McNaughty: All you could ever want in an English teacher

I have been meaning to do an entry about my school days, but I inevitably end up deleting them. I think there is just too much material. But I guess you have to start somewhere, so I will do my best. I will start with my teachers.

Now, unlike most hipster types, I loved high school. I was smart so my teachers liked me but I was also considered funny so I got along with my classmates just fine as well. After awhile I realised that for some reason I could do just about anything and my teachers would let me get away with it. I have no idea why this was. I think it was because I was charming or something, or maybe it was just the fact that no matter how much I acted up in class I would always hand in my work on time and get excellent grades, so there wasn't much they could do to stop me. After awhile I started actively seeing what I could get away with.

The best example of this came one day while I was wandering the halls absentmindedly during class time. I ran into one of my English teachers.

"Shouldn't you be in class, miss?" I said sternly. She got embarrassingly far into a rambling excuse before she realised that I was the student and she was the teacher, and not only did she not have to explain herself to me, but that I should probably have been in class too. I'm not sure how many people could have got away with that, but I did.

That was my favourite teacher, hands down, ever. She was a lady who we will call McNaughty. This was actually what I called her when I was at school, but I figure it's not something she will find by googling herself so I'm safe. She was sensational. Every year when her birthday would come around she would sit at her desk and sigh loudly. With one arm lazily supporting her head, she would say that if anyone was going to buy her anything could it please be a bottle of Jack Daniels? Obviously no-one ever did. In the circumstances that high school students get their hands on full bottles of Jack Daniels, they are not turning it over voluntarily to their teachers.

But me, I'm a social rebel. I defy conventions. I kiss when I have coldsores. Yes, I'm that badass. In year 12, myself and a friend of mine had a free period directly before her class. I had turned 18 by this stage so I decided to actually buy her that bottle of Jack once and for all. I can still remember walking in to class and putting it on her desk. She had this strange way of laughing where she sounded like she thought whatever you did was very funny, but she still hated her job and wanted to kill herself. She would shake her head and roll her eyes, but she would still be laughing.

From there, that friend and I went out in our free period every second Tuesday and bought her some kind of gift, the more bizarre the better. We would trawl the local op-shops and discount stores looking for the ultimate prize. Every fortnight we had the pressure of having to out-weird our previous finds. The last one we found was the only one I really remember, but it really was the best one. It was a cigarette lighter, but when you went to use it a tune would play and lights would flash. There was also a topless man on it who would change position when you adjusted the angle. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Every time we gave her one of her gifts, she would laugh that same laugh. I like to think that it sounded more sincere every time, but it's hard to tell based on memory alone.

The biggest sign that she appreciated our efforts came on my graduation day. She caught up with the both of us after the ceremony and handed us each a little bag, the type you put birthday gifts in when you can't be bothered with the endless frustrations of wrapping paper. A variety of wonders were contained within. I remember mine included a plastic lei, a small bottle of sparkling wine (which we were on strict orders to not reveal to anybody) and a mix cd of her favourite songs from the 80s. It was the best thing. I also remember her borrowing my phone that day to send a message to one of my friends, masquerading as me. The recipient knew straight away that it was a phony because she had used a lot of text abbreviations and my messages were always completely grammatically correct. I find this ironic, considering the message had been written by my English teacher.

The year after I graduated I ended up going to her house and getting drunk with her. We turned her living room rug into a dance floor and thrashed away to trashy 80s pop. She was a lesbian, but don't worry, it wasn't anything like that. She was just really freakin cool. Every now and then I would text her when I was out drinking, encouraging her to come out but she never would.

Naturally, we lost contact after awhile. I have no idea if she is still teaching at that school, or if she has decided to cut herself off from everyone whose name does not start with 'Jack' and end with 'Daniels'. I don't have her number any more, but I probably have her old email address somewhere on my computer. Maybe I will drop her a line someday.

-Smackie Onassis

The Dude Ranch, and it's Glorious Art Installations

As I have previously mentioned, the Dude Ranch is not what you'd call a "normal" household. There is random junk all over the place - for a while if you were to ask where the coffee was, you would have received the honest answer of "In the kitchen, in a top hat". More recently I was struggling to find a pillow, which I eventually found in the bath.

There was also a time when Vegatrain and I were battling modern art installations. He started by affixing about 4 cans of air freshener to the bathroom wall. I responded with this piece of soapy genius:

I call it "Dishes". Basically I realised that of the dirty dishes, there seemed to be two of just about everything. And we had two drying racks. So, yes. I washed them and then arranged them as they were intended to be arranged. I am sure I was channeling a higher dishwashing power with that one.

The success of this installation was clear in that no-one touched it for several days, despite the fact that there are four of us, all of whom eat food on plates. I suppose we decided we could sacrifice that in the name of art.

-Smackie Onassis

One Degree Of Seperation, Where "Separation" Actually Means Professional Writing

I have mixed feelings about the course I did at uni. I had actually wanted to take some time off to figure out what I wanted to do with myself but everyone sort of convinced me that because I was good at writing, I should do a course that would teach me how to write for a career.

My major was in journalism, although I was discouraged pretty early. The attitude of most of my journalism professors was something along the lines of:

"Guys, don't become a journalist. Don't ever do it, not ever, not if you want to maintain a will to live. The hours are crap, the pay is crap and if you want to make a living you basically have to work for a company that will sell your journalistic integrity on Ebay and pocket the proceeds."*

There was also the fact that, in journalism, it doesn't mean shit if you have a degree or not. You can graduate with honours, but a newspaper will laugh you out onto the street if you can't show them a portfolio of published works. I knew this, but I continued with the degree because I was under the impression that they might actually teach us something useful.

This is how my degree was structured:

Professional Writing 101 -> Lengthy rehashings of subjects covered in Professional Writing 101 -> Irrelevant filler subjects -> Electives

Admittedly, this is probably because I went to a university whose focus was clearly more on bringing in the dollars than actually giving people a useful education. I am sure there are similar degrees at other institutions that are of a much higher quality. I, however, made the foolish choice of trusting a school who had recently been in the news for passing students who could barely write a coherant sentence, solely because they didn't want to lose a full-fee-paying student.

That being said, my degree wasn't a total bust. Some of the topics were quite good, media interviewing in particular was one I enjoyed, as was radio production (funnily enough, I had the same teacher for both these subjects, who was great. She was actually a woman I had known for most of my life, and even done amateur theatre with. She was an excellent teacher). The electives I chose were great, and I actually did learn a few things. Linguistics gave me an even larger basis for being a total language nerd, Film Studies introduced me to the wonderful works of Jim Jarmusch. If you haven't seen Dead Man, watch it now. I am not even kidding. This blog will be here when you get back.

However, the single easiest High Distinction I ever received in my university career was in a little subject called "Introduction to Guitar". This was in the second semester of my second year. I had realised that I still had one elective left to fill, and while browsing the various topics I stumbled across that one. 'Super,' I thought, 'I could do with honing my guitar skills and getting credit points for it'. I signed up to the class.

What I didn't realise was that this was a course aimed at education students, designed for people who had never looked at a guitar before. I was no prodigy on the instrument, my previous experience being based around fiddling with chords in my room as I attempted to teach myself. However, not meaning to talk myself up or anything, but with ten years of classical piano training under my belt, as well as six years of saxophone lessons and five of singing lessons, it was safe to say I knew what an octave was.

Of course, I could have dropped out at any point after realising how basic the course content was, but I didn't. It was just too much of a self-esteem boost. I was not at my most confident at that stage, and to be doing a course where I was top of the class while doing literally no work was pretty excellent. While everyone else struggled to pluck out the melody to Three Blind Mice, they would look over at me in awe as I played it through with no mistakes.

"I am going to rock these three blind mice so hard, their sight will be restored," I would say, as every one else swooned at my feet. 

Ok, so maybe that's an exaggeration, and maybe playing simple tunes is not so impressive for someone with my musical experience, but it really was "Self-Esteem 101" for me. Because the majority of the assessment was based on in-class performance, I literally had to do no work outside of class. There were a few worksheets on scales and chord structures, but I pretty much filled them out on the bus on my way to class, so that doesn't really count. It is a bit ironic that the best grade I received in uni was for the class where I did the least work, but you know me. I dig irony. I love that shit.

Unfortunately, I ended up dropping out of the degree in my final year, feeling that my time would be better spent spiraling into a deep-seated, existential depression and ultimately moving halfway across the country to be with a guy I had known for a month. It was fairly spontaneous, yes, but it was actually one of the best decisions I ever made.

-Smackie Onassis

*They didn't say those exact words, but that was the general gist of it. I am now wondering if I can actually put my journalistic integrity on ebay. I might try this, actually.