“I need someone to cover the CWA’s Craft Fair, that’s the Country Women’s Association for those of you who don’t know, Liam said looking around the Clarion office one morning. “If anyone connected to the school wins something we should report it.”
All of a sudden everyone was really busy, except me. I had taken to hanging around the Clarion office when I had any free time, even though I wasn’t strictly with the team. Liam looked at me, “Seems no one else can find the time, so why don’t you have a go, Jasmine.”
“Me, really,” I squealed before I pulled myself together and tried to look cool. My first assignment! Was I ready to have go? Was I what?
“Sure, if no-one else wants it, I’ll have a go,” I murmured trying to look disinterested.
I could see I hadn’t fooled Liam though because he smiled at me and gave me the details. I could barely stand still when I was telling Pete and Frankie as we went into Science that afternoon.
“My mum is entering her bracelets. You never know, maybe she’ll win a prize. Pete had recently had his braces fitted and had been pretty quiet lately. I had put it down to his embarrassment at having to wear them but I was to find out that there was certainly more to his broodiness than just his braces.
The CWA Craft Fair was held in the Memorial Hall on Molonglo Street just near the turn off to the coast. The had been built in the 1930s, was red brick and was pretty daggy. The fair started at 9am but I wasn’t going till about 4 after the results of the judging had been announced. When I go there I did a quick once around and noted some of the categories – quilting, knitting, crochet, tatting (what was that?), woodwork, jewellery and embroidery. I stopped at Pete’s mother’s exhibit – she had taken to finding old plastic knitting needles, heating them and bending them into bracelets. They were very colourful and looked quite good really on the upturned arms which were standing on the table. A First Prize for Jewellery Certificate was leaning up against one of them. Pete and his mother were there and a man I hadn’t met.
“Ms Seng, would you be able to stand with Pete, so I can take a photo of your and your winning bracelets.”
And that was how I managed to have my first piece published in the Clarion. Pete, his mum, her bracelets and an unknown man in the background.
Insert picture of article and photograph
It was a quiet week at the Clarion so my article actually made Page 2.
At school on the following Monday I asked Pete who the man was.
“That was my father,” he said.
“But you don’t have a father,” I blurted out.
“I do now,” said Pete and this is the story he told me about how he got his braces and gained a father.
THE DEATH SENTENCE
(Pete’ Story as told by Pete)
“There’s really no way around it, my young friend; you are going to need braces.”
These few words have to be the most terrifying a twelve, nearly thirteen, year old boy will ever hear. The fact that the dentist was smiling when he announced this death sentence made things even worse.
I closed my eyes and saw the smiling devil put that black cloth n his head as he pronounced my sentence.
Braces meant social death,; no girl would look at me for at least 10 years. All I could see stretching before me was loneliness, isolation and ridicule.
My life was over!
****************************
I had to get out of this somehow. I checked with Frankie and Jasmine my two friends from school. Both girls, they would be sure to understand and have some good ideas about avoiding the braces of death. Great help they turned out to be!
“Braces are nothing. You’re just being vain,” was Frankie’s response to my plea for help.
“I won’t laugh or call you names, I promise, Metalmouth err I mean Pete,” she said unkindly I thought with a smirk at Jasmine.
“That’s right,” Jasmine smirked back. “We’ll treat you as if nothing was different and we’ll keep an extra supply of toothpicks for you to get those annoying pieces of fruit out of the nasty braces. Now smile and I’ll take your picture for the next edition of the school newspaper.”
They both laughed and Jasmine said looking me right in the eye, “Just joking. We’re sorry Pete. We think you’re over-reacting. Lots of people our age wear braces.”
“You’ll get used to it. There’s the bell anyway. Come on you two, we’d better hurry,” finished Frankie turning to jog towards the next class.
************************
I tried to convince my mother that braces were a terrible idea.
“I won’t be able to play the flute with braces,” I tried.
“You don’t play the flute.”
“I’ll look terrible in the school photos.”
“Just keep you mouth closed.”
“We can’t afford them,” my last desperate try.
“That’s true. I have been thinking about that,” she said quietly, looking at me with a kind of funny look.
It’s just been my mum and me since I was born. We’ve never had much money or stuff. She makes a bit selling crafty items she sells at local markets and works part time in the local bakery. The latest craft idea is working old plastic knitting needles into bracelets by warming them up till they are soft and winding them around tin cans. They sell well. The hardest thing is finding the old needles. We go to lots of op shops looking for them. They are pretty cool places. You never know what you might find in them.
“I’ve had an idea, but I don’t know what you are going to think about it,” she said slowly.
“What idea?” I asked, a feeling of dread creeping over me. What was this all about?
“I think we should ask your father to pay for them,” she said finally and looked at me for my reaction.
Now this I had not expected. She had never spoken about him to me before. Any time I asked she changed the subject. I had to think about this.
“I’ve got to go, I’m meeting Frankie and Jasmine at the park. We’re thinking about trying out for the junior touch footy team. We’ll talk later, heh?”
I had a father. He knew about me. Did I want to know about him?. Not really, it was just Mum and me, as it had always been. No, No, No. I didn’t need a father and if he had wanted to know me he could have, couldn’t he. But no, he had left my mother to look after me on her own. I didn’t want to know him at all.
********************************
Another bombshell dropped when I got home an hour later. As I came in the door I heard my mother on the phone just finishing a conversation I didn’t want to hear.
"That’s fine. I understand that you want to meet him. He’s a great kid. So till next week then. Bye.”
“I suppose that was him,” I asked her. “And you’ve arranged something, haven’t you? Well, I’m not going to meet him, and I’m not going to get braces,” I yelled as I slammed the door to my room, which was a mistake really because the vibration sent my jar of coins flying off the shelf in my room.
********************************
Of course, being twelve years old and the kid in the family, next week my mother and I roll up to the Harvest Restaurant behind the old pub at the top of the main street of Bungendore. The locals call this the top pub and there is of course a bottom pub at the other end of the street. It was autumn and the light was just fading. They had lit a fire and hadn’t yet turned on the lights. My mother stiffened when she saw the man sitting alone in front of the fire. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might be nervous. Mothers don’t get nervous. And she should be thinking about what this meant to me – a new adult in my life, one I didn’t want.
Patrick is his name. It was really funny looking at him and remembering that my mother had told me that I looked like him - the same blue eyes, fair skin and mousy brown hair. He wore his on the long side, just like me. Mental note – get a number 1 tomorrow.
Was this a serious meal or what? They told me about how they had met at a ban-the-woodchipping camp down at Eden when they were younger. My mental arithmetic isn’t great but I figured this put them both about 22 years old at the time. My mother was a bit of a hippie and when she found out about me she decided that she wanted to do the mother thing on her own and hadn’t even told Patrick about me. Till now. Groan. And now that he had recovered from the “shock” of it all, he had decided that he had always wanted a son.
“Do you have other kids?” I asked.
“Yes, two daughters. Sally and Emma. 7 and 9. They go to Canberra Girls Grammar,“ Patrick told me. “My wife is Cathy. I’ve told Cathy about you and I plan to tell the girls once you and I get to know each other.”
“Well, I don’t know. I like it just being mum and me.” I said with just the right amount of loyalty and pride I thought. Who was he to muscle in on our lives? But I could feel myself weakening. I kind of liked him and the fact that he didn’t gush all over me. And he hadn’t known about me till now, so my thinking he had abandoned us wasn’t really true anyway.
************************************
So my plans to avoid getting the braces were not going well. My friends weren’t any help and now I was being drawn into more family stuff. I had to face it – braces and a father. Two for the price of one. Two crises. Double trouble. I gave in.
***********************************
Death day arrived. It was a Friday and my mum had already written a note for school so I had the day off. Now I know what the condemned man feels. I was to catch the train into Canberra and my newly found father was to meet me at the station to start his paternal responsibilities by taking me to the dentist (and paying the bill I supposed).
Friday was also the day of the Regional Spelling Bee and I was dreading having to show up with my new braces that night. Frankie’s cousin Charlotte was in the Regional finals and we had been preparing a banner to support her. I had to go. I didn’t want to go, but I had to go.
Patrick met me on the platform.
"All right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, even though my stomach was churning a bit.
"Good, the car’s over here,” he said pointing to a red BMW. I tried not to look impressed. And I wasn’t really. If he thought he could win me over with a big car and a cheque book he was wrong. It was a nice ride though.
We got to the dentist’s pretty quickly and putting on the braces began. It hurt like hell – all that twisting and turning – I thought it would never end. When the dentist asked if I wanted a look in the mirror I said “No way.”
Patrick was waiting outside. He didn’t look at my mouth and just asked if I was ready to go home. “Or we could see a movie or something,” he said.
Okay. Now I was onto him. This was him trying to wriggle his way into my life. Well, no way. Not yet.
“No, thanks. I have to go home.”
He didn’t look disappointed or anything. “Sure, let’s go. I’ll drive you since there is no train during the day.”
************************************
“Well, let me see them,” was my mother’s first demand. “They don’t look too bad and you’ll soon get used to wearing them.”
“How did you get on with Patrick?” was her second demand.
“Okay.”
“Hmm, I take that it wasn’t as horrible an experience as you were expecting, going to the dentist with your father.”
“I got through it, all right?”
“All right, all right, just asking.”
“Well go and get changed and help me with bending these knitting needles,” was her third demand as she turned back to her work.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to see what they looked like. Well Frankie had hit the spot. Metalmouth. I tried speaking without opening my mouth; I tried holding my hand over my mouth; and I tried opening my lips just enough that you couldn’t really see the braces. I tried this for 15 minutes until my mouth and my face ached. How was I going to face people ever again. As I had known all along my life was over.
It’s just that my mother didn’t know this and expected me to come out of the bedroom and help with the knitting needles. She also reminded me we were going to the Spelling Bee to support Charlotte, Frankie’s cousin, who was in the finals.
So that night we walked up the main street to the Council Chambers where the Spelling Bee was being held. I saw Frankie and Jasmine standing outside the doors with their coats and scarves on waiting for me as we had planned. Jasmine had her camera around her neck as usual. If I had expected sympathy again I would have been wrong.
“Okay, let’s see,” said Frankie peering closely at my mouth.
“Come on, open up,” said Jasmine trying to pry my mouth open.
In the end I gave in and quickly drew back my lips so they could catch a glimpse of all the metal that now filled my mouth and my mind.
“They’re not so bad. What were you worried about?”
I started to relax a bit then while we talked about our banner and how we were planning to support Charlotte. I tried to hide my mouth with my hand, but knew it wasn’t working when these two kids from St Joseph’s sniggered as they pushed past us holding their hands in front of the mouths, just like I had. I thought I heard “pity about all the metal,” but I could have been mistaken.
Jasmine said quietly, “That’s Damien and his mate Jason. Damien is Charlotte’s big competition.” Jasmine is a mine of information.
Charlotte. This was going to be a test. She didn’t know about the braces. What would her reaction be? I had known her for years, her and her brother Wesley. They were Frankie’s cousins and lived in Queanbeyan but we often hung out in the holidays. If Charlotte laughed at me I knew I would just die.
We sat up near the back of the seating. I pulled my hair over my face (I hadn’t got that Number 1 hair cut yet) and tried to look invisible. At the first break I saw Charlotte coming towards us. “Go away, go away”, I kept thinking willing her not to come near us. Of course, that was just what she did. The next thing I know she is smiling at me and thanking me for coming to support her. When I spoke she saw the braces, waited just a second and then told me that she would look forward to seeing my beautiful straight teeth when they came off.
Ain’t life grand!
Maybe my life wasn’t quite over just yet!
END
All of a sudden everyone was really busy, except me. I had taken to hanging around the Clarion office when I had any free time, even though I wasn’t strictly with the team. Liam looked at me, “Seems no one else can find the time, so why don’t you have a go, Jasmine.”
“Me, really,” I squealed before I pulled myself together and tried to look cool. My first assignment! Was I ready to have go? Was I what?
“Sure, if no-one else wants it, I’ll have a go,” I murmured trying to look disinterested.
I could see I hadn’t fooled Liam though because he smiled at me and gave me the details. I could barely stand still when I was telling Pete and Frankie as we went into Science that afternoon.
“My mum is entering her bracelets. You never know, maybe she’ll win a prize. Pete had recently had his braces fitted and had been pretty quiet lately. I had put it down to his embarrassment at having to wear them but I was to find out that there was certainly more to his broodiness than just his braces.
The CWA Craft Fair was held in the Memorial Hall on Molonglo Street just near the turn off to the coast. The had been built in the 1930s, was red brick and was pretty daggy. The fair started at 9am but I wasn’t going till about 4 after the results of the judging had been announced. When I go there I did a quick once around and noted some of the categories – quilting, knitting, crochet, tatting (what was that?), woodwork, jewellery and embroidery. I stopped at Pete’s mother’s exhibit – she had taken to finding old plastic knitting needles, heating them and bending them into bracelets. They were very colourful and looked quite good really on the upturned arms which were standing on the table. A First Prize for Jewellery Certificate was leaning up against one of them. Pete and his mother were there and a man I hadn’t met.
“Ms Seng, would you be able to stand with Pete, so I can take a photo of your and your winning bracelets.”
And that was how I managed to have my first piece published in the Clarion. Pete, his mum, her bracelets and an unknown man in the background.
Insert picture of article and photograph
It was a quiet week at the Clarion so my article actually made Page 2.
At school on the following Monday I asked Pete who the man was.
“That was my father,” he said.
“But you don’t have a father,” I blurted out.
“I do now,” said Pete and this is the story he told me about how he got his braces and gained a father.
THE DEATH SENTENCE
(Pete’ Story as told by Pete)
“There’s really no way around it, my young friend; you are going to need braces.”
These few words have to be the most terrifying a twelve, nearly thirteen, year old boy will ever hear. The fact that the dentist was smiling when he announced this death sentence made things even worse.
I closed my eyes and saw the smiling devil put that black cloth n his head as he pronounced my sentence.
Braces meant social death,; no girl would look at me for at least 10 years. All I could see stretching before me was loneliness, isolation and ridicule.
My life was over!
****************************
I had to get out of this somehow. I checked with Frankie and Jasmine my two friends from school. Both girls, they would be sure to understand and have some good ideas about avoiding the braces of death. Great help they turned out to be!
“Braces are nothing. You’re just being vain,” was Frankie’s response to my plea for help.
“I won’t laugh or call you names, I promise, Metalmouth err I mean Pete,” she said unkindly I thought with a smirk at Jasmine.
“That’s right,” Jasmine smirked back. “We’ll treat you as if nothing was different and we’ll keep an extra supply of toothpicks for you to get those annoying pieces of fruit out of the nasty braces. Now smile and I’ll take your picture for the next edition of the school newspaper.”
They both laughed and Jasmine said looking me right in the eye, “Just joking. We’re sorry Pete. We think you’re over-reacting. Lots of people our age wear braces.”
“You’ll get used to it. There’s the bell anyway. Come on you two, we’d better hurry,” finished Frankie turning to jog towards the next class.
************************
I tried to convince my mother that braces were a terrible idea.
“I won’t be able to play the flute with braces,” I tried.
“You don’t play the flute.”
“I’ll look terrible in the school photos.”
“Just keep you mouth closed.”
“We can’t afford them,” my last desperate try.
“That’s true. I have been thinking about that,” she said quietly, looking at me with a kind of funny look.
It’s just been my mum and me since I was born. We’ve never had much money or stuff. She makes a bit selling crafty items she sells at local markets and works part time in the local bakery. The latest craft idea is working old plastic knitting needles into bracelets by warming them up till they are soft and winding them around tin cans. They sell well. The hardest thing is finding the old needles. We go to lots of op shops looking for them. They are pretty cool places. You never know what you might find in them.
“I’ve had an idea, but I don’t know what you are going to think about it,” she said slowly.
“What idea?” I asked, a feeling of dread creeping over me. What was this all about?
“I think we should ask your father to pay for them,” she said finally and looked at me for my reaction.
Now this I had not expected. She had never spoken about him to me before. Any time I asked she changed the subject. I had to think about this.
“I’ve got to go, I’m meeting Frankie and Jasmine at the park. We’re thinking about trying out for the junior touch footy team. We’ll talk later, heh?”
I had a father. He knew about me. Did I want to know about him?. Not really, it was just Mum and me, as it had always been. No, No, No. I didn’t need a father and if he had wanted to know me he could have, couldn’t he. But no, he had left my mother to look after me on her own. I didn’t want to know him at all.
********************************
Another bombshell dropped when I got home an hour later. As I came in the door I heard my mother on the phone just finishing a conversation I didn’t want to hear.
"That’s fine. I understand that you want to meet him. He’s a great kid. So till next week then. Bye.”
“I suppose that was him,” I asked her. “And you’ve arranged something, haven’t you? Well, I’m not going to meet him, and I’m not going to get braces,” I yelled as I slammed the door to my room, which was a mistake really because the vibration sent my jar of coins flying off the shelf in my room.
********************************
Of course, being twelve years old and the kid in the family, next week my mother and I roll up to the Harvest Restaurant behind the old pub at the top of the main street of Bungendore. The locals call this the top pub and there is of course a bottom pub at the other end of the street. It was autumn and the light was just fading. They had lit a fire and hadn’t yet turned on the lights. My mother stiffened when she saw the man sitting alone in front of the fire. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might be nervous. Mothers don’t get nervous. And she should be thinking about what this meant to me – a new adult in my life, one I didn’t want.
Patrick is his name. It was really funny looking at him and remembering that my mother had told me that I looked like him - the same blue eyes, fair skin and mousy brown hair. He wore his on the long side, just like me. Mental note – get a number 1 tomorrow.
Was this a serious meal or what? They told me about how they had met at a ban-the-woodchipping camp down at Eden when they were younger. My mental arithmetic isn’t great but I figured this put them both about 22 years old at the time. My mother was a bit of a hippie and when she found out about me she decided that she wanted to do the mother thing on her own and hadn’t even told Patrick about me. Till now. Groan. And now that he had recovered from the “shock” of it all, he had decided that he had always wanted a son.
“Do you have other kids?” I asked.
“Yes, two daughters. Sally and Emma. 7 and 9. They go to Canberra Girls Grammar,“ Patrick told me. “My wife is Cathy. I’ve told Cathy about you and I plan to tell the girls once you and I get to know each other.”
“Well, I don’t know. I like it just being mum and me.” I said with just the right amount of loyalty and pride I thought. Who was he to muscle in on our lives? But I could feel myself weakening. I kind of liked him and the fact that he didn’t gush all over me. And he hadn’t known about me till now, so my thinking he had abandoned us wasn’t really true anyway.
************************************
So my plans to avoid getting the braces were not going well. My friends weren’t any help and now I was being drawn into more family stuff. I had to face it – braces and a father. Two for the price of one. Two crises. Double trouble. I gave in.
***********************************
Death day arrived. It was a Friday and my mum had already written a note for school so I had the day off. Now I know what the condemned man feels. I was to catch the train into Canberra and my newly found father was to meet me at the station to start his paternal responsibilities by taking me to the dentist (and paying the bill I supposed).
Friday was also the day of the Regional Spelling Bee and I was dreading having to show up with my new braces that night. Frankie’s cousin Charlotte was in the Regional finals and we had been preparing a banner to support her. I had to go. I didn’t want to go, but I had to go.
Patrick met me on the platform.
"All right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, even though my stomach was churning a bit.
"Good, the car’s over here,” he said pointing to a red BMW. I tried not to look impressed. And I wasn’t really. If he thought he could win me over with a big car and a cheque book he was wrong. It was a nice ride though.
We got to the dentist’s pretty quickly and putting on the braces began. It hurt like hell – all that twisting and turning – I thought it would never end. When the dentist asked if I wanted a look in the mirror I said “No way.”
Patrick was waiting outside. He didn’t look at my mouth and just asked if I was ready to go home. “Or we could see a movie or something,” he said.
Okay. Now I was onto him. This was him trying to wriggle his way into my life. Well, no way. Not yet.
“No, thanks. I have to go home.”
He didn’t look disappointed or anything. “Sure, let’s go. I’ll drive you since there is no train during the day.”
************************************
“Well, let me see them,” was my mother’s first demand. “They don’t look too bad and you’ll soon get used to wearing them.”
“How did you get on with Patrick?” was her second demand.
“Okay.”
“Hmm, I take that it wasn’t as horrible an experience as you were expecting, going to the dentist with your father.”
“I got through it, all right?”
“All right, all right, just asking.”
“Well go and get changed and help me with bending these knitting needles,” was her third demand as she turned back to her work.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to see what they looked like. Well Frankie had hit the spot. Metalmouth. I tried speaking without opening my mouth; I tried holding my hand over my mouth; and I tried opening my lips just enough that you couldn’t really see the braces. I tried this for 15 minutes until my mouth and my face ached. How was I going to face people ever again. As I had known all along my life was over.
It’s just that my mother didn’t know this and expected me to come out of the bedroom and help with the knitting needles. She also reminded me we were going to the Spelling Bee to support Charlotte, Frankie’s cousin, who was in the finals.
So that night we walked up the main street to the Council Chambers where the Spelling Bee was being held. I saw Frankie and Jasmine standing outside the doors with their coats and scarves on waiting for me as we had planned. Jasmine had her camera around her neck as usual. If I had expected sympathy again I would have been wrong.
“Okay, let’s see,” said Frankie peering closely at my mouth.
“Come on, open up,” said Jasmine trying to pry my mouth open.
In the end I gave in and quickly drew back my lips so they could catch a glimpse of all the metal that now filled my mouth and my mind.
“They’re not so bad. What were you worried about?”
I started to relax a bit then while we talked about our banner and how we were planning to support Charlotte. I tried to hide my mouth with my hand, but knew it wasn’t working when these two kids from St Joseph’s sniggered as they pushed past us holding their hands in front of the mouths, just like I had. I thought I heard “pity about all the metal,” but I could have been mistaken.
Jasmine said quietly, “That’s Damien and his mate Jason. Damien is Charlotte’s big competition.” Jasmine is a mine of information.
Charlotte. This was going to be a test. She didn’t know about the braces. What would her reaction be? I had known her for years, her and her brother Wesley. They were Frankie’s cousins and lived in Queanbeyan but we often hung out in the holidays. If Charlotte laughed at me I knew I would just die.
We sat up near the back of the seating. I pulled my hair over my face (I hadn’t got that Number 1 hair cut yet) and tried to look invisible. At the first break I saw Charlotte coming towards us. “Go away, go away”, I kept thinking willing her not to come near us. Of course, that was just what she did. The next thing I know she is smiling at me and thanking me for coming to support her. When I spoke she saw the braces, waited just a second and then told me that she would look forward to seeing my beautiful straight teeth when they came off.
Ain’t life grand!
Maybe my life wasn’t quite over just yet!
END