The Best Australian Humorous Writing Read Free Page B

Ex-students and the older siblings of the currently aggrieved have been known to show up and settle scores. I am dropped off outside the school gates by a friend who cannot believe where I have been going on my working days. “You must be crazy!” he says. I have been to a concert, I am wearing a black velvet suit and my hair is in a plait. I am a little bit nervous, like a ballet dancer about to step out onto the stage.
    â€œDracula!” One of the Dragans has seen me arrive. The chant goes up. Ten, twenty, fifty voices, at least. And there is the sound of stamping.
    â€œDracula! Dracula! Dracula!” I hear all around me. I know this is no threat, though the apprehensive looks of some of the staff who are still outside the hall make me realise that they are nervous and not brave enough to confront the mob on my behalf. But I do not need courage, theirs or mine. I have recognised the loud beat of what is really a loving welcome. This chant and the stamping are a kind of applause.
    I feel the tears in my eyes. I try to grin but my whole face appears to be quivering, especially my mouth which is jerking wildly at the corners. This is going to be a disaster. Dracula cannot be seen to be crying.
    â€œAre you okay miss?” John is by my side. Under the cover of darkness, he has taken my right hand into his own long smooth one. My heart is ready to burst. I can see it bursting out of my chest— blood gushing everywhere, a fountain of blood where my heart used to be.
    â€œI’m okay. John, I’m fine.” But I don’t let go of his hand.

WENDY HARMER
Torn between satay skewers and children as an endangered species
    Watching my children play over these summer holidays, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only present Santa should leave under the Christmas tree is other people’s children.
    Not everyone would agree. The American satirist Fran Lebowitz once observed that “hell is other people’s children”. But for me, the most hellish six words in the English language are: “Mum, will you play with me?”
    (Come on, I know I’m not alone on this one. I’m just brave or rude enough to admit it.)
    When other people’s children come to play with mine, it’s heaven. Then I can get on with things I would rather do—such as scrub the griller tray with steel wool, or poke out my eyes with a satay skewer.
    Call me selfish and lazy if you like, but it’s the mind-numbing tedium of “imaginative play” which has me screaming for the exits— the interminable sessions of Play Doh, the fiddly craft-making, the excruciating “let’s play shops” and dress ups—anything which looks like fun on
Play School
. I figure that’s why
Play School
was invented. They have to pay actors to do this stuff with your children. Meanwhile, you can hire other people’s children to do the same, at your place, for a cheese toastie and a lime ice-block.
    The demographers tell us that the number of families with children is steadily declining in Australian society; that childless, unmarried men and women will soon be the norm, and, if and when they do have children, it will be only one or two.
    I had two children late in life and I regret I didn’t have four. My children regret it, too. They look at photos of me and my three siblings and love to fantasise about what it would have been like to have two more live-in playmates, just as I look back at photos of my father’s seven brothers and sisters and like to imagine.
    I can hear the shudders of my generation that grew up with the ideology of zero population growth as a mantra. This idea has been given new life by the present generation of child-bearing age who believe it’s not environmentally responsible to have a large family. Or is it the fear that children can be a blunt instrument with the potential to bludgeon to death personal ambitions?
    It’s all very well for me to