I had a weird “Wonder Years” moment yesterday.
I work from an office in Fortitude Valley on the city fringe in Brisbane… and as is my want… I wandered up to the Brunswick Street Mall for lunch. I had just finished ordering my lunch, when a guy approached me. He looked vaguely familiar and he mentioned that he recognised me from school… and then introduced himself.
When he said his name… Simon… a flood of memories came back to me.
Simon used to live two houses down from me when I was around 7 years old. He then moved away for quite a number of years… only to return in my senior year for the last 6 months or so… although I didn’t have much to do with him then…
But as with any 7 year old… I had quite a few neighbourhood friends that I used to hang around with on a regular basis…
Simon was NOT one of them.
However, from time to time Simon’s mother used to send him over to my house and we’d be forced to play together. I found out later that Simon’s mother used to con my mother into setting up our “play dates” because none of the other kids seemed to want to play with him. This should have sent warning signals to my mother straight away… but bless her… she didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body…
Anyway, you know what 7 year old boys are like. Weekends were filled with kicking the football… backyard cricket… endless battles with toy soldiers… and of course cowboys and indians…
Well Simon and I probably only played together a handful of times… I can only remember three of these times, but they still stand out vividly in my memory to this day… despite the fact that it was over 20 years ago…
The first time… we were building a miniature city in the corner of the front garden of my house. This corner of our yard was protected by tall shrubs, so we couldn’t be seen from my house. It was also protected from the road by our front fence which was probably 4 feet high… ample height to provide cover and privacy for 7 year olds.
I was a pretty focused kid… and as such… being totally consumed with building roads and tunnels in our newly created city… I hadn’t notice that Simon wasn’t playing any more.
Eventually I glanced up… and there… squatting in the corner of my front garden was Simon… with his pants down around his ankles…
Next moment… Simon peeks up over the fence and peers down the road… where a car is approaching… probably a couple of hundred metres away.
He then quickly ducks back down… and to my utter amazement starts screwing his face up and squirming… and promptly… and I’ll try to put this as delicately as possible… defecates… into his own hand…
I’m frozen in astonishment… we… we didn’t do that kind of thing… not at my house…
Next thing… he peers back up over the fence at the rapidly approaching car… stands up… and promptly flings his brown handful straight at the passing car…
To be honest… and full credit to him… it was quite a shot… and one he’d obviously practiced before… (the kid had clearly mastered the concept of relative velocity)… as his scud missile splattered hard across the rear passenger door and window of the passing vehicle…
The car immediately brakes… and pulls to a halt around 50 metres down the road… I turn my attention back to Simon… who is now off and racing… scrambling up over my neighbour’s fence… scooting across the yard and up and over the fence on the far side to the relative safety of his own yard… which was on the opposite side of my yard from the direction of the now stopped… and suitably irate motorist…
The next instant… the driver starts reversing the car… and it suddenly occurs to me that Edward Shitterhands had set me up to take the fall… so I of course instinctively bolt back through the shrubs… dart down the side of our house… and quickly hide underneath the front balcony…
I peek out… as the driver stops his car… and starts walking up and down the sidewalk… trying to spot the elusive dukey sniper… yelling out “Show yourself… I know you’re there!”…
Eventually after a few minutes of ranting and pacing… he gives up… and drives off… presumably to locate a hose… a large bottle of disinfectant… and some heavy duty carwash…
Being a 7 year old… I of course never breathed a word of this to my parents… as I was too frightened of getting into trouble…
Needless to say… a few weeks later… Simon was “invited over” for a second time…
Simon was pretty heavily into action figures (GI Joe… Star Wars… Superheroes… that sort of thing). Now at some point, my mother must have cottoned on to Simon’s action figure obsession… and in an endeavour to give us some common ground… she chanced upon and purchased… what I remember as being… probably the coolest Batman figurine in all existence…
I honestly don’t know where she got it from, but it was made entirely of rubber… and it depicted the comic book kind of Batman…
You know… a Christian Bale - “Batman Begins” - dark and brooding version…
Not an Adam West - “Batman and Robin” - light and campy version…
Anyway… Simon was instantly jealous of my Batman… and of course called dibs on getting to play with it… even offering to swap me an old crappy Superman figure for it…
I of course… firmly rejected his offers… and kept playing with Batman…
After a while… I must have put Batman down… because in the next instant… Simon had latched hold of it… and was perched up on the fence waving it over my head… taunting me to come and get it… I of course made a few feeble snatches to try and grab at it… all the while Simon was teasing me by pulling it away from my grasp…
Eventually I realised the only way I was going to get it back was to climb up onto the fence and forcibly take it back…
Well Simon saw me coming… and scooted to the corner junction of the fence… he then waited until I was a couple of feet away from him… and promptly and deliberately… ripped the head off my Batman figure…
He then tossed Batman’s headless… and lifeless body down into the dirt… threw the head into the long grass of the vacant alotment across the road… and screamed ”Who has the better Superhero now!!!” and then quickly disappeared over the fence… across the yard… and back to his house…
I never did find Batman’s head… and I never did tell my mother about it… I think she’d have been as devastated as I was…
Anyway… a few month’s later… much to my chagrin… Simon came over to play for a third time…
This time… we opted to play hide and seek… less chance for harm… or so I thought…
Since it was my yard… I had home ground advantage… and knew all the cool hiding spots. As a consequence, I obviously found him a lot quicker than he found me…
Eventually… after a handful of alternating turns as hider… and seeker… it was my turn to look for Simon…
I covered my eyes… counted to 100… and started searching… I looked in a few obvious places… under the house… in the garage… in the back shed… all to no avail…
But then on a whim… I decided to go and look in the treehouse my father had built in the back garden. It was a pretty sweet treehouse… like a small cabin with a roof and walls… about a metre and a half off the ground… braced between the lower limbs of a tree between our shed and the back fence. To get into it my father had nailed pieces of timber to the tree trunk to form a rudimentary ladder…
I started climbing… and just as my head reached the floor level of the treehouse… Simon stepped out into the doorway… with his pants down… and tackle out…
For a fleeting instant… I feared I was going to be projectile pelted… crazy monkey style… like he did to the car…
But Simon had a different type of warfare planned… he promptly started urinating on my head…
Being halfway up a ladder… I was instantly stunned… and didn’t know how to react for fear of falling… so he had the opportunity to drench me pretty heavily before I had the presence of mind to jump to the ground and run away…
The experience was truly AWFUL… it was probably only a cupful or two that landed on me… but I can still remember the feeling to this day… it was warm… body temperature warm… it matted my hair… and it stung my eyes…
And this of course was the straw that broke the camel’s back… or perhaps the golden shower that broke the 7 year old’s back… but you get the point…
So I of course did what any self respecting 7 year old would do in this particular situation…
To hell with getting into trouble… I ran screaming into the house to tell…
Now my mother didn’t have too many friends in the neighbourhood… we lived in a pretty small town… but this happened to be one of the rare times when she had some of the local ladies over for morning tea…
So in runs a screaming, urine drenched gremlin… right through the middle of her sophisticated gathering which consisted of a balanced combination of the good china… cups of tea… paper doilies… lamingtons… and iced vovo biscuits…
My mother of course quickly told me to calm down and tell her where I was hurt… thinking I had banged my head or grazed my knee… which were the usual suspects when encountering screaming 7 year olds…
To which I blubbered… “Simon… sniff… sniff… did a wee… sniff… on my head!”…
All the while quietly dripping on the living room carpet… (perhaps that is one saving grace… it was the early 80’s… so the carpet was orange…).
A look of revulsion and horror quickly spread across my mother’s face. She promptly apologised to her lady friends… excused herself… dragged me down the hallway… and threw me in the shower… clothes and all…
I don’t think the morning tea ever got to see completion… but once the dust settled… and for obvious reasons… Simon was never invited over to play again…
Soon after, he moved away… and I did not see him again until my final year of high school… where we had a kind of an unspoken understanding… almost a telepathic pact… where neither of us ever attempted to make even the slightest form of eye contact…
That is… until now… in the Brunswick Street Mall… where we cross paths for the first time in at least a decade…
As a result I was clearly nervous to see what kind of man he’d become…
Now as most of you know in life… often the reckless, naughty or unruly child turns out to be the tortured poet… the nuclear physicist… the globe-trotting environmentalist… the entrepreneurial go-getter…
With this in mind… it was important that I kept an open mind… so that I may objectively assess how Simon had turned out…
I’m glad I did it… because after taking the time to sit down and talk with him… and I mean really listen to him… even just for a few minutes… I came to understand…
Simon was an utter tool…
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