If you deciphered the headline correctly, you might have guessed that I’ve been sick. There was a time when I would be quite grateful for being sick, but those were times when I would quite often pretend to be sick when I wasn’t, so I could miss school. I went through a period of doing this so frequently that I am sure my parents knew with absolute certainty that I was faking it, but they showed admirable compassion even in the midst of what must have been intense irritation.
Mostly I took my sickies on Thursdays in Year Seven. The principle reason for this was art class, which we had on Thursdays. This wasn’t because I hated art: it was because I hated art class, which seemed to focus exclusively on areas of artistic endeavour that I was terrible at. Like lino-cutting. I did not know lino-cutting was a thing until I was told to do it in Year Seven, and I found, to my complete lack of surprise, that I possessed no natural facility for it.
Other things I wasn’t good at included painting, which you might imagine was also pretty heavily stressed in art class. Or maybe I was good at painting. Hell, maybe I was good at lino-cutting too, but the atmosphere in that class was not one conducive to unlocking the genius within. I don’t want to say my art teacher was terrible, but no sympathetic connection between she and me was ever forged.
Or maybe I was just lazy, and couldn’t be bothered making any effort to understand something I didn’t already understand. Because at the age of twelve I was very much on board with words and how to put them together. Pictures, objects, sculptures? I did not know how to do these things. And apparently I didn’t have the inclination to properly figure it out.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m in my mid-forties and desperately trying to learn art and music and languages and a hundred other things that I should’ve learnt when I was a kid but didn’t because I was a lazy little prick.
And now I’m a lazy big prick, which if anything makes it more difficult, because I get tired quicker and my back hurts.
I am frustrated with young me, who failed to learn all the cool stuff that as an adult I would like to know. What the hell was wrong with that kid? Why didn’t he realise that every day was an opportunity to soak the world up? Why did he hold such a grudge against his future self that he withheld all the best of life from him? What was he DOING with himself?
Sigh. I guess it’s just a part of life that the older you get, the more you hate yourself.
Right?
Right?
Look, I’ve been sick, OK? Someone bring me some Strepsils.
I have the same with languages, and also annoyance at the three-year period of my life in which my job was to read novels and I couldn't really be fucking bothered.
I have the same with languages, and also annoyance at the three-year period of my life in which my job was to read novels and I couldn't really be fucking bothered.