From chaos to tragedy... (mine and not mine)

Here's my day (the chaos bit) -- or the first few hours of my morning, really.

Find out Princess Sleepyhead's train has been cancelled -- and then, no, not her train but an express that leaves almost at the same time. Her train will be packed, and she has to get a wriggle on if she's going to make it. She already has detention for being late yesterday.

Sir Talkalot is running late (what a surprise!). Then he can't find his blazer.

"Who's taken my blazer? Where is it?"

I tell him he's supposed to organise his stuff the night before. I say this every day. He never does.

"I did organise it," he said. I know he didn't. He never does. "I hung it right here on this banister. Dad must've hidden it."

"He didn't hide it. It must be around somewhere."

Then I remember that I think I saw it somewhere strange. ST's convinced his father is conspiring against him.

"It might be in the other car," I say. The car's at the station. We drag PH down and she just catches her train. The blazer's in the car. ST has it hidden behind his back, as if I can't see the sleeves poking out, as if I won't notice that he's suddenly found it. "You hung it on the banister last night, did you?" He's somewhat sheepish now.

I take him home to get the rest of his stuff, which he doesn't have ready. We fire up the car -- no petrol. I know I have no money in my purse, but there's some somewhere in the house. Only I can't find what's left, which isn't much but will let me put some in the car before I get to the bank. I find where it should be and it's gone.

It's now time ST should be at school. I have no petrol and no money. But the other car has petrol. I go down the station and swap the cars over, blocking the car park for about a minute, in which time a disabled person comes and misses her train. I feel bad, but realistically the train was in the station when she drove up. She was never going to make that train. Doesn't excuse me blocking her path though. Frantically, I move the car to get out of her way and ask ST to get all the stuff out of the other car. When he scrambles back in, I ask him whether he locked the other car. No. Of course not. I go back to lock it.

I take him to school. Halfway there I realise I haven't got my bag or my purse. It's still in the other car. He says he didn't hear me say to bring everything. Last year our number plates were stolen at this station. I'm just hoping my bag will still be there. It is. One thing goes right.

So I'm really stressed and angry at this stage, and that always makes me want to eat, but instead I decide to take the dogs for a walk before the day becomes too warm. We're there less than a minute and one is pooping. When I clean it up I notice the other dog has too. So I clean that up and realise it wasn't actually hers. (It's cold.) Oh, well, good to leave the world in a better condition than you found it, right?

Do I get some kind of heavenly reward for this? Yeah, of course. As I'm returning from the bin, the toller is chasing the 25 kg retriever, who's galloping full tilt and looking back over her shoulder. Crash. Straight into my legs, which collapse under me. My back jars. My ankle wrenches. It's the ankle that I have so much trouble with, but happily it's not the usual injury. I'm sore. Bruised. But able to walk shakily back to the car after the quickest walk ever.

If I thought my day was bad (and it got better after that), PH was on a train on the way home, when a boy stuck his head out of the window (allegedly while trying to graffiti the outside of the train) and hit his head on a pole. He's now in hospital with severe head injuries. PH, luckily, didn't see it -- the boy was in a different carriage, but she's still upset by it. Really, my day wasn't that bad after all.

Just another day at work really . . .

So, in the past, every time I've worked late, I've had the security guards hovering around, wanting to know when they can lock the building. This time, there's a new crew on: they don't know me, and I don't know them. I'm moving from one part of the building to another when I encounter a guard, trying to lock up. "Oh, I'll be awhile yet," I say.

"What time will you finish?"

I give him an estimate.

"No worries. We'll lock the door now, and you just let us know when you're actually leaving, and push the button to get out."

"Yep, no problems. I've done that before."

The appointed time comes, and I haven't quite finished, but I figure I'll leave the rest for the morning. I speak to the guards; they're happy. I go to the door and look for the red push button I'm used to, but it's gone. There are four things now -- a white knob with three blue lights and a twin outside the door, a flat plastic panel that looks like a light switch without a switch, a keypad, and a pad that says "Emergency Exit. Break glass and press here to get out".

So I play with the white thing with blue lights. I push it. I pull it. I wave my hand over it. Nothing.

I try the flat white panel. Nothing.

I look at the keypad. I have no idea what it's for, or what to key in.

I look at the Emergency Exit thing. I can't see any glass. Sounds a bit over-the-top, so I go back to the first one again, and then the flat panel. Nothing.

Hmm, Emergency Exit. It's not quite an emergency. I can just grab a security guard if I wait for a couple of minutes. But I can't see any glass either. Maybe it's already been broken, and this is just the normal exit mechanism.

Tentatively, oh so tentatively, I press where the instructions say to push. Nothing. So I push harder. Snap. The glass under the surface breaks and the doors open. Only they don't shut again. Clearly they are open so everyone (i.e. me) can evacuate the building to get away from whatever the emergency is. Oh, no. I figure that somewhere, either on the grounds or off, an alarm bell is wailing. A klaxon, perhaps, is blaring.

So I have to wait for the security guys and fess up. I predict they'll be peed, but they're not. Or at least they don't appear to be. They're good about it, but chances are they don't know how to "fix" it anyway. Yes, I'm the most popular gal around at the moment! Why do these things happen to me?

Heath Ledger's legacy

Princess Sleepyhead and friend

The man was a brilliant actor -- you didn't need to see Batman to know that. His performance in Brokeback Mountain was startling, so tortured, so convincing. But to the younger generation he will never be more or less than The Joker -- something he did pull off in a staggering fashion. As my friend Margaret said: "I looked and looked for the actor behind the mask and couldn't see him." It was a masterful piece of work -- and a great shame he won't be around to see the accolades he so richly deserves. (And a great shame for his family too.)

When parents know best

This week, I've been doing a lot of thinking about things past -- not so much my past but my husband's. But let's get to the story.

I have a student. A very good student. A student who emails me this week, after re-enrolling last year, to say he's very sorry, but he has to withdraw from the course. "I'm really cut-up about this," he says. He's been really looking forward to second year. Turns out that his father, in his infinite wisdom, has decided he can't continue with our course, and is forcing him to take up a place in a different course, a course he doesn't want to do.

The same thing happened to my husband. The Gadget Man was accepted into a course that was difficult to get into. His father decided a general science degree had much better employment prospects and coerced him into changing his preferences. TGM did so and ended up in a science degree he didn't like and dropping out. Eventually, after a dead-end career in the public service, he went back and completed his science degree and embarked on a career in research. His father was rapt, and talked of Nobel Prizes. (Nothing like unrealistic expectations, right? Especially because credit for great discoveries usually goes to supervisors, not necessarily the grunt doing the work.) In the meantime, research funding dried up and what was, for a few years, a reasonable career fell apart.

We often think we know what's best for our kids. My student's father thinks he's acting in his son's best interests. His son is a talented writer who is dedicated enough to work hard. Writing's a tough career to crack, true. But who knows? So's acting, and many who try fail. But what if those greats among us had never tried?

I always wanted to be a writer. When I finished high school, the only course for writers was journalism, and I was just too shy to be out interviewing people, and despised the way some journos got in the faces of those grieving just to get a story. I did science instead. Treated my writing as a hobby. If only courses like ours had been around then!

But would my parents have allowed me to do one? I'm not sure. They were always very focused on my having a career. In fact, until I started teaching, my mother considered all the time I'd spent on writing and doing writing courses a waste of time. I think of it as no such thing. I've pointed out to her that all tradespeople have to do an apprenticeship. Her reply is always in terms of how many years I've spent doing this, to which I'll make a quip about how apprentices do their apprenticing for many hours each week, whereas my apprenticeship hours get broken up between trying to run a household, trying to bring up a family, trying to work. I don't spend 40 hours a week on my writing. (I only dream of this!)

The other thing for us to remember is that people can change their careers. There's so much pressure on young people to choose a career when they know nothing of the world. It's a shame they don't all go have a gap year straight after school. Gap years should be compulsory -- a time to learn something more of themselves, to find out what they really might like doing, to find out what the world and the working world is like and to have a chance to freshen themselves up in terms of their studies. I've changed careers -- gone from scientist to arts teacher. My husband has changed careers (a few times). All this angst the kids feel -- do we really need to be adding to it with our own dreams for them? Our own dreams -- and that's the key point, isn't it? Vicarious living is all right for us, as long as we're not imposing those lives on our children as well. It's one thing to want to live through them, but another thing altogether to then try to shape those lives to provide the vicarious lives *we* really want to lead.

Let's just step back and take a breath. Is there anything wrong with letting our kids chase their dreams? What's the worst thing that can happen to them? What's the best? Isn't it better that they make their own mistakes and not ours? Something for every parent to think about . . .