Cec and Bug, ranting on: Ellaborating on the 'quick' update

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Ellaborating on the 'quick' update

As going to a gym class (couldn't go to the 30 minute spin as all the bikes were booked so went to the hour long step class at the uni gym for the first time where I had to do stupid things like 'dancey move' and 'shoulder shimmy' instead of the more hardcore things the gym instructor at the YMCA where I usually go make you do and I wasn't even absolutely bloody exhausted the way I usually am) has made me so very hungry I am just finishing off a very delicious, slightly mushy snickers bar (mmmm, just the right squishiness), mushy because it's such a gorgeous warm spring day here, beaming sun and blue sky with a few token fluffy white clouds. Do you perhaps see WHY I need to go to the gym quite so often? I'm just using the gym-has-made-me-hungry as justification. If it wasn't that excuse, I would have probably used need-brain-energy-for-session-with-supervisor-at-3pm.

Bug was feeling sick yesterday (I couldn't have infected her with my germs as I hadn't seen her in at least 10 days before I started vomiting) so I hope she's feeling better by tomorrow - it's supposed to be 26 degrees and she luuuuuurrrrrves hot weather.

Back to the night of the law ball - I am beginning to realise how much living and growing up in the Northern Suburbs, working at the local fruit market where the other girls used to ask me when I was going to have a baby (as 22 is pretty old not to have started, to them), and going to the local Catholic school (it wasn't a state-run school, it's a private school in that my parents had to pay a couple of thousand a year for me to go there, but it still attracted a hell-bogan crowd in high school where they didn't just take mainly Catholic kids the way they used to in primary school, they take anyone) has influenced my behaviour and the way I think. I like to think that I'm not a bogan. No, I KNOW I'm not. Quite well-spoken (now I don't work at the fruitmarket, where I used to adopt the local accent on purpose to fit in), don't swear badly except when under extreme provocation, think that everyone should stay at school until they're 18 unless they get an actual job, and that these bogans need to stop living off the dole and child welfare payments and stop having so many damn kids so damn young.

But I do things and think that they are perfectly acceptable that the work girls don't. Except Felicity, who went to a state school. For example, when that undercover police car almost crashed into the side of us last month I was the only one whose automatic reaction was to give them 'the finger'. Because that to me is the only/best reaction to show your extreme displeasure at a very reckless driver who has almost caused a serious accident.

And when we left the fancy hotel where the law ball was held, there were no taxis. My friends and I had raced out, and as there were no taxis I called for one on my mobile. In the meantime, other people had come out and stood waiting as well. One taxi arrived and instead of driving right up to the entrance, it stopped by the first group of people it saw who had come out another entrance and were waiting 20 metres away, and these people got in and drove off. That to me is very bad manners. We had all been at the same function, and those people knew that they hadn't been waiting first. I was quite annoyed. I called the taxi company again and told them to send lots of taxis. It had now started to rain, and it was quite windy. A group of people who'd come out the front just after us walked down to the roadside and waited for a taxi down there, one arrived and it took them. That was okay, they'd only been out the front about 10 seconds after us. Then my friends and I went and stood at the end of the covered walkway that leads up to the hotel, by the roadside. Another taxi approached, and a group of people came running down to the road and waved it down and got in it about 30 metres up the road from us. I was furious. As they started to get in I ran up to the taxi, screeching like a mad woman about how rude they were and lacking in manners, and how I would've expected more from law students, and god I have no idea what else and I dread to think. We got the next taxi. I most fortitiously had packed my umbrella in my handbag (so don't ask) and planted myself on the footpath in the rain and wind, with my bright yellow umbrella while my friends huddled under the covered walkway, and we got the next one. But noone else had hurled abuse directly into taxi windows. It was me, the girl from the northern suburbs.

Then we were waiting in a very long line in the rain in our little evening dressers at the new nightclub. Again everyone was very thankful I had packed the umbrella as five of us managed to huddle under it. Carmen and two of her other friends we had attended the ball with were standing in the line at least 35 people ahead of us, having got into a taxi before the function actually ended (in order to be sure of getting one). After waiting 20 minutes with very little progress, Carmen came running (as well as you can in high heels in the rain on a slope) down to the rest of us, saying 'Nova was just punched in the face. This girl just turned around and punched her in the face. For no reason. She's got a fat lip.' Carmen went back up to Nova and her other friend Sam, and in a few minutes they all came back to us, Nova smiling bravely with a tearstained face and waterey eyes, and a fat lip. Some bogan girl had turned around and punched her in the face and then run off down the road. She still doesn't know why. We all left the club in disgust. The bouncers hadn't even let Nova into the club, offered her an icepack, or a drink of water. In fact they hadn't given a stuff. I don't care if they are the hot new club in town, a little bit of customer care would be nice.

I was relaying this story to my eldest brother (he's 16) and a couple of his friends and his first reaction was 'did you smack her one?' (the girl who smacked Nova, that is) and when I said 'no', he wanted to know why and thought it was pretty poor that I hadn't. When I explained that it was all over and done with before I even knew about it, the bogan Nova-basher gone, he still thought it was a weak excuse for not sticking up for my friend. This got me thinking. If I had been there, what would my first reaction have been? And I know without a doubt that I would have taken a swing back at the girl, pushed her into the wall, anything really. It's an automatic reaction drilled into me due to my upbringing. You stick up for your friends and yourself physically if you have to. My dad has taught us this well. To the point of my younger brother (he's 15, was 14 when this happened) breaking his hand and having to have surgery on it earlier this year for wading into a fight with some totally random bogans who started attacking his friend. Of course, my automatic 'bash the crap out of the other girl' may not be the wisest move, being that I'm only 5'2 and was on the night wearing damn high heels. But I would have expected every other girl there with me to wade into the fight, and as there was 8 of us, I'm pretty sure we would have bested the other girl, and whoever the else she was with. But then, out of the 8 of us, I think only Felicity would be there with me, pulling hair and bitch-slapping.

I am actually shocked that Carmen (at least 5'9, size 14) let some girl smack her very good friend Nova in the face and stood by and did nothing. And her friend Sam, who is a damn tall, not fat in the least but a sporty, powerful looking girl, did bugger all either. Am I totally betraying my humble northern-suburbs outlook on life here, or is anyone else shocked that Carmen and Sam stood by and did nothing? Is that the right thing to do? What 'nice, well-bought-up girls do? Nothing? Am I in actual fact a total and utter bogan in disguise?

posted by Cecilia @ 2:41 pm

3 Rantings:

At 2:23 am, Anonymous said…

was it a good night, other than those bad parts mentioned?

its similar where i live, people seem to think youre an old spinster if you havent got kids hanging off every limb by the time youre out of your teens.

its getting cole here in the mornings, no melting snickers...

where IS bug anyway?- not that i dont enjoy reading your stuff!
At 2:05 pm, Cecilia said…

Bug hasn't wanted to write for ages because bad things happened with evil man and bad things kind of took over her life. I'm just going to have to go out with her one night and have so much fun that she is FORCED to post about her fun night. Plus I don't think she can blog at the job she now has, whereas at her old job she used to have nothing to do often.
At 12:34 am, Anonymous said…

oh, thats rubbish, i hope shes ok. say hello to her from me, if thats not really pathetic!

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