The Course THE COURSE BY IAN KIDD CHAPTER 1: ON COURSE It was late June, 1995, two and a half years into my life as a dole bludger, that I received another DIOD (Do It Or Die) letter from my friendly local CES. This time it was a request (ie order) for me to visit my Case Manager, the infamous Sue Stewart, on the 2nd of July. Little did I know this would be the last time I would see or have any contact with the erstwhile Ms Stewart. But boy, did she go out in style. She suggested that I go on a 4-week course at my local TAFE college, a new program called "Employment Connections", which, she said, was actually going to be bringing in employers from around the community to meet us. According to Sue, going on this course was very much in my best interest, because "at the end of this course, fifty or so kids are going to be going straight out into the workforce". Famous last words. Foolishly, I agreed. I was almost looking forward to it. Foolishly. So, like an eager beaver, Monday 5th July, 8:30 am, I dragged myself up to the Noarlunga Centre in the freezing cold, for the first day of the first week of... The Course. I gathered outside the TAFE building with a rag-tag, rough-looking bunch of youths, waiting to be let in. Eventually we were, and had to sit in an assembly hall listening to some man with no apparent personality reiterating what Sue had said, but also trying to embellish it beyond belief and make it sound inspiring and uplifting in the process, boring nearly everyone in there to death. It wasn't just my eyes glazing over, I'm sure, and the spontaneous applause that marked the end of his speech came more out of relief that he'd actually finished than reflecting any kind of enthusiasm on behalf of the crowd. Eventually (and I do mean EVENTUALLY, for about forty-five to fifty minutes, none of the TAFE staff seemed to know what to do with us, and I felt my optimism rapidly ebbing away) we were split into groups and assigned a tutor to take us to a room of our own. The class I was in was 'lucky' enough to get a woman called Josie, a sixty-five year old former primary school teacher, whose first task was to tell us that this was NOT High School and we were to be treated as adults and not children, and who then went on to take registrar and ask if everyone had remembered their lunch money. It was around this time I noticed a girl on the corner of the table next to me. If it helps I will supply a (crap) layout of the room: John N Weirdo Christian Type /Other Rebecca Josie/ /Rebecca /Karen Me John She was beautiful, with a mane of fiery red/brown hair and yes, I'm sorry, I'm normally no fashion critic, but I thought she had great dress sense. I'm sorry, but she just looked great - especially that black jacket, the way it went down almost to her fingers... I should have seen it coming, of course. Three years since I'd been around a large group of people my age (High School), I was probably ripe for a crush. ANY pretty girl I was in close contact with would probably have started my heart beating the same. Maybe. Anyhow, Josie's first brilliant idea was for us to get to know each other - by handing out halves of the same coloured paper, finding the person who matched to, and then telling each other at least three things about each other. At least, it became a brilliant idea - I thought - when my partner turned out to be the girl I'd already noticed. "Alright!" I said without thinking, unable to contain myself. The girl seemed amused by my enthusiasm. We sat down on the floor together (oh, how romantic!) and she looked at me and said darkly, "This isn't getting me a job" (meaning talking to me!). But she said it in such a semi-joking tone, I liked her immediately. She was also even prettier close up. Her name was Karen (cool name, I thought!). She was eighteen years old. She wanted to be a photographer. She had been accepted into University, but after a couple of months had been finding it stifling and quit - an act she now half-regretted. One of her heroes was Drew Barrymore (I wouldn't call her one of my heroes - I'd call her, sure, but...sorry). And she was a vegetarian. With any other girl, that last fact might have put me off, but I think I was already too far gone on her by then for it to make the slightest bit of difference. We retreated to our desks to relay the information we'd learned about each other to everyone else (as the others were all doing). Here is a bried rundown of the people in the room - at least, those who played any role in the drama to come: Rebecca - 18 year old girl. Quite pretty, taller than Karen, and with a bigger mouth. Quite an aggressive attitude. John N - Age unknown. Had "troublemaker" written all over him. Had quit his last job after telling his boss to "fuck off". John - Age unknown. Bearded, chubby, with rings on all fingers, and looked like the kind of person you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley - but actually had a sweet and gentle nature ("The Jolly Green Giant", Karen called him). Other Rebecca - Age unknown. Bit chubby but cute. Weirdo Christian Type - Eighteen, ugly, buck-toothed, wanted to be vet, and, of course, already engaged! The others are unimportant, their names and characters lost in the mists of time. The players were in place. I already had more than a passing romantic interest in Karen, and Josie was confident of getting each and every one of us a job. Let the disaster commence... CHAPTER 2 - Heartbreak, Disaster, Conflict - and Collages! The first day was dull and tedious, attempting to work out the morality behind some "Melrose Place"-style story Josie spun us, and indulging in more ridiculous "getting to know you" routines, which involved walking around with notes saying who you were stuck to you, and asking other people questions about themselves. I, of course, made a b-line for Karen, and asked her the burning question of the hour. "Why are you a vegetarian?" (with a heavy emphasis on the "WHY?!".) "Because I don't see why animals should have to suffer and die just so we can eat," Karen replied. "Oh," I said, "that's the reason I do it, actually." Not the brightest thing to say to a vegetarian, the sad thing was this was my attempt at being flirtatiously charming. Karen laughed, but she probably thought I was a right prat, anyway. The days passed - uselessly. Josie insisted we keep a 'diary' of the course and write in it every day, saying what we'd achieved on the course. "Very little" summed up most days, and my early diary entries were glaringly cynical and scathing of the course. There were NO "employers from the community coming in to meet us" - nothing of the sort. Typical examples of a diary entry: Day 1 - "Chances of getting a job after today: 0/10. More chance of being mistaken for Hugh Grant." Day 2 - "Chances of getting a job after today: 0/10. More chance of being made Arch Bishop of Canterbury." You get the idea. But on Wednesday, things changed. Josie came at me squawking excitedly about a Clerical Traineeship in an MP's office. After ringing the CES and spending over an hour trying to get an application form, speaking to people who didn't know what I was talking about and kept asking me if I was an Aborigine, I finally got the all-clear. They'd send in the forms. Later, it transpired I had to take a "Clerical Aptitude Test" to even get as far as the interview, but I was confident. I had passed a similar test for the Public Service only that April (although they hadn't given me a job). Anyway, the weeks went past. A certain tension was developing between John N and Josie, Josie resenting of John's cynical and negative attitude, and John irritated by Josie's nauseating enthusiasm and primary-school style lecture technique. As we reached the end of Week 2, my crush on Karen was growing to alarming proportions. That Friday, we were alone in the room (everyone else out on a smoke break!), I read out to her an article in the paper about some lunatic who'd chopped his sons' heads off because he thought they were possessed by the Devil. Karen just looked at me and muttered "Religion, of course", which seemed to me such a wonderfully cynical attitude that I wanted to kiss her on the spot. Of course, I'd been wanting to kiss her for weeks already, but that was beside the point. Anyhow, I made a decision. I was not just thinking about it, I was going to DO IT. For the first time in my life, I was going to actually ask a girl out. By this time, you see, I'd convinced myself that this course was a "fate" kind of thing, and that I was going to end up with both a job AND Karen. My determination was such that I was even going around muttering "You're a decent-looking bloke, and a good guy" to stay confident and not ley my nervousness take over. Even if she'd said no, (I was going to do it on the last day of Week 4, so if she did say no, I wouldn't have to stick around too long being embarrassed) I was going to do it. But I never got the chance. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. One of the reasons everyone was getting irritated with Josie - and John N was showing it - was the sheer ineptitude and lameness of some of her ideas. Of all her pitiful attempts to fill up time, the "collage" one is one that has become legendary. What we had to do, you see, was make a collage to "represent what we wanted out of work". Aah. Yes, we got to cut out pictures from magazines and glue them together! We could use felt-tip pens of different colours, too! And when we'd finished - and here was the real treat! - we got to stick them up on the wall, too! Shake your heads in wonder at the miracle of how some people get careers they are so OBVIOUSLY right for. The only amusing thing at the time about the whole "collage" business was that all the collages had one, and only one, theme. Money. Josie said she was "rather disappointed" by that. Josie was, of course, a newcomer to the real world, her previous home being Fairyland. But, as I was about to discover as the deadline for me to ask Karen out drew closer, she wasn't the only one living there. CHAPTER 3 - The Price You Pay As the third week of the "Employment Connections" course began to unfold, things were clearly not going 100% as one might have hoped. As the tension began to rise between John N and Josie, so did everybody else's frustration with the course. The highlight of the previous week had been Josie sending us all "cold calling". In layman's terms, this means just walking into shops and businesses and the like and asking them if they'll employ you. When they reply, inevitably, in the negative, you give them your resume for future reference, and leave. They then take one look at the resume, laugh, and drop it into the nearest waste paper basket. I visited several employers for this purpose, and the day was generally as tedious as you might expect, except for one amusinf moment in a building in King William Street, where I got in the lift, pressed the button for the company "Drake Overload" was supposed to be on - and the lift spoke to me! "You do not have security clearance for this floor" the electronic voice told me. "Please leave." I left. Makes one wonder what REALLY goes on on the top floors of these supposed businesses, doesn't it? Somebody ought to tell Mulder and Scully - the truth isn't out there, it's UP there. Anyway, Josie seemed to have adopted me, except for her increasingly irritating inability to call me by my name. Instead she kept referring to me as "John". There being two Johns in the room, one could have forgiven her for her mistake - except that she kept on making it even AFTER she'd taped everyone's names to the front of their desks! Rebecca actually went so far as to suggest just calling everyone in the room "John", to make it easier for her. Josie was not amused. And despite my enormous crush on Karen and rock-solid determination to ask her out by the end of Week 4 (I had visions of us dancing in moonlight, having picnics, watching "Doctor Who" together...), most of the time I was barely able to talk to her. We were alone in the TAFE tuck shop once (save for the attendant) and I could barely muster a "How was your weekend?". The most I could manage generally was to just look at her and dream. One time we were, at Josie's insistence, all meditating (no, really!) and it was all I could do to keep my eyes off her (even when they were supposed to be shut!). I'm also pretty sure she noticed, but said nothing. It was Friday the 21st of July that the walls came tumbling down. It was the morning. That afternoon I had to take my Clerical Aptitude Test for the traineeship in Adelaide, and in exactly a week's time I intened to ask Karen out on a date. Until this morning, when the truth was revealed, the most horrific truth you can imagine, and my old heart went splintering into a million little pieces. Can you guess what I'm talking about? The four little words that will be recurring in this memoirs with chilling monotony? Do I really have to spell it out? Okay, I will: She Already Had A Boyfriend. We'd been conducting mock-interviews - I'd been lucky enough to nab Karen as my partner - and one of the questions I had to ask was "What do you do in your spare time?" To which one of the things she replied was: "Going out with my boyfriend". Her other answers are lost in the mists of time, as at that point it was all I could do to stop myself literally bursting out crying - I mean it, I started to mist over - and I stumbled, moving quickly - too quickly - onto the next question, aware of her big brown eyes upon me, perhaps testing my reaction. Needless to say, when the final Friday of the course rolled around, I did not ask her out. With that "boyfriend" comment, there was no longer any point. I was devastated. Part of me suspects Karen had a pretty good idea I was keen on her, and was letting me down casually and gently before I humiliated myself and made her no doubt uncomfortable. Sometimes I hope that's true. Other times I don't. CHAPTER 4 - Counting the Cost As we entered the fourth and final week of the course, my spirits were at an all-time low. Karen's revelation the previous Friday morning had sent me to the test that afternoon feeling alternately angry and not giving a shit. As a result, I didn't even know if I'd passed the thing. So I wasn't going to get the girl, and the job was looking unlikely, too. Par for the course, really, but it still hurt, so it was with a decided lack of enthusiasm that I entered the fourth week. But don't think just because my relationship with Karen was over when it hadn't even started, that there's going to be little left to say about this final week. Oh, no. Not a bit of it. The fun really started on Tuesday, when the tension between John N and Josie finally exploded into full-scale war. A full-scale shouting match erupted in our little course room. I don't know what started it, but John's negative attitude and sarccy comments finally pushed Josie over the edge, telling him to grow up and act like an adult. At which point John finally went completely bananas, screaming "Well maybe I WOULD grow up and we all might get more done if you'd stop treating us all like fucking two-year olds!" Josie said something else, to which John responded "Fuck off, you senile old bitch!" and stormed out in the grand tradition of the dramatic exit. You could have cut the silence in the room with a knife. No one knew quite what to say. Myself, I had to fight the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh uncontrollably (John was, after all, saying what we'd probably all been thinking for weeks), but failed to suppress a smirk, which I hid from everyone but Karen, who seemed amused by my amusement, and just rolled her eyes at me. Still, it was memorable, anyway! Wednesday was an interesting day, for two reasons (oh, John and Josie made up - sort-of). Firstly, after Josie had packed us all off to the library for some lame exercise she had is doing (and an excuse to get us off her hands for an hour or two, no doubt!), I had the misfortune of sharing my table with psycho John and several other uncouth youths, as well as Karen and another girl. Now, neither Karen nor I smoked, but everyone else on the course did, and Karen and the other girl left the table to get some books. Later, when the other boys had gone and the other girl discovered some of her cigarettes missing (like a movie title, ain't it - "One Of Our Cigarettes Is Missing"!), Karen beckoned me over to them (making my heart beat in the process) and asked me if I'd seen the other boys going in the girl's bag and pinching her cigarettes. I hadn't, but Karen seemed dissastisfied and said "Don't worry. We won't tell them you said anything." I felt rather affronted by that. As if I would lie to her or be afraid of those cloth-eared Aussie cunts. I told her I'd seen no such thing, and would tell her if I had. Karen seemed satisfied. Later, it transpired the girl had merely miscounted her cigarettes! Though rather affronted by the above comment, I nevertheless was pleased that Karen thought I was decent and trustworthy enough to ask and confide in. Mind you, it was probably just because she knew I didn't smoke! Later that day (it was cloudy out, and the course room lights weren't working, making the place dark and gloomy) a discussion on euthanasia (the Christian was the only one who didn't support it - what a surprise) turned into a discussion on death in general. The conversation became incredibly morbid, with people detailing car crashes and uncle's found dead in bed with bloodied eyes from brain haemorrhages... I left the room that day feeling like sticking my head in the oven! Thursday was D-Day. Disaster Day. My friend Michael was, on Thursday and Fridays, at TAFE for two of the weeks I was, and had seen him occasionally. We had, however, arranged to meet Thursday lunchtime at their his usual lunch hang-out, Pizza Hut - along with two other girls from his TAFE course, one of whom was a girl called Laura. Laura had become a close friend of his, but the relationship had become decidedly strained of late. Michael, Laura and Laura's boyfriend had recently gone out together (not, one suspects, the brightest of ideas). Laura and her boyfriend had had an argument and he had buggered off home. Laura had got a little tipsy after that, and as Michael and Laura went home, they were laughing hysterically over some joke - and Laura started to kiss him. And Michael, as you might expect, didn't exactly push her away. Laura, however, eventually broke off the kiss and threw what can only be described as "a major wobbly". Stricken with guilt and crying her eyes out, Laura instantly went over to her boyfriend's place to apologise - and to tell him what had happened. Understandably, this had left Michael and Laura's friendship rather strained. And I was going out to lunch with them. I felt a little trepidation at first (I'm not terribly good in social situations, in case you hadn't realised) and Michael introduced us all with mimimal fuss and, as we walked to Pizza Hut in different groups (me with Michael, Laura with the other girl, Michelle), I began to get the feeling this was a bad idea. That was putting it mildly. Anyway, having now met the elusive and infamous Laura, I was pleased to discover she was a petite, rather pretty girl with short blonde hair. If only the same could be said about Michelle. Oh dear, oh dear. Don't get me wrong, I'm not casting aspersions on her character, from what little I got to know her that lunchtime, she seemed to be a nice person and Michael liked her, but boy oh boy, was she ugly! (Isn't it always the way, though, aye?) Anyway, we made it to Pizza Hut, took our seats and grabbed our food. Now the disaster could begin in earnest. CHAPTER 5 - Bye Bye Love - And Money For once, I was neither a gibbering imbecile nor a silent shadow in a social situation, and acquitted myself reasonably well. Laura, however, did not. She seemed uncomfortable, edgy - and I fancy this had less to do with meeting me that it did being with Michael. She ate practically nothing - "not hungry" - and after less than fifteen minutes, made her excuses and left. The situation became noticeably less awkward and tense with just me, Michael and Michelle, and a reasonable enough lunch ensued. Then I had to leave a bit early - at the course, we were supposed to be going to some health seminar at a nearby hospital or something - but as I got up and made to give Michael my share of the lunch cost...I found my wallett was gone. I immediately checked my other pockets, my coat, my seat, under the table. Nothing. I had had my wallett entering Pizza Hut - I had checked to be sure - but somehow during our lunch it had gone. Been 'alf-inched, you might say. With all my club membership cards, bank card, house keys and over sixty dollars inside. Apologising to Michael, with a wink to Michelle - "She's going to think I do this all the time" - I retraced all our steps just in case I had been wrong about having the wallett as I entered Pizza Hut - I still believe I wasn't wrong, however - resulting in me arriving back at TAFE late, with the group having gone, and with me having no idea where they were. I then had to badger another TAFE staff member to find another key to our room - which took another twenty minutes - so I could check the room, then, with final confirmation that my wallett was indeed gone and not just misplaced, I phoned Mum, telling her to lock both doors should they go out - at the time I did not have a security door key in my wallett - and rang my bank and all video stores to cancel my cards. A great afternoon all round. But, ironically, out of the blackness came a ray of sunshine. While phoning Mum, she told me they'd received a phone call from the office of Lorraine Rosenberg, MP. I had passed the Clerical Aptitude Test and had an interview for the traineeship the following Monday. I spent the next hour sat outside my (again) locked course room, waiting for my class to return, despite the job news in a state of black fury. Finally, Josie returned. She didn't seem to mind I hadn't gone - I told you she'd adopted me, after all - but when I said "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news.": "You PASSED!" Josie guessed correctly. "Yeah," I said, "and I lost my wallett. With over sixty dollars in." Josie and others in the class visibly winced. Karen exchanged a look of sympathy with me that almost made losing the wallett worthwhile. Sad, eh? Friday. The 'day' lasted approximately two hours. We had a small "ceremony" where we all received a piece of paper saying we'd completed the course (wowee!), pulled down our collages from the wall and threw them away (most of them ripped apart with venom), read papers and generally said goodbye. We also did a "What do you think of me?" paper for the last time, where we wrote our names on the top of a sheet of paper (we'd done this before) and passed it round to have others write down what they thought of us. I resisted writing "adorable" on Karen's (can't remember what I did write - probably something like "nice girl" or something equally lame) but Karen did write "friendly guy" on mine. I cherished that comment for months afterwards. Then it was all over. Josie threatened (sorry - promised) to ring me in a weeks time to see how I'd gone in the interview, but that was it. Sayonara, folks. I stopped off in the library and as I left the building, I saw Karen in the TAFE office one last time. She saw me, too. She didn't look away, but neither did she smile or wave goodbye. None of us got jobs as a result of that course. John (the Jolly Green Giant) got on a TAFE course, but that was it. The rest of us left, some of us a little happier, some of us a little heartbroken. I walked out of the building, saying goodbye to Karen and the course. I saw Karen once more, about nineteen months later (for the first few months I'd traipse up to the Noarlunga Centre regularly just on the off-chance of seeing her). We made eye contact, but that's all. I was with my parents at the time, so it made it hard to stop. But I don't know if she would have, anyway. I didn't get the clerical traineeship at Lorraine Rosenberg's office. I came second, apparently. Out of three. As I told Josie when she rang (Mum thought it was a girl - "Fat chance", I told her) "She probably said that to the other guy, too." I saw Laura the week after, in the cinema, with her boyfriend. She didn't smile, or acknowledge me in the slightest. Her friendship with Michael ended soon after. She stopped talking to him, took a different bus in the morning, moved in with her boyfriend, and started completely avoiding both Michael and even Michelle. She left TAFE soon after, and didn't even say goodbye. Michael never saw her again. If there's a moral to this story, I can only think it goes something like this: "Be careful what you wish for...you probably won't get it, anyway."
Copyright © 1996 Ian Kidd |