The Best Australian Humorous Writing Read Free Page A

take him by the arm and lead him outside. I don’t know what I am going to say to him. I’m angry. I see that he is about to cry.
    I take him by the shoulders. He is about my own height so I am looking directly into his eyes. “You are
never
,” I whisper hoarsely as the blood comes down my face in a steady trickle, “you are
never
to throw anything again. Never, never, never!” My throat is dry. I feel myself beginning to shake. I let the boy go. I cross the paddock to get to the staffroom. John runs after me.
    â€œAre you okay miss?”
    â€œGo back to the class, John. And don’t let anyone touch Valentino.”
    When I come back to the portable, they are all miraculously quiet, working away at
I Gotta Get Outta Here.
Only a few dare to sneak a look at me. A lot of them are flushed. We get through the class without a word and then they shuffle out of the classroom shame-faced, as if they had all thrown chairs at me. Valentino is at a loss. His eyebrow is a tight line over his red eyes.
    â€œSorry miss,” he manages to whisper, as he stumbles out of the door.
    Later in the week I speak to the principal about Valentino. I do not tell him the whole story. I merely ask if the kid can have some help with controlling his temper. “He needs a good belting,” says the principal, and that’s that.
    The staff let off steam in the staffroom. There are no nice cafes, restaurants or pubs nearby. There are a few shops and a fish’n’chip place where you can get a standard ham and tomato sandwich onwhite bread, maybe with some lettuce and a slice of beetroot thrown in. So you go to the shops and take back your fish’n’chips or your sandwich to the staffroom where there is an enormous metal urn, a big tin of Maxwell House instant coffee and a bowl of tea bags. It’s a tech school. Up until recently, the staff was entirely male, and there is still the feeling that women don’t belong here. There is a big green snooker table at one end of the long rectangular room. There is smoke. Everyone smokes, except me. Much to the alarm of some of the more hard-bitten tradies, I take up snooker.
    There is some resistance, at first. You get the feeling that the wives of these blokes don’t do things like play snooker. From what I hear, they don’t do much except for domestic duties. They stay at home and give their hubbies a packed lunch to eat in the staffroom. It’s only a few of us who have to face the shops. I figure that if I don’t do something to bridge the gap between me and the tradies, I won’t ever be able to do much for the 3F–K boys in terms of a future except for keeping them moderately entertained during my allotted hours in their awful present. The phalanx of old hands—Les, Kevin, Col and the others whose names I can never remember—is the real powerhouse of the place. This group of men can make or break a kid. They can recommend him for an apprenticeship, they can develop his skills, they can keep him at school and out of the factory for a few more crucial years. I want them on my side, just in case. It’s not easy. I’m young. I’m straight from “the university” and I’m also a wog. Three strikes.
    It is incredible, but snooker and I obviously have a date with destiny. A bit like the 3F–K boys. Right from the beginning, I find I am a good player. At times, I am a fantastic player. I even show off, rather loudly for a stuck-up university graduate. The blokes stop sniggering and begin to take me seriously. It’s a deadly competitive spirit in the staffroom at the snooker table end and a winner is respected. Well, perhaps only a little in my case, but the little bit is just enough for me to be able to ask for some favours for “my boys” when things get a little rough.
    Parent–teacher night. The police come to make sure the teachers can move safely from their cars into the building.