In primary school, my friend Sophie and I did everything together. She was the perfect ally. We lived just up the road from each other, which was ideal for meeting up to play. It was also ideal when we fought, as it was just a five-minute walk home. We both played in the school band with flutes we’d hired, and we were both so bad at it that one time, just before a competition against a much better school, the music teacher told us that it would be best for everyone if we just mimed playing our instruments.
One of our more famous fights happened at the local fish-and-chip shop where we’d both decided to busk with our flutes at age ten. We wore Santa hats, even though it was April, and set up a little box into which people could toss their coins. At first, we were a hit. Looking back, I suppose it’s because we were cute kids playing flutes adorably badly, and, come to think of it, people probably thought we had acute mental disorders because of the Santa hats. But we didn’t feel cute, or mental – we felt like we were important businesswomen on the cusp of making some real money.
Things were going smoothly until Sophie wanted to play ‘Home on the Range’, which I didn’t want to play, as I didn’t feel it suited the vibe and clientele. This turned into a vicious fight with each of us saying such terrible things to the other that a woman dragged her child away from where we were playing (something that would become a recurring theme in my career). Fed up with it all, I decided to take my sheet music, flute and hat across the road and go it on my own. This made perfect sense; we clearly couldn’t work together. It wasn’t personal, it was just business. But to onlookers, all they saw were two ten-year-olds standing on either side of a busy main road wearing Santa hats, playing flutes badly and death-staring each other.
Now, the problem with allies is that they’re only your ally until you both want the same thing, which Sophie and I often did. Then they become your competitor, and everyone knows that the more you know about your enemy, the fiercer the battle is.
One of our fiercest battles was over Brett Jackson. He was the cutest boy in Year Six and Sophie and I both had a crush on him. The selection of boys at our school left a lot to be desired, but Brett had just moved from Canada and had feminine features, nice teeth and a blonde bowl cut.
After school, we would sit on the floor of Sophie’s bedroom and obsess over Brett’s perfect bone structure, passionately explaining just what we’d do for a strand of his hair. We even performed witch spells together, in efforts to make ourselves irresistible to him.
He was always toying with our emotions, hinting at wanting to go out with one of us but not knowing which one to choose. We diligently worked as a team, trying to gather clues from his friends as to who he liked more, but it was all very coy and, also, we were all, like, eleven. It really seemed like, if anything was going to happen for either Sophie or me, it was going to be because of timing, and this meant any time we could get alone with him was precious.
Luckily, he was a bad boy who was constantly in trouble with his teachers and our exhausted principal. What this meant for us was that if we could sniff out where he’d been told to sit for half an hour as punishment, we could ask to go to the toilet and steal thirty seconds of alone-time with him.
One day, Brett had been caught lighting things on fire and I was told (by a boy who would go on to be on Australia’s most-wanted list, though that’s neither here nor there) that Brett had been sent to the principal’s office to await punishment. The principal’s office was at the end of a long covered concrete path, at the start of which were three concrete steps that had a bar above them, which was part of the support frame that held up the roof. It was customary, if you were heading down the stairs, to jump from the top step, grab hold of the overhead bar like you would on the monkey bars, and swing once, then land past the bottom step and continue walking.
As I walked past Brett outside the principal’s office, praying he’d call out to me, he did, and my heart just burst. I sauntered over to him, feeling truly alive.
He spoke first. ‘Becky? Can I ask you something?’
‘Yeah . . .’ I answered, imagining how I was going to break the news of our relationship to Sophie.
‘Will you ask Sophie out for me?’
My eyes immediately filled with tears or, as I like to call them sometimes, liquid cool. My throat had closed up by this point, so I just sort of made a noise that sounded like a yes and walked down the path towards the stairs. If I didn’t do the jump, I thought, he’d know beyond a doubt that I was upset, and I didn’t want him to know. For some reason, I felt I had to prove to him that I was totally unaffected by him.
So I went for the jump.
Unfortunately, my hands were so slippery from the rejection sweat that, when I was supposed to swing back and then thrust my body forward to complete the landing, I instead lost my grip and fell back hard onto the concrete, breaking both my arms.
Not wanting him to know just how badly I was hurt, I stood up with both arms akimbo, laughed, told him I was fine, then immediately took myself to sick bay. Once there, the sadistic woman who ran that operation gave me two ice bags to put on each arm, then left the room. This was a major problem because the issue was that both my arms were broken, and I sort of needed my arms in order to hold the bags of ice against my arms properly. She swanned in half an hour later and diagnosed me as having two possibly sprained wrists, then sent me back to class where I gave the news about Brett to Sophie and saw out the last two hours of school in agonising pain. Plus my arms really hurt.
Sophie and Brett began dating the very next day, and I returned to school with both of my arms encased in plaster in a permanent double fist-pump. Not only did I miss out on the boy of my dreams but, to add insult to injury, I also needed help going to the toilet. Despite her winning our romantic competition, Sophie was above all else a loyal friend, and she would accompany me to the bathroom to help zip my culottes back up. As she did, she would tell me all about her new relationship with Brett and, thanks to the position of my plastered arms, I always looked as though I was really psyched for her.
Sophie and Brett broke up about a month later due to a misunderstanding about a Beanie Baby. It was rumoured that, during class, he’d gone through her locker and stolen one from her bag. He claimed that she’d said he could have it, and she said that was a bald-faced lie and that she’d merely mentioned the possibility of her lending it to him one day. Sophie and I both got over him together and set our sights on a new boy who’d arrived at school called Steven, who was far more mature and had hair that spiked upwards, a style that was now more popular than the bowl cut
By then, my arms had healed and I was able to resume my regular activities, including going to band practice, much to the chagrin of my music teacher, who had been hoping I’d never be able to play the flute again.
Thank you to Brett Jackson for the vital lesson that sometimes it’s cooler to just be honest about how you’re feeling and actually let someone know you’re hurt than attempt an elaborate stunt and end up with two very uncool broken arms.