Usually I start with something a bit serious and as we work our way through, it gets stupid and stupider. Let’s flip that this week with one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.
No, it’s not the chilli ball tracky dacks incident.
Put a fork in him. He’s done.
Men get to an age where they need to get up at night to do a wee… a lot. I’m at that age. Combine the need every few hours with a lifetime relationship with bozo frenemies, Tony Insomnia and Kevin Anxiety, and nights for me can get annoying.
And because of the noise I make, it’s just as annoying for my family and the people who live below and above us.
Like one night, it was so late, it was the next night*, I was walking around illy nilly, finding my way to the toot and all of a sudden I heard my downstairs neighbour yell, WALKING!? WHO’S WALKING AT THIS TIME OF THE NIGHT? His comic timing was so good that I laughed so hard, I almost sharted.
Back to the fork.
I try so hard to be quiet but Kevin Anxiety makes this tricky. There are a lot of things on my bedside table, asthma puffer, three types of headphones (AirPods for podcasts/books, corded apple for music and fancy brand corded for special music), watch, books, notepads, a Leatherman (if I wake up with the urge to carve a spoon), and a fork. Each of these ESSENTIAL accoutrements have their own ways of making noise.
Around 3am, my reoccurring nightmare about getting a bad seat at the grand final wakes me up. I wake up a lot like how these people 👇 did.
I’m awake. My back is itchy. I reach for the fork. That’s why it’s on my bedside table – I use it as a back scratcher. I shuffle my hand along the Tasmanian Blackwood table top quietly, oh so very quietly, not wake anyone up.
But I don’t have Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment’s deft pilfering skills.
God no.
I hit the fork awkwardly and it flips off the bedside table and IT LANDS ON A BELL. Why is there a bell on the floor? Because I have a 6yo and a 10yo, that’s why there’s a bell on the floor. DING!!!
But this is just the start of the stupidity.
I trudge off to the toilet for a 3am tactical wee. I sit down to calm old m8 anxiety down with a what’s-Trump-said-while-I’ve-been-sleeping-news scroll.
I have the fork. I have an itch on my back… so I attack.
I can’t believe I’m telling you all this.
Have a look how narrow the room your toilet is in. My dad told me that in Victoria the bathroom size standards were based on the width needed for the premier at the time to be able to read the day’s copy of The Argus. I refuse to look this up because being right all the time is boring and I want this fact I’ve loved for many years to be true.
Scratch your back now.
See where your elbow went?
Close to your side, huh.
I had a really itchy back so I went in hard to scratch.
My elbow bounces off that wall fast, and what happens next…
I STAB MYSELF HARD INTO MY EAR, HARD INTO MY HEAD.
"And there's an interesting statistic. The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body, for whatever reason. The doctors told me that and I said, 'Why is there so much blood?' They said it's the ears, they bleed more. So we learned something.” - Donald Trump
I already learned this the hard way, d1ckhead.
I pierced the inside of my ear and there was blood everywhere. I thought for a second that I had exposed my 🧠. I yelled as quietly as I could, OH NO, OW OW OW OW!
I was thinking ‘how do I explain this to the nurses in emergency?’ but luckily the pain and bleeding stopped after a couple of minutes. Back to bed, ‘what was that noise you were making?’ ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
First thing in the morning, I check out the wound. It was tiny like Trump’s. He was shot in the head. I stabbed myself in the ear with a fork.
Ridiculous.
* So many of Steven Wright’s jokes like this have made it into my daily conversation. I memorised his I Have A Pony LP word for word when I was ten.
Now let’s hear a duet from Prahran’s favourite old cobblers.
🎵 They say our love won't pay the rent, before it's earnt, our money's all been spent 🎵
🎵I guess that's so, we don't have a pot, but at least I'm sure of all the things we got 🎵
🎵 I got you babe 🎵
🎵 I got you babe 🎵
Thanks to friends about last week’s issue.
Last week’s story about calling out the 💩 bloke in the bar seemed to affect a lot of youse. Thank you to Mark, Lisa, Nina, Stremps, and Russell for your thoughtful comments, and Russ for your late night message about how your dad would deal with blokes like that.
I read yours Russ, up against gate 6 of the MCG just before my ride home late from post footy drinks at that same bar. I thought about it all the way home while listening to The Pogues. What would I do next time, I thought.
It didn’t take long to find out.
On the Sunday morning, my daughter’s under 10 soccer. Loud opposition coach all game. Not awful, but pretty bad. Towards the end of the game when his team was losing, he got louder and obnoxious. He swore.
After a week thinking about all calling this stuff out, I have the confidence not to hesitate, and walk over calmly to ask him to pipe down. It’s little girls he’s swearing at. He didn’t swear, he lies. Whatever. Just calm down. I walk away. He quietens.
Game ends and I tell our coach, a very high grade senior player, that her calm, warm vibe coaching is an inspiration.
She tells me that she has had so many coaches over the years, and knows one thing… that players rarely hear or understand what coaches bark at them during the game.
I look over to the other team. That loud coach is now hugging his child, one of the better players in their team.
He cares.
I hope he’ll take it on board and try to be a bit more calmer this weekend.
The highlight of the 2024 AFL season was making these cupcakes to celebrate Scott Pendlebury’s 400th game.
Despite my family’s cake decorating heritage, it’s the first time I’ve ever made cakes. I took them to the game and everything.
Better wrap it up now.
It’s 2:38am and I have an itchy back.
I snorted at the fork stuff. No one did it in my family (to my knowledge) but we were all in racquet sports and have freakish shoulder mobility. Weird flex.
Reading this at 5am, I stifled a lol and hurt my trachea. Might I suggest adding to your bedside paraphernalia a hospital pee bottle? You can get some designer ones that are almost sculptural. A sort of Bauhaus horn of cornucopia.
Also my dad was a fork back-scratcher. This story triggered upsetting memories of him diving into the cutlery drawer for relief then just putting it back, horrifying anyone unfortunate enough to witness it. Which fork did you use? Remove it immediately! Wash it! We don’t want your back germs, Dad! We know you can’t reach it (as evidenced by needing a fork) so it CANT BE CLEAN!’