FOOD & ENTERTAINMENT
Bamboo Cottage Everybody wants to CHINESE RESTAURANT ruler the world By Stuart McCullough ONCE upon a time, there was paper. Using either a pen or pencil, it was customary to write on sheets of paper in order to communicate with others. This was before the computer made the art of handwriting almost wholly redundant. Back then, a tweet was something you wrote down, put in an envelope and mailed to another person. Several weeks later, you might receive a response to your written missive. Granted, it was painstakingly slow, but the world was a better place for it. It was an era when it was okay not to know what Lady Gaga had for breakfast and Shane Warne’s thoughts on almost everything remained his alone. It was, in other words, a paradise. In primary school, the first task of the day was always to copy down whatever the teacher had written on the blackboard. I often wish I had paid more notice. Even then I found copying down someone else’s work tiresome and really didn’t give the task my full attention. As a result, my attempts to transcribe the day’s date resembled an ant that had been dipped in ink and sent on a one-way trek. If only I’d paid more attention, I feel my handwriting could have been better. We were only allowed to write in printed script. At that time, cursive script was regarded with awe as something that only grownups were allowed to do. Our teachers argued that printing was easier to read and that I was just the exception to the rule. But it wasn’t only my handwriting that left much to be desired – my style of presentation more broadly meant I was doomed to fail. We would write in exercise books, with a different book for each subject. But before a single letter was added to the page, there was the matter of ruling a border. There were many ways to go about this seemingly simply preparatory task. Perhaps inevitably, I took the most direct and least imaginative approach possible: I placed my ruler to the left of the page and drew a red line down the side. For me, it was something I had to get out of the way before getting on with the real business of school. Others, however, spent more time preparing their borders than they did on their actual class work. They too began with a simple line. Then they broke out the big guns. I only ever had regular pens, but some of my classmates were lucky enough to own the Titanic of biros – the four-in-one pen. A simple click of a button was all it took to transport you away from everyday blue ink to something as full-on exotic as green. Truth is, green ink serves very little practical purpose and exists largely for decorative
purposes. From a simple border would spring decorative patterns and flowers that made my pages seem impossibly dull. By lesson’s end, the paper would be so heavily inked that it looked like a Comanchero. Their borders were, frankly, bordering on the ridiculous. As you go through school, your relationship to your stationery begins to change. A ruler is no longer something with which to create a very dull and uninspired border. It becomes the site on which you declare your allegiances to particular bands or, if you were particularly bold, another person. Before people announced their relationship status to the world through Facebook, they used to do it on either the ruler or pencil case. In the event that the relationship ended, of course, this would cause all manner of awkwardness, requiring either that the name be blotted out or turned into something else. Much as when people are forced to remove one of their “My Family” stickers, the results were always far from perfect. But rulers were more than just mere billboards. In the schoolyard, there were many ways in which you could settle your differences, but rulers were the weapon of choice for discerning students. There were other options, though. I lived in fear that, one day, a fellow student would issue an invitation to meet behind the shelter shed. I would avoid these confrontations, even though I knew it meant being called “chicken”. Some students preferred the brutality of the compass, but the device was eventually banished, ensuring an entire generation would be useless when it came to drawing a curved line. A ruler, however, was always to hand. It was as simple as it was cruel. All you had to do was hold out your ruler and allow someone else to use theirs to strike it as hard as they could. The object was to split your opponent’s weapon, rendering it useless. Moving your ruler out of the way at the last second was the best way to avoid a strike but was strictly prohibited. Any deviation at all would result in the other person getting a free go. The sound of splintering wood was the sound of defeat. It’s been years since I owned a ruler. The need to put a border on anything simply doesn’t arise. Soon, paper too will be a thing of the past. Even now, I regularly receive emails that invite me to think about the environment before printing it. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to sit quietly and observe a minute’s silence or just feel guilty that I’ve accidentally printed 87 copies rather than the one I needed. If I’m caught, I fear receiving an email invite to meet behind the shelter shed. stuart@stuartmccullough.com
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Western Port News 10 December 2013
PAGE 43