And then everything changed
A little learning can be a good thing, writes David Slack.
Life hangs by a thread. The world reminds you every day, cruelly, in a Gold Coast courtroom, at the bottom of a water ride, in the glare of cameras, in a vale of tears.
You never know when, and yet it may not come before we’re 94 or more, and that seems a small miracle, and it is.
Completely out of the blue a few weeks ago, and in a matter of hours, a friend found himself looking over the edge, tubes running in and out of him, full of serious drugs. I didn’t grasp for a time how bad it was because the way he put it in a text was: ‘‘OK, I’m in Intensive Care with pneumonia. Beat that.’’
We have swapped hospital banter before. I was flat on my back in the emergency department one morning, texting, because I have heart attacks in my history and whenever I faint, I get an ambulance ride. I texted: ‘‘it says CP next to my name on the admission board. Some others have it too. No idea what it stands for.’’ He texted back ‘‘Complete Pussy.’’ It in fact means: Chest Pain.
When the moment comes, when you see over the edge, when you’re thinking ‘Oh, man, no, is this it?’ and then it works out OK, how do you feel?
Some people walk away relieved, contemplative, like my friend. Some people get tentative, unsure about everything they ever thought they knew. That was me at 27, home from coronary care, washed ashore, thinking: I don’t want another one. I must not exert myself. I must remain very still.
I might have stayed that way a long time if a friend hadn’t helped. I’ve never properly thanked her. She said: come with me, we’re walking down the drive to the front gate. She said: it won’t kill you. She said you can trust a nurse to know what she’s doing. We walked.
A week or two later another friend rang and said ‘‘I’m going to the pool. I do 40 lengths. You should come.’’ I said I didn’t think I could do even one full length. He said ‘‘come anyway’’. I did. I slogged to the other end. He said ‘‘come back tomorrow. See if you can do two.’’ He kept at me, I kept going back. In a month I was doing 40 lengths.
Anna got me walking, Steve got me swimming. Sometimes
Teachers do it every day. It's beyond belief we don't pay them well.
a few words are all it takes to shift your life. Sometimes it takes you a long time to get around to thanking them.
You can do good, you can do harm. You can say something entirely offhand and leave a thought burned into a young mind. You can say to a sixyear-old girl eating a muffin ‘‘you’ll need to do plenty of dancing to burn that off’’. If she can recall those words 10 years later, it means more than nothing. No single thing brings on an eating disorder but why do people talk that way?
A friend spent years at a Christian school of the creationist, conservative kind. In maths they learned about God’s magic numbers. In science they learnt that the world was created in seven days. The girls were told they should be submissive to the boys.
Just in time, the school fell apart and my friend moved to a regular high school. Capable, caring teachers got her going. She passed School Certificate, she qualified for university. She wasn’t sure. The church had told her university was for boys, not girls; she didn’t think she was smart enough.
Her teacher heard she hadn’t applied, called her into her office one day: was she really not going? She told her she should, that she’d enjoy it. She sent her off with application forms and booklets, kept checking, kept asking.
Eventually my friend thought: Yes. Maybe she would go to Otago, far away. The teacher arranged it all for her, made sure the application was posted.
A few words can turn a life. Teachers do it every day. It’s beyond belief we don’t pay them well. No pay is enough to make Auckland truly affordable at the moment, but if we don’t pay them properly who ever will explain to our privileged youth what a real man does?
@DavidSlack