Primary School Confidential (5 page)

THE PRIDE OF ERIN

Of all the things I learned in primary school, the one thing I remember most clearly to this day is how to dance the Pride of Erin. I cannot recall the capital of Peru, and I still can't work out the symbols for ‘less than' and ‘more than', but if you need to know the steps to the Pride of Erin—or even the Heel and Toe Polka, for that matter—I'm your gal.

Dancing lessons at school. Do you know that they were actually part of the curriculum back then? Depending on your vintage, you may have learnt anything from the Bullockies Ball to the Jubilee Jig, the Prince of Wales Schottische to the Waterfall Waltz.

Our dancing lesson, if memory serves me correct (and it does seem to favour days of yore), was on a Thursday afternoon. We all filed into the hall, with the boys lined up on one side and the girls on the other. It was like a Mexican stand-off.

The teacher would then ask the boys to choose a partner. (CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT DOES TO A GIRL WITH COKE-BOTTLE GLASSES
AND TEETH THAT PROTRUDE FROM HER MOUTH AT A NINETY-DEGREE ANGLE?) All the boys would rush to the pretty girls and grab them by the hand. And I stood there, like a lonely sausage in the meat display window of a butcher's shop at the end of the day.

So I ended up dancing with the strange girl who wouldn't talk to anyone, but just picked at her scabs and ate them.

Thankfully, the Pride of Erin was a progressive dance, and I got to have actual physical contact with the male species. Which was all very well and good until you ended up dancing with the cool, cute boy who refused to touch you because someone spread a rumour that you had warts.

You then moved on to Stanley, whom you refused to touch because back in kindergarten he shat his pants and sat in it all day and was referred to as Stinky Stanley ever since. Oh, the politics of progressive dance!

Then, after all the formal dancing, the teachers let you go apeshit by blaring ‘Nutbush City Limits', which was when your creativity could finally be unleashed—but not really, as you had to do the correct moves or were made to go and sit on the stage, alone, like a renegade disco diva who had lost her way.

But disco was an exotic byway; the main game was the good old Aussie bush dance, and in the 1980s our bible was
The Bushwhackers Band Dance Book
. It was from this much-loved and well-thumbed resource that Mr Ellis or Mr Lewis taught us how to dance the Waves of Bondi. Looking back on that experience, it must have been as fun for them as it is to try to bathe a cat. Apparently, when the dance is done correctly, it resembles waves crashing onto Bondi Beach.

Apparently.

It was somewhat creepy to watch your teacher dance with Mrs Hunt on the stage, pleading with you to watch on and learn each little step. The truth of the fact was that we thought these dances were daggy, and we would much rather learn the steps to ‘Thriller'.

My fondness for the art of dance saw me and my two best friends, Penny and Audra, start our own little dance trio. We were awfully exclusive and practised a lot each afternoon after school.

There were two stand-out numbers that we concentrated on. The first was a mysterious and exotic song and dance performed to the tune of ‘Magic', sung by Olivia Newton-John in the wonderful movie
Xanadu
.

Penny's mum, Mrs Riley, was very encouraging, and she proved to be quite nifty with a sewing machine. For this dance, we wore pink and purple dresses that had handkerchief hems—the glamour! They looked very floaty and dramatic when we held the bottoms of our dresses and swirled suggestively around the stage.

We debuted our act at the school's quarterly talent quest, and came a respectable second place behind the boy who did the Frank Carpenter impersonation. (However, the principal did tell us that our performance was a little too adult.) Buoyed by our success, we immediately began work on a new number in preparation for the following term's quest.

‘Walking on Sunshine' by Katrina and the Waves had just been released. It was upbeat, catchy and definitely less creepy than ‘Magic'. Mrs Riley made us costumes again, and they too were much less controversial. We wore sunny yellow halterneck dresses with sensible knee-length hems.

We were positively giddy with excitement at the prospect of winning the school talent quest and, if the reaction of the enraptured crowd was anything to go by, our victory was assured.

But while we'd been feverishly rehearsing our dance number, a rival had been equally busy at the piano. Susie Jarski took to the stage and stole the limelight, playing Beethoven's ‘Für Elise' without a single mistake.

And so, to the victor went the spoils. Susie won a $2 voucher to the canteen. (It was probably for the best, as it would have been hard to split that two bucks between three people. Although, I suppose we could have bought 200 carob buds and divvied them up that way . . .)

But the thing was, for all the effort we put into our dance trio—the time, the rehearsals, the choreography, the costume fittings, the drama, the disagreements about who got to be in the middle—it was never about the prize. We just wanted to be known throughout the school as talented.

Through all my primary school years—and I am ready to admit this now—I never won a thing. Oh, sure, I got a merit award here and there, but that doesn't really count. (Insider secret: everyone in the class has to get one over the course of the year; it is an unwritten rule.)

But if I never won, there was a time when I came second—and it was fucking marvellous.

I was in Year 1, and Easter was approaching—and with it the annual hat parade. Most of my schoolmates had stay-at-home mums who probably relished the chance to pit their creative skills against each other. But my mother was time-poor. She was working
her ring off trying to build her new business, Christine Murphy's Indoor Plant Hire. Basically she was, and still is, excellent with plants, and she established the first indoor plant-hire business in Australia. For a couple of dollars a week, she would supply and tend to plants in businesses and restaurants.

I knew Mum didn't have the time to create a fancy hat for the parade but, undeterred, I entered the ‘I Made It Myself' category, designed for those children who would be responsible for making their own bonnets.

Looking around our house, it was fairly evident that we were not a crafty family. We had no magical cupboard full of pipe cleaners, special tape and glue. We had a few textas and that was about it. So I had to be quite experimental. I waited patiently until the pink ice-cream was finally eaten from the Neopolitan ice-cream selection, and then I swiped the plastic container. I covered it in tin foil, then pasted on a few hand-drawn pictures of rabbits.

Stick a fork in me . . . I was DONE.

The big day arrived and I proudly wore my hat to school. I was surprised to find that many of the other kids weren't wearing hats. When I asked why, they explained that their mothers were bringing them in at recess because they were too intricate and fragile to be used as everyday wear.

After recess the parade began, and to give credit where it is due, the mothers at North Richmond Public School that year had completely outdone themselves. Parading around the grass were wonderful examples of just what you can do with a glue gun.

Mine was the last category to be called on. Me and another boy walked around for a little bit, then he was given a blue ribbon and I was given a red one.

Sweet rapturous joy flooded through me. I was a winner! And I did it myself!

It totally made up for the fact that, as it turned out later, I couldn't dance for shit.

4

PRETTY IN FLUORO PINK

Like most girls of my age, my first interest in fashion and appearance can be traced back to one person: Madonna.

When she burst onto the world stage in the early 1980s, she redefined fashion for me. Want to wear some bike pants under a miniskirt with a ripped t-shirt over another ripped t-shirt under a mesh singlet? Be my guest. Better still, pile on every single bracelet and bangle in your house and you were really good to go. Even if it was just a trip to Coles with your mum to do the grocery shopping, you were going to rock those aisles.

There was just one problem: my parents had no intention of allowing their pre-teen daughter to parade around town dressed like some sort of hooker. And so I was an oppressed child stuck in sensible shorts and a t-shirt with a picture of a pony on it.

Meanwhile, my sister, who was three years older and worked after school at Marie's Record Magic, earned her own money
and was able to spend it as she pleased. She bought super-cool things like blue eyeliner, blue eyeshadow, frosted pink lipstick and mesh singlets. She was a bitch about sharing, too. Not to worry. As soon as she left the house to do whatever horrendous teenage girls do (i.e. smoke cigarettes in the park with the other juvenile delinquents), I would make a beeline straight for her room.

Armed with the latest issue of
Smash Hits
for reference, I would use all of my sister's makeup to emulate either Madonna or Cyndi Lauper, another style icon of mine. And I didn't bother with subtlety, no way. I stacked it on. I'd start with two big swipes of hot pink blush that ran from the corners of my mouth, up and over my cheekbones to end at my earlobes. My eyes were lined with electric-blue pencil while the lids were liberally dusted with a matching powder and my eyelashes caked in mascara in the same shade. To counterbalance the look, I painted my lips with Revlon's Pink in the Afternoon, a shimmery pale pink that I believe is still available today.

Next it was time for hair and wardrobe. I'd tip my head upside down and tease my hair until it resembled a halo around my head. Clipped to my ears were a pair of huge white hoops. My sister had an impressive wardrobe, and I would put on basically everything she owned, for layering was de rigueur. Finally, with my feet swimming around in her Doc Martens, the concert would commence.

I used my pink tape deck to record my favourite songs from the American Top 40. I would grab my hairbrush, hit play, and imagine myself standing on a stage, singing and dancing in front of thousands of screaming fans.

Because I was a professional, there was light and shade to my performance. I might start out with Irene Cara's ‘Flashdance . . . What a Feeling', which was always a crowd pleaser. Then I'd slow things with a heart-felt rendition of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart'. I'd then change the tempo with a series of upbeat numbers like ‘Beat It', ‘Holiday' and ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun' until, finally, I was discovered. Not by a recording agent keen to listen to my demo, but by my sister. And she was not in the mood for fun.

Down the stairs I'd race, her hot on my heels. If I was lucky, I'd make it to wherever my mother was and thus be saved. If I was unlucky, I'd cop a generous beating and a spray of language so foul it would have made a bikie blush.