There is an age somewhere in the middle of primary school where you’re not one of the little kids but you’re not one of the big kids either. High school is a long, long way over the horizon. The kids who go there are giants who travel along the footpath in a jostling scrum of legs and schoolbags with the knots of their ties dangling in the middle of their chests and the hems of their skirts so high you can see what colour undies they’re wearing. But high school is a lifetime away when you’re in the middle of primary.
In the middle of primary, my Mum tied a twenty-cent coin in a handkerchief to make sure I didn’t lose it in case I needed to ring home. Somedays, if she was in a really good mood, she would let me blow it at the canteen. Crates of bottled milk were stored outside the canteen where they gently warmed in the morning sun so that by little lunch they released a sour smell when I peeled back the foil top. Happy days were when I found five cents in the playground and bought a banana paddle-pop at the canteen and thought this was the best day ever.
In the middle of primary, no one asks you to do anything special. It’s the big kids who get to run errands for the teacher. The big kids have swimming carnivals and go on overnight school excursions where they share rooms with their best friends and smuggle in lollies and giggle until they fall fast asleep. They get picked first for the school play or solo in the choir or the footy or netball teams because the teachers feel sorry for the big kids. Soon they’ll be off to high school with their dangly ties and short skirts, tumbling along the footpath in a tangle of arms and legs. Soon they’ll be the littlest of the big kids, so right now, when they are the biggest, this is as good as it is ever going to get.
When you’re in the middle of primary, most of the time, everyone kind of ignores you. Depending on the sort of kid you are, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to be a little kid and have Mum or Dad or the teacher treat you like you still need looking after. But sometimes it’s not. Which is kind of the long way around of explaining why I used to carry a spare pair of undies in my schoolbag.
It’s important for you to know what kind of schoolbag we’re dealing with here. See, we used to actually take suitcases to school rather than backpacks. Imagine rectangles of hard, brown cardboard with a lid that opened. We had desks with lids that opened too, where you kept your colouring-in pencils and scissors and stuff instead of a tote tray. They were made of wood and were etched with love hearts filled with intriguing initials of the kids who came before you. There was a round hole in the right-hand corner where kids from even longer ago used to put their bottles of ink in the inkwell, which is also how I ended up being stabbed with a sharpened pencil, but that belongs to a different story. Let’s stick with understanding how the schoolbags worked because, like I said, it’s important.
Everyone had these rectangles of hard brown cardboard with their name and home phone number written inside them in black texta. Some of the luckier kids had peeling stickers of butterflies and rainbows and stuff stuck on the outside because their mums let them. But all of these cases had two catches either side of a curved handle that made the school case swing and bang against your knees when you walked. Now I think back on it, they were quite big when all you had to carry was your little and big lunch.
See, we drank from the bubblers so we didn’t need water bottles. We didn’t even know about no-hat-no-play or sunscreen. We tied our school jumpers around our waists, so we didn’t need a bag for them either. Once in a while, we might shove in a note from the teacher or take out a rolled-up raincoat if it was wet. But mainly they were a place to keep white bread sandwiches with soggy tomato and cheese or peanut butter or baked beans, the apple with a bruise on it or the orange with the hole in it because Mum had cut out a neat round circle with her thumbnail to make it easier to peel. Maybe, if you were really lucky, there was a slice of sponge cake filled with jam and that delicious fake cream leftover from a weekend birthday party. But in among the brown paper bags of little and big lunch, there was always a spare pair of emergency underpants.
Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t still wet the bed or anything. I don’t think. But Mum always made me carry a spare pair of undies Just In Case. They were big white ones with little blue flowers on them. How can I remember that after all these years? Am I sure they weren’t striped or that the flowers were pink not blue? Oh, I’m sure all right. That kind of detail never leaves you, not when you’ve been scarred for life.
The other important bit of the story is that we moved house when I was in the middle of primary school. Instead of a short walk home every day, now I had to catch the bus to and from school. When the bell rang (and it was a proper bell too, enormous and made of brass and only the teachers and the big kids were ever allowed to ring it) we had to run across the road to our bus stop. Here was where all the blue buses lined up and you double-checked the number on the yellow sign before you hopped on and raced to a window seat.
Now you’ve got the picture. The scene is set, as they say. So this day, I am running for the bus. Not because I want the window seat but because I’m late! The bus is there; engine running and dirty grey smoke blurting out its back end. Any moment now it will take off and leave me behind and then how will I get home because I don’t know how to catch a proper bus, just the school bus. And I spent my twenty-cent piece at the canteen because Mum said I could, so I don’t even have a way to pay a proper bus driver, which means there’s no way he’ll let me on the bus in the first place and then I’ll have to walk all the way home and I’m not quite sure if I know exactly how to do that now we’ve moved house. You can see my dilemma.
So, as I reach the pedestrian crossing, I look at the bus driver. He’s not looking back at me because he’s too busy checking his rear-view mirror for oncoming cars before he pulls out and leaves me behind. The only way to stop him is to cross the pedestrian crossing but I am not allowed to until the lollypop man holds up his sign and he’s not doing that. He’s waiting for a scrum of kids to catch up with me so we can all cross together and not cause a traffic jam. Can’t he see I am about to be left behind? That I’m not quite sure I do know the way home? Doesn’t the look on my face tell him I am about to burst into tears and not pretty ones either? I’m talking the red-faced snotty ones for which my mum had made sure she packed me a handkerchief, now free of its burden of a twenty-cent piece and ready for action.
The white stripes of the pedestrian crossing stretch out before me but my eyes are glued to the bus driver. He’s watching the lollypop man, waiting for permission to go. I have mere seconds to make it across the road and bang on the bus door so he can let me in. I won’t get the window seat but at least I will be on the bus and on my way home. I know I can make it if only the lollypop man would do his job!
At last the lollypop man strolls out to the middle of the road as if he has all the time in the world then slowly, ever so slowly, sticks up his sign that says ‘stop’. My muscles twitch with tension, ready to sprint. The sign is barely up when I take off, my legs pumping as fast as I can. I risk a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure the other kids are crossing with me so the bus will be stuck here just long enough for me to jump on board. I’ve finished looking back at the kids behind me, I’m in the middle of turning to look at the bus driver, when disaster strikes.
One second I’m running, the next I am flying. Through the air, heading straight down towards the white stripes on the bitumen. Under the circumstances, I do the only sensible thing and shove out both hands to stop crashing headfirst into the road. But I’m too slow. I smash into the road; the force of my landing ripping the cardboard school case from my hands and sending it spiralling and spinning away. It crashes into the road. On impact, the latches spring open and the contents of my school case scatter over the pedestrian crossing.
Everything stops. My knees burn with raw grazes, the palms of my hands sting and there are tiny bits of gravel freckling my skin. I’m breathing hard, trying not to cry and not really succeeding.
Then time starts again. Kids open bus windows and crane their necks out, howling with laughter. From where I lie sprawled on the tarmac, I see that big kid with hair the colour of autumn leaves and no front teeth cackling and calling out ‘sucked in!’ There’s that horrible boy who once got detention after he blew a bubblegum bubble so big it burst and plastered his hair in pink goo. He’s giving me the finger and elbowing his mate in the side at the same time. The scrum behind me, the lollypop man, the bus driver, are all staring at me as I scramble to my feet.
But now I’m standing, I realise they’re not staring at me. I turn around. There’s my school case gaping open in the gutter. My raincoat has unrolled and flaps like a broken bird, trapped under a bus wheel. Then I see what has caught their attention and hot shame melts over me.
Remember how I said I didn’t keep much inside my school case? It’s the end of the day so there’s no little lunch left (cake) and no big lunch either (peanut butter sandwich, orange with a hole in the skin). The only thing left in my hard, brown cardboard school case lies between two white stripes in the middle of the pedestrian crossing. I’m staring too. At a pair of bright white undies decorated in tiny little blue flowers on the black, black road.
My cheeks burn red. The tears brim over. I snatch up the emergency undies, the school case, the flapping raincoat. I don’t need to bang on the bus door. The driver must feel sorry for me because he winks as if to say, you’re all right, kiddo. I slink onto the bus and take the very front seat, on the aisle. The perfect place for every pair of eyes to bore into the back of my skull. The only good thing is that while they send their laser beams of scorn searing into my head, I can’t see them. Totally humiliated, I bury my chin into my Peter Pan collar, wipe the tears away with my hanky, and stay that way until the bus lets me off at my stop right outside the milk bar.
If I hadn’t spent my twenty cents at the canteen, I could buy myself a consolation mixed bag of lollies. After the afternoon I’ve had, it’s the least I deserve. And right as I’m thinking this, I see the garbage bin overflowing with chip cartons and paper bags smeared with bits of pie and sauce. A couple of seagulls are pecking through the rubbish looking for a treat. And it comes to me. Never again will I risk such humiliation. Never again will I allow myself to be the centre of the wrong kind of attention. There is only one solution.
I lift my chin from my Peter Pan collar. I place my hard, brown cardboard school case on the bus-stop seat. I undo one catch then the other and I open it. They lie there, those bright white undies with their blue flowers, looking a little less white after the run-in with the road. Nevertheless, I fancy they know they have brought me shame. They were supposed to be for emergencies, not to make me the butt of everyone’s jokes. I scoop them up and crush them in my fist and whisper to them, ‘I’m sorry but you have to go.’
I walk the three short steps to the overflowing garbage bin. Taking a deep breath, I stare at the chip packets and the tomato-sauce stained paper bags and I thrust those traitorous undies right down in the middle of the bin.
Stepping back, I am satisfied no one will see them, ever again. For today I have learned a valuable life lesson. That there comes a time in every kid’s life, maybe when they’re not one of the big kids yet but when they’re not a little kid either, and today is that day. Today is the day I realise that as nice as it is to be treated like a little kid by your mum or dad or sometimes even the teacher, at some point you have to take control of your destiny. As I stare at that overflowing garbage bin, the certainty grows until I am absolutely sure of it. Yes, today is the day I became too old for emergency underpants.