Spreading the Honey

Preface: Needing a thing

We humans are a complex lot. Happiness and contentment are the best any of us can strive for, and if we turn out happy with our lot and content in ourselves, it’s job a well done.

I’ve found that one part of achieving this is having what I call a thing: something outside your normal routine that provides a point of difference or contrast in your days and in your life. Whoever said variety is the spice of life was a wise person.

This past year, my thing was the decision to fly off to the Cook Islands for a period, to rejuvenate and motivate myself by tapping out the stories in this volume, which are the stories of my life.

Most of us don’t need a thing while we are extremely busy. But if your children are no longer children and your work is no longer your focus through necessity, there’s a void in your time that has to be filled. I needed something different to concentrate on.

This thing is a project for my children and their children, a document that expresses all my views and beliefs and can give them an insight into who their father is. I am particularly pleased that both my parents are still with me and will be able to read this chronicle of my life.

My thing is arguably an act of selfishness, in that it is all about me. Here, I share myself through my stories, and tell my tales my way, to my satisfaction. No doubt there are elements that some might disapprove of, if they recognise a reference to themselves and find it not to their liking. They might consider that such information should have remained private. To these people I say, as I did when I was a child with no filter and as I still do as a middle-aged man telling it like it is—too bad.

I hope you find some amusement in the pages that follow. I’ve chuckled as I wrote down what I remembered, and at the end of this journey I feel privileged and fortunate to have had such a wonderful life. Hopefully, that life is only halfway through. Yet I feel the time is right to tell my story so far: I doubt age would in any way improve my retelling of events. In addition to humour, I hope you also find this read sprinkled with just a little wisdom that may be helpful in some situation or circumstance.

I can highly recommend reflecting on what’s transpired in your life, as I have done. Other people who have felt the same way I did and gone in pursuit of their own things will have started travelling the world, playing golf, or riding a bicycle—but for me this project was just right, and has been highly rewarding.

While writing this book, I sat in villas in the Pacific, by some beautiful beaches, and tapped away feeling good, drawing out gratitude for a fortunate life thus far. After all that reflection, I still don’t know what my next thing will be. I know I’ll soon need one, though, and I am excited about the prospect of discovering what it is.

For now, please enjoy this thing.

—Doug David, March 2015

Childhood

Primary school

I began primary school in 1969 as a well-mannered but relatively dim boy with dead straight hair. The beauty of being a slow learner was that I was relatively oblivious to what was going on around me. So, notwithstanding my poor academic achievements, I was happy and content. Until grade four, I attended a local Catholic convent school on Sydney’s North Shore. Here are some of the highlights.

Kindergarten

I have two lasting memories of kindergarten. The first was a pretty brunette classmate I yearned to be near and whose name and image I can still vividly recall nearly half a century later. The other was watching the moon landing.

My kindy teacher was a Brigidine nun who adopted the name of a Jesuit saint. Her name was Sister Loyola, and she must be a hundred and twenty years old by now. The Brigidine Sisters are an Irish order, and this teacher seemed genuinely delighted when meeting a child with an Irish surname such as mine. Unlike the mean old Penguin who taught me the following year (see Left-handed Chopsticks), she was a kind woman.

I remember this good sister sitting my class in front of the television and telling us all that the next moment would change our lives forever. I wasn’t really that interested in what was going on, though, as the TV picture was very fuzzy and difficult to decipher. It didn’t seem that much of a big deal to me.

Twenty-four years later, when my firstborn child started kindergarten, it felt like a much bigger deal to me. Years later again, a classmate of hers that year would tell me he’d had a crush on this extremely intelligent, pretty girl, reminding me of my own childhood crush.

When I asked my little girl about her first day at school, she told me of another classmate, a boy later diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, who had asked each of his fellow new students if they would be his friends. If they said yes, he would hound them relentlessly; if they said no, he’d thump them. When my little darling was asked of her view on befriending this chap, she replied, I’ll tell you tomorrow, which seemed to satisfy the boy sufficiently that he moved on to the next child without further incident.

Years 1 and 2

Years 1 and 2 would be marred by a teacher I called the Penguin, who was memorable enough that you’ll hear more about her in other tales. She was far from my only antagonist, though: at school assembly one morning the principal asked me in front of the entire school if I wanted to be as big as my dad and still be in the second grade—her prediction for my later life if I didn’t pay attention. At the time, I totally misunderstood and thought she was somehow saying my father, though a grown man, should still be in the second grade, which I found most upsetting.

Concentration lapses at inappropriate times also bought me undone at another school assembly, when the head asked the student body to raise their hand if they understood. I promptly raised my hand, but I had misheard the instructions, which were to raise a hand if you didn’t understand. I was the only one who did.

Year 3

Year 3 was blissful, due largely to a young teacher with long, blonde hair, equally long legs and short dresses, as was the fashion of 1972. I met my year 3 teacher again years later, when her daughter was playing netball in the same team as my eldest daughter, and she said she recalled me being a sweet, quiet boy. In turn, I told how I recalled her, and her husband fondly agreed. Unfortunately, she passed away a few years later from cancer, which was very sad. I’m lucky to have such fond memories of her.

Another memory of year 3 was being teamed up with a small, skinny boy who I thought was very intelligent. We were given a science experiment to complete, and when we finished, the entire class got moved to the playground to watch the volcano this boy and I made ooze lava. In reality it was all him: at the time I had no idea how my partner in the assignment could construct such a marvel. Later in life, I watched him lose his thin figure and balloon into a replica image of Norm, the obese cartoon character at the centre of the government’s Life. Be in it. campaign to promote exercise in the late 1970s and early 1980s. You never know how life could turn, for any of us.

Year 4

In year 4, my last at the convent school, I was taught by a far less attractive lady than my year 3 teacher, an Englishwoman who would progressively eat an apple during the course of the day and, after each bite, place the partially eaten core inside a glass cabinet in the classroom.

I found this practice quite disgusting, given that the apple was completely brown by the day’s end. The heat of the Australian summer accelerated the process, as did being in a glass cabinet.

This same teacher would regularly ask for volunteers to wash her car at lunchtime, and while most of the class would eagerly raise their hands to be selected, I never once sought to do it.

With these things in mind, it was incredible to me that this same woman told my mother, at the parent–teacher interview that year, that she considered me to be mildly retarded—her words, not mine. I knew I was far from being the smartest kid in the school, and have acknowledged being a slow learner, even dim. But to be called mildly retarded? It certainly wasn’t me who gnawed on rotten fruit day in, day out. I went forth from year 4 and on to tertiary education and can safely claim to have been more commercially successful, and accomplished more in my chosen career, than any Pommy year 4 teacher with a beehive hairdo.

Hitting the wall

The expression hitting the wall is associated with the particular moment when you’ve partied just that little bit too long and too hard, the drink or drugs catch up with you, and the curtain is drawn on proceedings. I have never been one for a lot of drink or drugs, so I have rarely hit the wall, but I assume I did as an infant child. Parents use the same term quite differently, to describe when their overtired child finally gives up and falls asleep. In both scenarios, the outcome is the same.

My most important hitting-the-wall experience was a little different, and consisted of literally hitting a brick wall.

I was five years old. At that time, my paternal aunt and cousins lived nearby, and would often walk between our two houses so the kids could play together. At their place one day, while running races along their front lawn (ah, life was once so simple), I collided with the front brick wall that retained the front verandah of the house.

I had been racing my younger sister, and my competitive nature couldn’t have dealt with a loss. That determination ultimately saw me hurtling forward at such a speed that I managed to knock out all of my front teeth upon impact with the wall.

There was blood all over the lawn, and I can still recall my older cousin, as my aunt was dispatching him to tell my mother what had happened, insisting that I should be held responsible for cleaning up the mess. My aunt would always tell of hearing the sound of my collision from inside the house, and dreading what had transpired out on her front lawn.

My mother soon arrived in the car, and she and my aunt drove me to a dentist. On reflection, this seems quite pointless, as they were all baby teeth. I had cleanly knocked out six upper teeth across the front of my mouth, including both eye teeth. While I was off to the dentist, my siblings and cousins set about retrieving my teeth from the grass. They only ever found five, even though there were six vacant spaces in my mouth. The theory to this day is that I swallowed one of the teeth without realising.

I spent the better part of the next two years with no front teeth. Looking back at the photos, it seems very normal and even kind of cute, given my young age. I felt like the richest kid on the planet after receiving a ten-dollar note from the tooth fairy.

The only downside to the whole episode was that at fifteen I ended up having to wear braces. But unlike most kids, whose braces were wired up for two or three years depending on how messed up their teeth were, mine were only on for six months. My teeth needed only minor straightening as a result of having lost my guiding eye teeth years before I should have.

All in all, I’d say I was pretty lucky when I hit my wall. I’d be hard-pressed to find many others who could say the same.

The altar boy

I wish I were religious. It really can’t hurt, and whatever the staunchest atheists say, it’s got to be a huge comfort leaving this world with the peace of mind that comes from genuinely believing you’re going somewhere new and better. This alone makes me wish I were religious.

Some may say this is a selfish outlook, but let’s be honest—there are only two certainties in life—taxes and death, plus a bonus certainty that nobody has ever been able to share the experience of death after the fact. As I age, I crave faith; I expect it would deliver me contentment. It’s unfortunate that religion is administered by mortals who are as vulnerable and exposed as everyone else. In today’s world, mass media exposes the weaknesses in religious organisations, making the sell so much harder.

I didn’t always have to crave religion—I once had plenty of it. I was born into an extended religious family, all of whom were believers and regular church attendees, schooled by religious orders from kindergarten through to year 12. The indoctrination was expert, especially when I was a young fellow. Even today, I feel a tad nervous to be writing as I am and not taking the opportunity to spread the word of God. The Catholic education process involved receiving massive doses of guilt that, for me, still linger decades later.

So, knowing that one should never discuss politics or religion, I need to give this story some humour. I’ll tell you, then about my time as an altar boy. Altar-boying seems like it would be a dead industry by now, though for all I know it may be flourishing—I no longer attend church.

I became an altar boy just after receiving my first communion, which means I would have been about seven or eight years old. For this I dressed in a red and white frilly, layered, full-length garment, and assisted the priest during Mass. It’s probably a reflection of the times, but there always seemed to be more altar boys than were actually necessary. We would divvy up the tasks of holding the bible before the priest so he could read the Gospel, and would ring bells at certain times and perform other ceremonial duties that were all completely unnecessary.

There were a couple of issues with my performance on the altar that somewhat blighted my time in the service. The first was that I had a twitch of sorts, where my eyes would feel partially closed. To correct this feeling, I would try to force my eyes open, and in doing so, given the connections between various parts of my face, as part of doing this I would open my mouth as far as possible, too. The outcome of all of this is that I would sit on the altar, above a crowded congregation, regularly making my eyes and mouth gape open as though I were trying to imitate a goldfish. My parents would be in church, no doubt dismayed to see their boy on stage before their entire community, looking like a halfwit.

Aside from my facial excruciations, I also had a habit of filling the cruet (a jug that holds the wine before consecration) to the very top but only pouring a fraction into the chalice for the priest, so that after mass I could drink the leftover sacramental wine, which is sweet like sherry. This was working very well for me around the age of twelve, probably the only age that sweet fortified wines have actually been palatable to me, until my father pointed out that the congregation could see my silhouette as they headed to the car park after the service, through