Hello....Dickhead!

As a child I received my primary education at our local neighborhood school.  Lugarno Public School, still standing, is located in an outlying suburb of Sydney.  In the late sixties and early seventies, my attitude and behavior were monitored closely by a traditional headmaster and headmistress, included corporal punishment (being struck across the hands, fingers and/or legs with a yardstick made of solid cane), and stoic teachers who pointed at the blackboard (chalkboard) with a ruler, spoke clearly and concisely, and never repeated themselves.  Disobedience was tolerated only for as long as it took to meter out swift and immediate punishment.  My school uniform included long pants and a tie, and disrespect of the institution’s dress code was also corrected without threat or warning, often in front of piers, and if not, then before the school assembly. 

This type of discipline, strict though it may have been, served several benefits.  First, there was never any doubt as to what was expected of me.  I always knew what the limits were and what the consequences of a boundary trespass would bring.  Unfortunately, knowledge does not automatically or necessarily preclude one from playing the fool.  Once, during an all school assembly, myself and three other mates (closest friends) decided to have a bit of fun.  It was the tradition at all assemblies to first sing together Australia’s national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” followed by a chorus or two of perhaps my homelands most beloved and sacred song, Banjo Patterson’s Waltzing Matilda.  We had, somewhere and somehow, recently learned a rather dirty version of the song.   As the rest of the school sang to the rhythm of the headmistress’s waving arm, we four belted out our filthy substitution, flailing our own arms about with great exaggeration, much to the horror and/or amusement of our classmates.

 

We did not go undetected by the eagle eye of the school’s main disciplinarian, Mrs. Burly.   Mrs. Burly was in fact put together from the ground up, just as her name suggested, and she had the ability to intimidate with a simple look.  She pulled me and the other three Pythonesque vocalists quickly out of line, her somehow superhuman grip corralling us all.  Discipline and punishment (both separate things when I was a kid) soon followed. 

A second, although unintended by-product of all this behavior training was the installation of a sometimes overwhelming desire to bend or break the rules, even in the face of a certain and severe caning.  At Lugarno Public School there was a play area we dubbed, “The Green Patch.”  It wasn’t green.  There were some gum trees (eucalyptus) and some paper bark or ghost gum trees, dirt and not much else.  It was, however, located in one corner of the school grounds and shared a boarder with the street, separated only by a shoulder high fence.  It was rather easy to keep an eye out for teachers or tattle tales.  Somehow, somewhere, one of us had learned a new game and decided to share it.  The game was called, “Hello Dickhead.”  It was a simple game.  We would stand as a group very near the shoulder high fence and wait for someone to walk by on the sidewalk, outside the school grounds.  (Back then people used to walk places).  As someone approached we would pretend to be deep in conversation, and then just as our victim was passing, one of us would loudly say, “Hello, Dickhead!”  Until you have heard “Hello Dickhead” in a long drawn out belligerent Aussie accent, you just haven’t lived.  “Hello,” sounds more like, “Hah..looooh,” with the last word pronounced in a sharp, clipped, sing-song manner.  We would all immediately pretend to act as though we had not heard anything save our own conversation.   As our target moved out of range, we would collapse with laughter over the confusion or reactions we could get.

Of course, it not last did long, and we were nowhere near as funny or as clever as we presumed.  Sometime later, several days after we had begun our new favorite recess and lunch hour pastime, the four of us were summoned to the headmaster’s office right out of class.  As we walked into his office we were met by the headmaster, a woman who had been one of our latest victims and Mrs. Burly…lightly tapping her yard stick cane against her black leather shoe.

What does this have to do with cycling, you may ask?  I would answer, “nothing much,” except that yesterday, while out on a ride, someone in a car cut me off… not once, but twice within the distance of a city block.  The first time, they tried to speed past and make a right hand turn into a drive way.  It’s a common problem and one I am forever on guard for.  (People don’t always realize that a cyclist can often keep up with the flow of traffic in town.  They don’t realize, or don’t perceive the speed a cyclist may be traveling  and make critical errors, sometimes with tragic results).  I yelled loudly enough to get his attention, upon which he abandoned his illegal and dangerous maneuver and whipped back into the lane.  A short minute later, he tried the same thing, again speeding up to pass me to attempt to enter a driveway.  I yelled again, and he swerved sharply back into our lane.  We arrived together at a stoplight, and he rolled down his passenger window and leaned over in my direction.  I half bent toward him but had already decided I wasn’t going to be intimidated. 

“Hello Dickhead…,” left my lips before I even knew it was lined up and ready for departure.  It even sounded Australian in tone (my Aussie accent having been warn away and replaced with an American one decades ago) and had a sarcastic flavor that tasted good as it floated through my front teeth… and into his open passenger window.  The words hung in the air between us we both waited for the lights to change.  He had not responded, but I could tell by his shifting gaze at the stop light just what he intended.  I hunkered down over the handlebars like I was already in a downhill race.  He crept forward toward the line in his car as I tightened every muscle in anticipation for the green.  Tension built between us the lights turned yellow in the other direction and we waited like warriors for our turn.   As soon as the traffic beacon signaled our lane to go, the driver stabbed at his accelerator.  At the very last second, as he lurched of the line, I once again yelled into his open passenger window.  “Goodbye Dickhead!” 

While he angrily screeched across the intersection in a cloud of tire smoke, I casually mounted up and turned right, having already been at my destination the entire time.

I don’t really miss my youth at all, and there are many who might say that I never left it behind….which is OK with me.  Had I not had any discipline training as a child, I may well have lived a very different life.  Perhaps I may even have become the kind of dickhead who knows no better than to drive like a moron and challenge cyclists to drag races.  Sometimes I wish old Mrs. Burly was here with me now.  How great it would be just to look in her direction for that disapproving glare, or that all knowing, barely perceptible nod of approval in times of decision or strife.  Somehow, at the intersection with my “friend”  I think she would have approved of my solution.