but again, no one was answering. "I'm sorry," I told the man politely. "Everybody seems to be out and I don't know anything about these courses. You could try again later, or leave a message." "I don't think so," the geezer replied, incredibly snottily. "Thanks very much for all your help." "My pleasure," I replied, equally snottily, and hung up on him. Prick. After Day 1, where I was told I was "doing wonderfully", I was shipped from the front office to the back to work with a fellow called Ashley. Ashley was okay, a bit slow but okay, but the "work" I did there - for the next 3 1/2 days - was cataloguing the info in ten or so binders of notes, and then - wait for it - photocopying the bits he wanted, and creating NEW binders of them! Two days I spent just photocopying. It was VERY exciting. I noticed how dedicated people were to their work at TAFE. Ashley in particular took 20 minute breaks at the first given opportunity, and managed to stretch a 40-minute lunch breaks out to at least an hour and a half. "Eating snacks" was another pastime I witnessed being taken up at every half hour or so, no doubt to relieve the tedium of work. I was REALLY looking forward to getting a job after this course had finished! Friday afternoon I was shipped back to the front office, to spend an hour or so on the switchboard while everyone else was 'in a meeting'. Mass orgy, probably, I thought, noting that as usual I wasn't invited. The, finally, at 4 o'clock, Judy let me go home early. Hallelujah! It's difficult to describe how dull, tedious and mindnumbing that week was. But put it this way, a week there had seemed like six months. It was soooo boring. Compared to week 2, however, it was a positive breeze. You guessed it, my week at Noarlunga Library - where I got to come in at 8.30, not 9 - whoppee, an extra half-hour of excitement! - was even duller than my week at O'Halloran Hill TAFE. The hours passed so slowly at one point I thought I was trapped in a time-loop like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day'. Doomed to spend an eternity working at the library. Uggh. Don't even joke about it, Ian, it's too horrible to contemplate. Sometimes I get to - shock - STACK SHELVES! Sometimes I got to - gasp - sign books in! One time I even got to - wait for it - SIGN THEM OUT! One morning I spent watching the receptionist count the petty cash and - don't go, it's getting to the exciting part! - collect the post - FROM THE POST OFFICE! And one afternoon, I was privileged enough to input endless numbers into a spreadsheet on a computer, and, as the piece de resistance, PUT POSTERS UP ON THE LIBRARY WALLS! Be still my beating heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One morning I spent 4 hours - FOUR FUCKING HOURS! - just stacking shelves because they didn't have anything better for me to do, resulting in chronic back-ache for the rest of the day. Finally, the unbearable excitement concluded on Friday afternoon, as the Head Librarian - I forget her name - let me go early, after making me tell her what I thought of my weeks Work Experience. "To be honest, I preferred O'Halloran Hill," I told her. I'd endured 2 weeks of clerical work experience. And I was starting to seriously examine my career options. CHAPTER 8 - Par For The Course The following Monday, and after my two weeks of "Work Experience", I was almost glad to be returning to the course at Noarlunga TAFE. Almost. It wasn't long, however, before I became very bored, as it became apparent (to everyone this time, not just me) that we had absolutely nothing left to do. As stated last chapter, Tracey wasn't there for the first week, which was somewhat annoying, as I'd rather missed her on WE, and missed her even more being back on the course without her. Tracey just had the ability to light up both the room and my mood with her smile, and without her, both of those examples were pretty dark. Maud congratulated everyone on a job well done on our WE, having received very favourable reports from everyone. She told me that Judy from O'Halloran Hill TAFE had thought that I was "absolutely brilliant". Encouraged by this, I sent Judy a job application. And didn't even so much as get a piss-off letter back. Charming. Anyway, I digress. On Thursday, I was so bored I finally figured out how to use the Email service on the TAFE network computers, and spent a happy couple of hours with Rachael and Melissa, sending disgusting messages back and forth across the room. All jolly good fun, I must say. Looking through the Email address book, I found Tracey's: Tracey Lillian X. Bored, I sent her a message: "LILLIAN?" She wouldn't be back 'til Monday, but it'd be on the network 'til then. A little later, I sent her another, longer, message: "I AM NOT SENDING YOU THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE I AM BORED. NOR AM I REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO LEAVING THIS COURSE NEXT WEEK. NOR DOES YOUR HAIR SHINE LIKE...OH, BUGGER!" It was a funny, rather cute little message. At least, that's what I thought on Thursday. Come Monday morning, I was panicking, utterly convincing that I should never have sent an email to her, that the instant she read them she would turn around and 'do a Kirsty' on me. Visions of Tracey yelling "STOP FUCKING LOOKING AT ME...AND STOP FUCKING SENDING ME EMAILS, TOO!" ran through my mind. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Tracey greeted me warmly on her return (I greeted her even more warmly, I suspect). And what was her reaction to my emails? She thought they were funny, of course. She even sent me a reply to the first one, something along the lines of... "LILLIAN? THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT...ROBERT." Very droll, Tracey. Very droll. I was relieved. And I also realised something I'd known all along, but had kind of forgotten in the year since Muirden. Not all girls are like Kirsty. Some of them are even sane. Maud was leaving. Not for good, but on long-service leave, which was for good as far as we - with 3 days to go - were concerned. Bianca bought a card for her, which we all signed. I wrote "Good luck, Maud. And maybe, someday, we will meet again..." Well, I thought it was funny. "It's been good," I heard Maud telling Leslie. "Despite a couple of people who had problems at first." "Wouldn't be referring to me would you, by any chance?" I remarked dryly. "Of course not," Maud replied, equally dryly. My Advanced Word Assessment with lecturer Judy (not the same one as on WE) did not go down well. Judy found all sorts of errors in my first effort, and got quite upset. So upset, in fact, I was afraid she was going to hyperventilate at one point. "I can't stand sloppy work," Judy said. "Maybe you should go outside and calm down for a minute." I didn't think I was the one who needed to calm down, however, given that a far more massive 'error' on Judy's part, to me, was that she seemed to be labouring under the impression that I gave a shit. In the last couple of days, Tracey and I got friendlier. Tracey's behaviour - such as continually trying to disrupt me while typing by deliberately knocking my chair, and affectionately ruffling my hair when she walked past me - seemed to indicate that she had become rather fond of me, and the feeling was very much mutual. The final day - oh, that sounded good to say - didn't go so well, however. On a minor note, the "Bitch" Julie saga (even I grew to hate her. Looking through a paper one day, I commented "Job for you here. Stripper required". Julie, being very fat and very ugly, looked at me and muttered "Ooh, you little bugger". This followed an earlier incident where she had been complaining that my typing was too loud (?!?!?!?!?!) and I had told her to move if she didn't like it. "I thought he was going to get really mad," Leslie commented. "And he's usually so placid, too." "He's not," Tracey disagreed. "He's got a right temper, 'aven't ya?" she grinned at me. I grinned back.) came to a dramatic conclusion. Apparently, moments after I'd gone home the night before, Julie had thrown a major wobbly at Judy. Julie claimed to have already handed up her Advanced Word Assessment, where Judy said all that had been handed in to her was the ordinary Word Assessment. Julie apparently went completely bananas, calling Judy a "lying fucking bitch", among other vulgarities. It was the talk of the group. "I can't believe it," I said. "I follow this storyline for 3 months, and I miss the punch-line by 2 minutes." Julie didn't turn up that last day, not even to receive her certificate. But no one was exactly distressed by her absence. CHAPTER 9 : The Last Course I think I took things a little too far with Tracey that last morning. I was bored senseless again, and started sending her humorous emails again. She replied to them, and an amusing pastime ensued. But I think I may have sent too many. I wasn't going to do anything - she was taken, and all that - but on the other hand I really liked her, and today was quite probably the last time I was ever going to see her. I made some crack, and she emailed me, calling me (jokingly) a sicko, I replied "THAT'S JUST WHAT MY MUM CALLED ME... JUST BEFORE SHE DIED". She replied "OH, YOU ARE A JOKER, MR KIDD." And this is where I think I may have put my foot in it: "FLATTERY WILL GET YOU NOWHERE... ....UNLESS YOU TRY HARDER." We'd been flirting. There's no doubt in my mind about that. It was flirting where both participants knew nothing was ever going to come of it, but it was flirting all the same. And I think I may have pushed it a little too far. Because she didn't email me again. And at the "Morning Tea", where we gathered to eat, drink, get our certificates, and listen in disbelief as the traditional last-day spiel was dished out with ludicrous sincerity - y'know what I mean, the "It's been a wonderful 3 months, it's been really great" bullshit - she seemed to be avoiding me. We were two seats down from each other and we barely spoke 2 words to each other. Considering how friendly we'd been the last few days, this awkwardness was doubly apparent. Even Leslie commented "You alright, Tracey? You look a bit unhappy." Considering she'd been fine 'n' dandy an hour or so before, I was even more convinced I had something to do with the transformation. I felt incredibly awkward and embarrassed and ill at ease. I just wanted to get out of there. And finally I did. With a quick, shifty "see you" to Tracey (which she returned equally shiftily) I bolted, walking out with Rachael and Melissa. We said goodbye - I'd grown rather fond of those two, even more so when I was sure Melissa was NOT interested in me - and I went home. Just another course over. Just another girl out of my life. C'est la vie. A few weeks after leaving TAFE, I heard that Muirden had merged with another college - Stones - and moved premises. I returned to the site of Muirden Business Studies Centre, to find this was so. Aside from the few other businesses located there, the place was practically deserted. I'm afraid I couldn't resist. I had a look round. I rounded the stairs I'd gone up and down for 6 months the previous year, with deja vu, memories that left a knot in my stomach, and even a strange sort of nostalgia. The 2 major rooms where our group had been were empty. Completely bare, stripped of furniture, carpets, posters, everything. But I saw it the way it used to be. I could see everyone - the lovely Kathryn, the hated Kirsty, good old Simon, nasty old Kathy, and poor old Becky. I could even hear Simon's laugh, see Kathryn's smile, hear Kirsty's fake sincerity. I stood there, alone, just drinking in the atmosphere of the place. As of almost two years later, I have not seen a single person from that place again. I don't really know why I went back, considering how miserable I'd been there. I suppose I was just... laying old ghosts to rest. I bumped into a few of the people from TAFE for a while - Barbara, Leslie, Keith, Elton... Leslie and Bianca both had jobs, apparently. I saw Elton surprisingly regularly, and he ended up landing a job at Noarlunga Library. I was a bit miffed by that, actually, despite the fact that I had absolutely no desire at all to work there. It was a full three months before I saw Tracey again. As luck would have it, she had landed a job working at Christies Beach Medical Centre, not ten minutes walk from my house. We chatted - the awkwardness from that last day seemed, thankfully, to have vanished - although I was still a bit nervous seeing her again, and then parted. "It was nice seeing you again," I told her, with genuine feeling. "You too," Tracey said, equally genuinely. And it was. I've seen her a few times since - with her working so close to where I live, it's inevitable we'd bump into each other occasionally, and one time she waved to me from a car (driven by her mysterious boyfriend, no doubt) so it's kind of nice to have her around, to be known, to be thought of fondly. We'll never be more than casual friends, I know that now, but that's okay. It's the end of 1997. I'm up to date for the first time since starting these "memoirs". I've enjoyed writing these volumes, it's gotten a lot of stuff off my chest. What will happen in 98? I don't know. I know I don't want clerical, and I want a way out, somehow. Whether or not I find one is another matter. Will I get a job? A career? A girl? A life? I guess only time will tell.
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