Hard Yakka

Nothing written for a while due to the combined effects of moving house – again – don’t ask, there is a bizarre reason that is quite simply explained – and the general business of maintaining the houseload of small and not so small entertainers we have.

 

Entertainer could be replaced with the word performer, as there’s been a few perfomances too. The youngest has learned some very attention-grabbing phrases (no-one’s to blame in particular as there are numerous sources) from “shut up” to “you’re stupid”, to “no! I’m doing it”.

 

Examples of their usage probably aren’t needed as everyone can picture a two and a half year old toddler telling her four and a half year old sister to shut up amid several well-aimed shoves and pushes. Of course getting to the bottom of why such an altercation started in the first place, let alone who started it is not only pointless but as easy as catching the mysterious person who writes on the walls in geen pen; either way it’s suffice to say it was definitely one of them! And besides that they’ve all perfected the standard answer; “it wasn’t me!”

 

Their slightly older but not eldest brother has picked up several new dexterity skills with his hands and can now communicate with one, two or a combination of fingers. School, the great educator. I was at school with him the other morning and stayed for his news turn at assembly. He took the mike and told the school of his first goal of the football season and sporting player of the week award for the Cusaders and you immediately forget the trivialities of learning that they go through. He’s going to learn a lot more rude hand signs, not to mention language on the football field that’s for sure!

 

And so the learning curve steepens and being as we’re all on it a periodic look back never hurt anyone. The eldest sister of the Tribe of Five is fairly racing along this curve. She knows so much already it’s amazing. All about working long hours at the hair salon, including training courses and the odd party, all about friends and relationships, all about honesty, truth and lies and certainly everything there is to know about mobile phones, text messaging and spending hours with little white wires stuck in her ears. Still hasn’t learnt that you don’t have to save each page of an MS Word document as a separate file and only recently learnt what a ‘siege’ is but the rest of life man, we’re a full time, hot-shot, ace pilot expert. Yoh!

 

But we battle on, discuss things a lot, sometimes have our moments of explosive emotion, discuss things a little more, utter the odd expletive (no, really…), settle on a plan, finally discuss things again and then promptly throw said plan straight out the window at the next PMT-induced episode of snappy-tongued stropping, shrieking and shrugging. And amazing as it sounds when you ask a teenager what they value most in a person’s character they invariably come back with the word respect. How about that for double standards? Or is that irony?

 

It’s bloody Hard Yakka no matter which way you mash it.