YOU PISSED ME OFF!
FROM THE BOSSMAN It was Father’s Day recently - my second ever - and the one thing I looked forward to the most, supplanting any notions of breakfast in bed or even the heart trembling embrace of one’s pink progeny, is the warm glow of new socks and underpants. We are to experience many Rites of Passage moments; first kiss, the loss of one’s virginity, the loss of one’s heart to Gladys, the frumpy window-cleaner. But there is one far more potent for a man, one that serves as a burning indicator that you have truly arrived... The Moment Socks and Underpants Go From Being The Worst Gift In The World To The Best. Peer back through the smog of memory, if you will, and remember those moments at Christmas when your ganglylegged self would nip emu-like from present to present, gingerly squeezing each one when you thought no-one was looking in an attempt to form a sharp mental picture of what lay beneath. Inevitably, you would come across a shudderingly soft present, one with the undeniable give of a pair of neatly folded socks. A quick glance at the label confirms your worst fears - ‘Dear Allan. Thought you might need these, much love Gran.’
Has someone yanked yer chain recently? Well send an email to editorial@bmamag.com and have your sweet vengeance. And for the love of God, keep it brief! [All entries contain original spellings] Hey everybody dickriding Obama again, just STOP. To coffee grinds… I need you so badly in my daily life, and yet when I spill you and you scatter to the far ends of the fucking kitchen lodging yourself into every nook and cranny so that I have the spend the next fifteen fucking minutes wiping you up instead of chowing down on some desperately needed caffeine well that just GOD DAMN PISSES ME OFF GAAAH! JUST GIVE ME MY DAMN COFFEE NOW! FUCK! To the parents with DVD players in their cars. I’ve got an idea for you, why don’t you go and buy some duct tape and tape a DVD
‘Bollocks. Fucking socks,’ my foul-mouthed nine-year-old self would mutter. O well. I’ll be sure to fart in her thank you card.
player to your child’s head then you’ll never have to communicate
This attitude to undergarments continues unwavering through the teen years. But then, one day, something strange happens. For your birthday you find yourself uttering the impossible... ‘Oooo, socks and underpants would be great!’
in the car, you might learn something. And while I’m at it 4WD’s
with them at all. Piss the DVDs off and try talking to your kids have always pissed me off, how’s it going paying $2000 a week for petrol?
A strange phenomenon, yes, but there is a simple logic behind it. Years of presents from fart-caked elderly relatives has allowed a healthy supply of undergarments and - much like bills, food, and generally every other cost of running a household - their value has been shielded from us. When you finally move out of home at the trembling age of 28 and realise that a humble fivepack of undies will obliterate your wallet, you baulk. Socks and underpants fall into the same category as cars - we need them, but we hate spending money on them. When we put Old Bessie over the pits and the grizzled charlatan of a mechanic returns, no doubt rubbing oil off their hands with an impossibly dirty cloth like they do, to say it’ll be $1750 dollars for four new tires, a brake pad, and a new baffle-spiget, we don’t cheerily retort, ‘O well! Such is the inevitable wear and tear of daily life; I’m just happy I got five years before having to replace anything; what a bonus!’ Instead we normally bark, ‘Thief! Outrage! Rape! I will summon Zeus and fire lighting directly into your anus, you money grubbing spanner jockey! Do you take me for a simpleton? Good day sir!’ before driving off into a tree. So loathe are we to spend money in this vital area of modern civilisation that we will go countless months with frayed undies, holy socks, stressed elastic and items that look like they’ve taken a detour through the Kingdom of the Mighty Mothpeople. We can’t fathom paying for them after so long, so we try to figure out a way to avoid it. Stealing them could see you end up in jail as the bitch’s bitch in the prison pecking order, and starting a fashion mag for freebies is a shade more effort than required. And at that precise moment, we realise... We can get them as gifts, and so we enter into The Moment. It is an important time. A significant time. Just thinking about it is making my eyes swollen with tears <sob> So beauitful! Sunrise, sunset, the cat’s in the cradle with the silver spoon, yes, we have no bananas... ALLAN ‘OH GLADYS, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?’ SKO allan@bmamag.com
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