12. SORRY BOUT THAT MUM....

Motorbikes. My Mum thought she had done so well. It helped of course that we didn’t live in the country but still. All the way through school and not a peep from me or my brother that would indicate either of us were inclined in any way towards those two wheeled son mangling devices that are, I suspect, the secret terror of all Mothers.

I do have some sympathy – I don’t think a month goes by up here where someone doesn’t wrap himself and his (and it’s pretty much always ‘his’) massively overpowered two wheeled expression of manhood around a tree. And these are generally older types who should know better rather than 18 year old, just out of school idiots, who know absolutely for certain they cannot be killed by anything, anywhere.

So when I rang Mum (in the middle of a downpour that was enthusiastically flooding our downstairs laundry) to tell her I had borrowed, 6 months into a new job, $2000 to buy a motorbike. She wasn’t that happy about it.

‘Hi Mum, I’m just ringing to say I’ll be DEAD in a couple of weeks. What’s for dinner.’ - Is, I’m pretty sure, what she heard, regardless of what came out of my actual mouth.

I’m not dead of course. Even after working as a courier on the thing for a year and a half in the late 80’s (which was the best job I have ever had). But as I say. I have some sympathy.

I do wonder however, why similar concern wasn’t expressed regarding my bicycle riding activities. At least I was wearing a helmet on the motorbike.

Parents never seemed to worry about what their kids were getting up to when they rolled out of the driveway on the non motorised version.

We, for example, spent one very productive morning riding our bicycles back and forth past a tree in the front yard throwing darts at it (which begs the question – what the HELL were we doing with darts at that age?) pretending we were big game hunters. We only stopped when one of us, who had dismounted for no logical reason I can think of and was standing right next to the tree, got hit right between the eyes with one of the darts.

Still, as I have previously pointed out, I am not dead (neither is the victim). And I know now that throwing darts in the general vicinity of another person’s head is likely to end in one of the darts meeting that head. So there is that.

NEXT: The School Bus Pass – Useful product of a civilised society OR Contributor to the ongoing childhood obesity problem?