(no subject)
i was originally going to do marla's twenty five weird things meme, but one thing let to another and pretty soon i was writing whole paragraphs, so i cut it down to ten.
TEN STORIES, TEN MEMORIES
when i was twelve i was picked out of the crowd at the circus and invited to take part in a stunt. what i had to do was, after being fitted with a leather harness (that the ringmaster assured me was 'brand new' because the old one broke last week) which was tied to a rope, hop on a horse that was then made to gallop in a tight circle and after we had gathered some momentum was lifted up in the air and swung around in wide fast circles about ten metres above the ground. it was so much fun, and afterwards i got free popcorn and a free soft drink.
things i have ridden/been passenger in include helicopters, horse and buggies, camels, pigs, cows, horses with saddles which i don't like and horses bareback which i'm much more comfortable with, tractors, roadbikes and dirtbikes and scooters, a souped up kimbi van with a porsche engine, tinnies, tugboats, ferries, cars, semi-trailers, mini-buses, buses, double-decker buses, trains, tilt-trains, bicycles, pogo-sticks, skateboards, rollerblades, rollerskates, a banana board and a bamboo raft. when my grandfather had a stroke and the rescue helicopter came to transfer him to hospital, the pilots let me sit in the pilots seat and play around with the throttle. the blades were still spinning during this, so they get get straight up into the air when my grandfather was loaded.
once in year eight i was walking down to my agricultural studies farm with the teacher and the rest of the class when i noticed that the large breeding sow wasn't moving and i told the teacher that it was dead. he said no, we'd just had the vet down and he'd administered anaesthetic to do something or another and that it was just sedated, but i pointed out that even so it probably should be breathing if it was still alive. when the rest of the class caught on to what was happening the teacher had to check and of course i was right.
when i was seven or eight and out on the farm, i was climbing aorund the cattleyards by myself when i jumped down off of a wooden beam and almost trod on a snake. being a country kid i've back away rather hastily and taken off at a sprint towards the farmhouse, calling out snake like a madman, and my mum and dad and aunt and uncle and grandpa and grandma have come pouring out of the kitchen door grabbing shovels and the a bucket, until two mintues later that i let it slip that it was only a green snake, which are perfectly harmless, that made me look like a right goose.
i was born with a serious heart condition. both of the major arteries leading to and from my heart were actually connected up to the wrong chambers, aortas, which meant that i was born blue and basically could not breathe. the medical term is transposition of the great arteries, i think. after two or three operations when i was under a year old, where they went in and made small holes in the walls between the two chambers of my heart, so i could breathe better, when i was thirteen months old i had a very major and serious heart operation called a "switch" heart op, where they went in and cut and sowed and as well widened the arteries with metal something or others and really made it possible for me to live something close to a normal life. i still had three and six monthly check-ups for the first ten years or so which gradually spaced out to being a year between visits, and i absolutely would not go outside without a shirt on because of the huge fucking scar that was there that i was very ashamed of, but again, almost a normal life, you know. i was extremely lucky. at that time, i was the first baby and the youngest person in the world to undergo and survive that kind of op.
out the front of the farm and down by the bridge there was a small creek/duck pond that us boys would swim in when we were kids. the water was probably rancid, full of cowshit from when they'd come down to get a drink and all kinds of crap from all of the ducks and geese that frequented the place, but there was a large fallen eucalyptus tree that had fallen over in a great storm that branched out right into the muck so of course being boys we were enthralled.
when i was fifteen i was living with my father and some blonde, big breasted twat-girlfriend of his that owned horses, and who insisted on bringing them up from her parents property despite the fact we had nowhere to put them. as such, we were forced to pin them in electric fences which we had to shift every night because theyre were three of them, and one of them a clydesdale at that. long story short, one day it had been pissing down rain and we'd gone day and shifted them earlier in the day, but because the rain would short the fences out we left them unattached to the power supply. we went back home, but a few hours later got a call that one of them was out and wandering by the roadside. we've got there and she's rounded the bastard up, and i've gone to lift the fence to let her lead him back in, only to find out that the same kind person who'd given us a call had attached the leads to the battery and that the fence was live, and being that i was soaking wet and the fence was wet as well i've gotten one hell of a shock from it, and it wasn't until several hours of numbness later that i was able to move my arm under its own motor again.
by the time i was twelve, i had gone to eleven primary schools and had thirteen or fourteen different sets of parents ie sole parents and various wives and husbands and partners along the way. and that's not including the two weeks i spent in a foster home/orphanage as a 'holiday' as the parents were sorting out custody arrangements.
i had my last heart operation when i was thirteen, and was pretty much scared shitless throught the whole thing, though i was determined not to show it. i remember throwing a tantrum when they went to place me in the adults ward because of bed shortages, and the doctors, one who had overseen my case since birth, had to pull a few strings to get me into the kids ward. i remember being calm all the way through the pre op rituals ie fasting and listening to the doctors explaining what they'd be doing, but as soon as they started wheeling me through the wards towards theatre i started jumping around on the bed and screaming out that the doctors were going to ruin my lives, that i was going to die. for some reason, even thought it occurred to me very strongly to get off the bed and run, i decided not to. when the doctors started to operate by making an incision between my groin and my upper thigh, i was still awake, and could feel them operating, thought i wasn't in any pain. i fell unconscious soon after, and spent a week or so in the intensive care ward afterwards. learning how to breath again was the hardest thing, actually getting some volume back into my breathing, it was phenomonally hard.
on the farm, one of the cows was sick, falling down all the time and not able to get back up on to its feet. this was after poppy had died, so my father took a rifle out to the paddock and shot it between the eyes, then backed up the tractor and tied a chain around its neck so we could drag it out into the back paddock. unfortunately, and despite the bullet fired point plank to the head, the cow wasn't dead, and the whole time we were dragging it over hills and through the long grass i was standing on the back of the tractor and watching this cow kicking its legs and licking its mouth and trying to get back to its feet again. i was a farm kid so i knew it was necessary but it was still strange and sad to watch. i was thirteen i think.
TEN STORIES, TEN MEMORIES
when i was twelve i was picked out of the crowd at the circus and invited to take part in a stunt. what i had to do was, after being fitted with a leather harness (that the ringmaster assured me was 'brand new' because the old one broke last week) which was tied to a rope, hop on a horse that was then made to gallop in a tight circle and after we had gathered some momentum was lifted up in the air and swung around in wide fast circles about ten metres above the ground. it was so much fun, and afterwards i got free popcorn and a free soft drink.
things i have ridden/been passenger in include helicopters, horse and buggies, camels, pigs, cows, horses with saddles which i don't like and horses bareback which i'm much more comfortable with, tractors, roadbikes and dirtbikes and scooters, a souped up kimbi van with a porsche engine, tinnies, tugboats, ferries, cars, semi-trailers, mini-buses, buses, double-decker buses, trains, tilt-trains, bicycles, pogo-sticks, skateboards, rollerblades, rollerskates, a banana board and a bamboo raft. when my grandfather had a stroke and the rescue helicopter came to transfer him to hospital, the pilots let me sit in the pilots seat and play around with the throttle. the blades were still spinning during this, so they get get straight up into the air when my grandfather was loaded.
once in year eight i was walking down to my agricultural studies farm with the teacher and the rest of the class when i noticed that the large breeding sow wasn't moving and i told the teacher that it was dead. he said no, we'd just had the vet down and he'd administered anaesthetic to do something or another and that it was just sedated, but i pointed out that even so it probably should be breathing if it was still alive. when the rest of the class caught on to what was happening the teacher had to check and of course i was right.
when i was seven or eight and out on the farm, i was climbing aorund the cattleyards by myself when i jumped down off of a wooden beam and almost trod on a snake. being a country kid i've back away rather hastily and taken off at a sprint towards the farmhouse, calling out snake like a madman, and my mum and dad and aunt and uncle and grandpa and grandma have come pouring out of the kitchen door grabbing shovels and the a bucket, until two mintues later that i let it slip that it was only a green snake, which are perfectly harmless, that made me look like a right goose.
i was born with a serious heart condition. both of the major arteries leading to and from my heart were actually connected up to the wrong chambers, aortas, which meant that i was born blue and basically could not breathe. the medical term is transposition of the great arteries, i think. after two or three operations when i was under a year old, where they went in and made small holes in the walls between the two chambers of my heart, so i could breathe better, when i was thirteen months old i had a very major and serious heart operation called a "switch" heart op, where they went in and cut and sowed and as well widened the arteries with metal something or others and really made it possible for me to live something close to a normal life. i still had three and six monthly check-ups for the first ten years or so which gradually spaced out to being a year between visits, and i absolutely would not go outside without a shirt on because of the huge fucking scar that was there that i was very ashamed of, but again, almost a normal life, you know. i was extremely lucky. at that time, i was the first baby and the youngest person in the world to undergo and survive that kind of op.
out the front of the farm and down by the bridge there was a small creek/duck pond that us boys would swim in when we were kids. the water was probably rancid, full of cowshit from when they'd come down to get a drink and all kinds of crap from all of the ducks and geese that frequented the place, but there was a large fallen eucalyptus tree that had fallen over in a great storm that branched out right into the muck so of course being boys we were enthralled.
when i was fifteen i was living with my father and some blonde, big breasted twat-girlfriend of his that owned horses, and who insisted on bringing them up from her parents property despite the fact we had nowhere to put them. as such, we were forced to pin them in electric fences which we had to shift every night because theyre were three of them, and one of them a clydesdale at that. long story short, one day it had been pissing down rain and we'd gone day and shifted them earlier in the day, but because the rain would short the fences out we left them unattached to the power supply. we went back home, but a few hours later got a call that one of them was out and wandering by the roadside. we've got there and she's rounded the bastard up, and i've gone to lift the fence to let her lead him back in, only to find out that the same kind person who'd given us a call had attached the leads to the battery and that the fence was live, and being that i was soaking wet and the fence was wet as well i've gotten one hell of a shock from it, and it wasn't until several hours of numbness later that i was able to move my arm under its own motor again.
by the time i was twelve, i had gone to eleven primary schools and had thirteen or fourteen different sets of parents ie sole parents and various wives and husbands and partners along the way. and that's not including the two weeks i spent in a foster home/orphanage as a 'holiday' as the parents were sorting out custody arrangements.
i had my last heart operation when i was thirteen, and was pretty much scared shitless throught the whole thing, though i was determined not to show it. i remember throwing a tantrum when they went to place me in the adults ward because of bed shortages, and the doctors, one who had overseen my case since birth, had to pull a few strings to get me into the kids ward. i remember being calm all the way through the pre op rituals ie fasting and listening to the doctors explaining what they'd be doing, but as soon as they started wheeling me through the wards towards theatre i started jumping around on the bed and screaming out that the doctors were going to ruin my lives, that i was going to die. for some reason, even thought it occurred to me very strongly to get off the bed and run, i decided not to. when the doctors started to operate by making an incision between my groin and my upper thigh, i was still awake, and could feel them operating, thought i wasn't in any pain. i fell unconscious soon after, and spent a week or so in the intensive care ward afterwards. learning how to breath again was the hardest thing, actually getting some volume back into my breathing, it was phenomonally hard.
on the farm, one of the cows was sick, falling down all the time and not able to get back up on to its feet. this was after poppy had died, so my father took a rifle out to the paddock and shot it between the eyes, then backed up the tractor and tied a chain around its neck so we could drag it out into the back paddock. unfortunately, and despite the bullet fired point plank to the head, the cow wasn't dead, and the whole time we were dragging it over hills and through the long grass i was standing on the back of the tractor and watching this cow kicking its legs and licking its mouth and trying to get back to its feet again. i was a farm kid so i knew it was necessary but it was still strange and sad to watch. i was thirteen i think.