Blood From a Dead Dog’s Donger, Dad?
September 27th 2008 19:57
Dad always gave me lunch money for school. He’d just leave $5 on the kitchen bench. “Your lunch money’s on the bench, pal,” he’d say.
That’s seven words. These seven word conversations we had every morning were always the same. By the end of the week you could say we’d said thirty-five words to each other, but I consider we only said seven words five times. All of them uttered by dad. Just not in sacred tones. More in colloquial Aussie.
I’m not even going into how many that makes in a school year. I’d have to remember my times tables. Seven sevens are forty nine, etc. But we always stopped at 12, so I still don’t know what thirteen sevens are. By the third week, I’d be stuffed.
I suppose I could work it out with a piece of paper and a pen, or borrow the prison calculator. Kids don’t learn to add up and subtract and divide and multiply nowadays. The computer does it for them. It’s why they can’t spell. The computer tells them when they got a word wrong. Or they use computer speak, and don’t give a shit about English? It’s why if you give two things to a checkout chick, she has to add them up on the cash register. $15.20 plus 60c is too much for their brains to handle.
They’re getting rid of repetition as a means of learning at school. It reminds people too much of religious parrot-fashion learning. And religion has to be stamped out in schools, so that people learn to tolerate other religions? “The only religion taught at this school is lessons on how to be tolerant of other religions.” Forget about what the faith of religions is? Just become tolerant of stuff you don’t agree with? Or know anything about? You could become an expert on world religions in the education system nowadays. Come out with a PhD on something you know nothing about. You’d do a thesis: ‘The necessity of becoming tolerant of other people’s views without listening to their views?’ And telling them to shut up when they contradict you, because you have a degree that proves you know more than them?
Having a chat with dad a religious experience. It was a bit like reading the Bible every morning. Reading Christ’s seven words from the Cross and the seven words said back to Him. Although, I never said seven words back to dad. I was trying to become like him, and not say anything?
He eventually got to the stage where he just left the lunch money on the kitchen bench, and said nothing. After he gave up on pointing at it as an exercise in superfluous hand movements. Don’t forget Christ’s hands were nailed to the Cross.
Perhaps dad was a Christian after all? And he was becoming Christ-like? So while Christ was becoming like his father, my father was becoming like Christ and I was becoming like my father? Religion’s a lot more simple than most people realise. I don’t know why all these modern people complicate it. A Christian is a follower of Christ. I was a fourth generation follower. God the Father, God the Son, my dad the father, and me the son. How much more simple can it get than that?
If I’d known religion better as a child, I could have answered dad with things like, ‘Are you calling on Elias, dad?’ Or maybe offer him some hyssop soaked in gall and vinegar? Since hyssop doesn’t grow where we lived, and we didn’t have any gall or vinegar in the cupboards, I could have brought one of those plants home from the swamps; the ones we called kangaroo tails, and just dipped it in a dead dog’s blood on the way home; a roadkill, and said, ‘Blood from a dead dog’s donger, dad?’ But I never said much. I was trying to be like my father. I’m sure it’s why I had so much trouble communicating with people. ‘Kangaroo see. Kangaroo do?’ We didn’t have any monkeys where we grew up. Unless you count the human ones. The ones who deny creation and believe in evolution. I leave them to it. If they want to believe their ancestors were apes? They're going the right way about convincing me.
I didn’t mention dead dogs’ dongers to dad. He would have accused me of having a mind all over the place like madwoman’s custard. Dad liked Strine and rhyming slang. He often quoted it. It was his way of saying, I really don't want to communicate with humans by having a chat about reality?
I was probably a bit thick, like badly-made custard, or like St Philip the Apostle. Like when he said to Christ at the discourse before the Last Supper, ‘Show us the Father and it’s enough for me.’ What a dumb question that one was. But Christ soon sorted Philip out. ‘Philip, have I been with you this long and you still have no understanding? He who sees me, sees the Father.’ The Apostles were a bunch of dolts. But that was all deliberate.God created them and God chose them. It was all for our instruction and edification. But you'd have to read the Bible with an open mind, I guess. Most people who open their minds find the little brains they do have spill out.
But it's a great read. If the Apostles were dolts, and could become great men after Pentecost, there’s hope for us dolts. We all need a huge infusion of the Holy Ghost. Most humans are dolts. They just don’t realise it. They’re too busy working out how to justify their own magnificence and superiority over other humans. While they’re not sitting on the toilet being instructed by God that we all have to shit. And one man’s shit is another stool pigeon’s viewing delight. There’s treasure to be found everywhere. You just have to look at brown trash. White trash is everywhere. It's all too common.
Yes, prison is good. It’s like living with dad. Nice and peaceful. Not a word said.
Just me and my thoughts.
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