Maddog Tales

This is our patch at school, the tennis courts and the seat behind the science building where we spend our breaks. Don’t go getting the wrong impression though, we’re not terrorising the school grounds, defending our patch, causing trouble. No, we are just the tennis team. A bunch of friends who spend every minute out of the classroom perfecting our ground strokes and mastering the mysteries of the overhand serve-a skill I never acquired.

Twenty foot tall chain link fence surrounds the courts to keep our wayward shots from cascading across the grounds. The balls that do leap over the cage disappear down the hill towards the basketball courts or across the adjacent road into the scrub. When we tire of tennis there is the bench to sit on and grab some lunch or a drink.

The seat is designed to stop people walking off them from bus stops, and made of heavy concrete legs with rough wooden slats to provide room for three or four growing lads to enjoy the shade and a Coke before the next game. We dragged-literally dragged because it weighed a ton-it up from the lunch area and made it ours. It even has a small brass plate to identify the new owners. That is where I am now enjoying an Paul’s Iced Coffee.

I look up as two young girls walk around the corner of the science building and stop in front of us. Apparently they know one of my friends, and start to chat about their first weeks of high school but the words are flowing around me. I’m responding to questions and joking with the girls but my mind is detached from the reality, racing recklessly into a future where one is my girlfriend.

Janet and Rhonda are typical of the grade eight kids who roam the school looking for acceptance and a sense of belonging in their new surrounds. A few weeks ago they ruled the playgrounds of their primary schools, they were the ‘big kids’ who helped or bullied the younger students. At high school they are the little kids again and need to find a safe passage through the minefield of teenage angst.

My first year of high school developed into a hellish mix of torment and attacks that left deep scars that no one sees but continue to sting years after the visible scars healed. Eventually, the bullies moved on to other prey or grew up and focused on their studies and friends. I found a niche on the tennis court and kept to myself and the small group of social outcasts that formed the tennis team.

The girls are still talking to us. Janet is a plain girl whom adolescence is yet to reshape into a woman but Rhonda’s athletic frame already reveals a stunningly beautiful young woman. Her sports uniform, a tennis dress in the school blue-grey, hugs her developing curves to about mid-thigh revealing her finely muscled legs, so perfectly proportioned Michelangelo must have carved them for her creator.

Her deep brown eyes, set perfectly above her slightly upturned nose, are alive with the sparkle of someone who is confident and strong. Her face is a perfect symmetry of delicate yet strong features that a photographer would call good structure, a face the camera loves and pulls on my heart. Then the exchange is over, they move on and I watch in awe as Rhonda walks away, her hips falling naturally into that rhythmic motion we boys find so distracting.

Now my mind is galloping through the important questions:

Did I make a good impression?

What did I say, nothing offensive or condescending?

How do I look, no sauce drops on my shirt or underarm stains?

On and on I go, my heart is beating out of control and I want to see Rhonda again but I can feel the waves of uncertainty washing over me. I have no difficulty with girls until I start to develop romantic notions then I loose my way with them. Soon follows rejection, depression and increasing insecurity. This time I have to do everything right because I think I’m in love.

Nola grabbed me as the DJ started playing Take a Long Line by The Angels, ‘Let’s slow dance to this one, it will freak out the teachers.

We swayed slowly to our own beat as the Aussie Rock Anthem blared across the hall, and everyone else jumped and gyrated to the rhythm. I looked into Nola’s eyes, and got lost in the moment.

Nola lived a teenager’s dream, her parents lived out Bush and she shared a house with her two sisters. Just around the corner from Nashville State High, it became a lunch time refuge in our Senior year. A place to chill, forget about classes, teachers and exams while we planned the weekend’s entertainment or discussed the world that so obviously revolved around us now.

Parties tended to happen more regularly at Nola’s house, without parental supervision we could indulge in the teenage vices; loud music, alcohol and cigarettes. I became partial to Blackberry Nip, a sweet liqueur that fulfilled my need for sugar and warmed me from within. Loud music became a constant companion; Led Zeppelin, Skyhooks, Alice Cooper and The Angels peppered my record collection helping to shut out Abba and the 70′s disco mania. Smoking never made sense to me so I avoided that particular vice. A relief for my lungs and wallet.

During our dance, I could see the mischievousness in Nola’s eyes, a free spirit thumbing her nose at convention. She warmed a small place in my heart but it never grew into a passionate flame before I left her behind rushing into adult life. Thirty years later only the dance is left.

Today, Burak of the Distiller’s Corner wrote about the benefits of writing down your personal history, and his thoughts mirror mine when I started Maddog Tales. The heart of all history is the stories, and researchers rely heavily on the written word and images left by our ancestors.

Will that same wealth of knowledge exist in the future when historians try to untangle our digital world?

Who will tell your stories if you do not?

Take time each day to write down a memory and suddenly you will find your life.