Some people have pools. Others live near the beach or a river. We had a lousy hose and sprinkler. And on days like this, they just didn’t do the job. To say it was hot was like saying Godzilla is tall. It was scorching. Droplets of my sweat hit the concrete slab and sizzled. There wasn’t a single patch of shade, not even under the verandah.
We live on one of the tallest hills in all of Australia, so you’d think there’d be some breeze, but it was as still as a rotting cane toad.
And of course, Mum decided today would be the best day to BUG-BOMB the house.
Mum sometimes does things without thinking them through. For example, she made Dad move all the lounge room furniture around last month, before realising there weren’t any power points near the television. So for a week, we had an extension lead running right through the middle of the room. It was back to its original layout the following weekend.
So it was no big surprise when Mum decided to send us all outside in the blistering summer heat while the cool indoors was filled with poisonous gas.
Troy and I sat cross-legged on the lawn beside the sprinkler, waiting for it to rotate to our faces. We were disappointed when the water that hit our heads was hot. Not warm. Hot.
Nina decided to make the most of the sun and squeezed an entire lemon onto her head to bleach her hair and make her look like a beach person. I’m pretty sure her almost see-through skin was enough to show she wasn’t a beach person. But there she sat, on a towel on the lawn, smelling like a citrus tree.
Mum had set up a giant umbrella for her and Bella to sit under. Bella sat naked in her shell pool with all her bath toys. Mandy, our Maltese dog, had her head in the pool slurping up the water. Mum sat beside Bella reading one of her gossip magazines and drinking an iced coffee that she had just poured from her thermal mug.
Troy and I jumped to our feet as Dad pulled into the driveway. He’d texted to say he was bringing home something exciting. I hoped it was an outdoor air conditioner or a giant ice cube to lie on. But it wasn’t. Dad opened the boot of the car and pulled out a giant roll of black plastic.
‘What are we going to do with that?’ I asked, annoyed.
Dad didn’t say anything. He shuffled past me and dropped the roll onto the front lawn. He wiped his forehead with his shirt before giving me one of his ‘whatcha-reckon?’ nudges.
Troy dropped his shoulders and returned to the sprinkler.
Before I could say anything, Dad found the end of the roll, pulled two tent pegs from his back pocket and pushed them through the black plastic into the ground. He checked that it was secure, then pushed the rest of the roll down the hill. I watched as it unfurled over every driveway in our street. It continued to roll until I could no longer see it.
Dad returned to the boot and came back with a bottle of fluorescent green liquid. I read the label on the bottle.
Kevin’s Kwiklid: The Kwikest Liquid in the Southern Hemisphere.
Below that was a warning label with big bold lettering.
Dad opened the cap and poured the entire bottle onto the plastic.
‘Well, go on then,’ he said, again with his signature nudge.
‘What, down there?’ I responded, pointing down the steep face of Hellman’s Hill.
‘Look.’ He walked over to the pool, picked up Mandy the dog, and brought her back. He put her on the plastic. She took off at the speed of light without blinking an eyelid. ‘She loves it!’
Dad was crazy if he thought I was going to follow Mandy down.
I turned to walk away and trod on a bindy. I yelped and began hopping on the spot. It was the perfect opportunity for Dad to give me one more nudge, and before I knew it my bum hit the black plastic and I was travelling faster than an air force jet down Hellman’s Hill.
I could feel my cheeks pressing hard against my teeth. I wanted to close my eyes but the sheer speed of my descent wouldn’t allow my eyelids to shut. Everything around me was a blur. My feet flicked up droplets of Kevin’s Kwiklid into my eyes, up my nostrils and down my throat. It tasted horrible!
I slid past Marty’s house and Debbie’s house and Trent’s house. Then past number 71 at the bottom of the hill, before entering the laneway at the end of the street. I wasn’t slowing down. In fact, I was certain I was gaining speed.
I tried to look ahead to see how much further this nightmare slide had to go. Through my blurry vision I could just make out where it ended.
Unfortunately, it ended right at the summit of the giant BMX jump Rossco’s dad had built him last year. It was so big only Rossco had tried it and he broke both his arms. It looked like I was going to be victim number two.
I tried to brace myself, but all I could do was make fists and scrunch up my toes. Rossco’s jump was growing larger and larger, like a tidal wave wrapped in black plastic. I held my breath and waited for the impact.
I hit the jump at such speed that my body was rocketed into the sky. I was ascending at the velocity of a ballistic missile. I felt the hairs on my head catch alight. Even my eyebrows were smoking!
I still couldn’t move my arms or legs. Or close my eyelids.
The sky around me was growing darker. The air that I struggled to breathe was getting thinner and thinner. I was higher than any plane had ever been.
Gradually, I felt my cheeks loosen away from my teeth. I could move my arms and legs. My eyelids were beginning to flutter. I was slowing down.
I should have felt relief, but at thirty thousand metres in the sky I remembered something Mrs Brown once said to me.
‘What goes up must come down.’
I shouldn’t have, but I looked down. Big mistake. I could see the entire east coast of Australia. Although it was the most beautiful sight my twelve-year-old eyes had ever seen, I was overcome with fear as I felt myself start to fall.
I picked up speed as I dropped towards the ground. My arms and legs became stiff once more. My teeth met the inside of my cheeks and my eyelids locked themselves open. I was now travelling faster than I had in my ascent.
My eyebrows began to smoke again. My hair, or what was left of it, went back up in flames. This was it, I thought. I, Paddy Thompson, was about to hit the ground like a meteorite. I could only hope that I wouldn’t feel the impact.
I forced my eyes to the right. I could see the Opera House in the distance. I forced them back to the left and thought I could see the Gateway Bridge in Brisbane. What was certain was that I was getting closer and closer to land.
Or maybe, just maybe, the sea.
I was beginning to notice less land and more ocean ahead of me. If I wasn’t going to become a pancake on the land, I was definitely going to make the biggest splash known to humankind.
I fell and fell, and the ocean grew larger until it filled my field of vision. Again, I braced myself for impact. I made fists and scrunched up my toes.
Closer and closer. I held my breath.
I hit the water hard. But rather than sinking deep below the dark blue water, I bounced off like a pebble skipping across a lake. I was still moving at an incredible speed. It must be the Kevin’s Kwiklid on my shorts!
My bottom continued to bounce off the surface of the water. Each skip felt like touching down on a cactus. I passed two cruise ships and watched as hundreds of sunburnt, cocktail-drinking adults gawked in disbelief as I bounced like a kangaroo in full flight across the top of the ocean. After around a hundred skips, my bottom went numb.
Finally I began to slow down. I could move my arms and legs again. My cheeks moved free from my teeth. My eyes were able to blink.
I looked ahead and saw a beautiful tropical island near the horizon. My backside continued to skim across the top of the water until I reached the rolling waves of the island’s shoreline. Then my bottom hit a sand bar and I came to a dead stop.
The first thing I did was check my head. My suspicions were confirmed: it was as bald as my pop’s. Fortunately, most of my eyebrows remained.
Then to my bottom. It was no use; it was still completely numb. One thing was for sure though, I definitely had a giant hole in my pants.
I gingerly stood up and staggered to shore. I noticed a number of people approaching me. All were wearing floral board shorts. A few of the bigger men had large tattoos. A couple of girls also wandered over.
All of them looked confused. They stared at me as if I’d fallen out of the sky. Well, to be fair, I had.
‘Where am I?’ I asked.
One of the tattooed men moved closer.
‘Talofa. Welcome to Samoa.’
‘SAMOA!’ I shouted.
Everyone started laughing.
‘Yes,’ chuckled the man. ‘My name is Fetuao, but you can call me Fetu.’
The laughing continued. Some people were laughing so hard they were on their hands and knees.
‘And you are?’ Fetu asked, a chuckle still in his voice.
That’s when I saw it running towards me. A skinny, balding monster. Its tongue flapping from side to side. Saliva drooling from its lips. But as I looked closer, I realised it wasn’t a monster at all. It was a hairless Maltese dog.
‘Mandy!’ I called out.
Everyone on the beach, including Fetu, laughed even louder.
I won’t bore you with how Dad ended up paying for my flight back home. Let’s just say he was a little less energetic with his signature nudge when I got off the plane.
Troy, on the other hand, couldn’t stop patting my bald head. Bella just screamed when she saw me. Nina did the same when she saw a hairless Mandy.
All in all, I was the one smiling in the end. Even though I had a head like an egg, I got to escape the heat of Hellman’s Hill with an overseas holiday. What more could I ask for?
