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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Do You Think Pinky Sounds Like a Wanker?

                                   

Look… to be fair it was eleven o’clock at night, and Scotto was tired.

But his reply was quite amusing when I rolled over in bed as we were sleepily messing around on our laptops (not a euphemism) and turned to him asking, 


“Scotto, do you think when I write my blog posts I sometimes come across as a bit of a… compulsive polysyllabricator?

“Huh?” he replied, “Please explain, Pauline?”

“I mean… am I a bit of a sesquipedalianist?”

“Still not with you, Pinky,” he yawned in my face.

“You know… big words, do you think I use too many big words in my posts?”

“It’s your blog Pinky, you can do what you want,” came his standard reply.

“What about adverbs? Do I use too many? It’s just that I don’t want to sound like a wanker.” I wailed.

“Just refresh my memory,” he replied, “what’s an adverb again?”

Anyway, I spent some time today wondering if I do indeed use a ridiculous amount of unnecessary words in my attempts at writing so I thought I’d try out a comparative exercise.

Thursday Sport
I despise Thursdays for one reason. Much to the bitter disappointment of the energetic boys in my class I’m somewhat disinclined to lug my ever-swelling torso out on to the oval to play sport in the sweltering North Queensland sun.

A few years ago, every Wednesday night I prayed for it to pour with rain on Thursday, and lo and behold it did… leading to the cancellation of Thursday P.T. (Physical Torture) for an ENTIRE term.

I began to develop delusions of grandeur imagining I might actually have a direct link to Numero Uno, whilst the P.E. teacher Alan, glowered guardedly at me from across the staff room; as if I might possibly have the numbers 666 stamped on my scalp, keep a snarling hyena in the classroom and dance naked around a pentagram in the woods each full moon.

Sadly, that never happened again and I’ve been unable to weasel my way out of Thursday sport for years. Today, after fruitlessly surveying the horizon in search of miraculous storm clouds, I reluctantly marched the throng of excitables out to the oval for a game of T Ball. We had the ball, we had the bat, but the year 5s had nicked all the Ts so what we essentially played was more like ‘softball for dummies’.

It was hot enough for a chicken to lay a boiled egg and some of the girls sensibly feigned various ailments so they could sit in the shade and gossip.

I stood in the sun with my sweat sweating and pretty much acted as safety officer, screaming at the batsmen to stop chucking the steel bat like a javelin (mostly in Pinky’s direction) every time they hit the ball. 

Suddenly I noticed Finbar crying on second base. He was holding his finger high in the air, flailing his arms and sobbing relentlessly.

“What happened, Finbar?” I asked peering at his unmarked finger.

“Matty ran into me and bit me on the finger!” he shrieked in a piercing cry.

Matty stood frozen on the spot, an expression of terror on his face.

“It was an accident, Mrs P.” he whimpered pleadingly.

“How can you accidentally bite someone?” I queried sceptically, noting the absence of blood and wondering if the near hysterical Finbar might be overreacting a tad.

“I ran into his finger with my mouth open.”

So do you see now why I hate sport?



Now if I’d written that story in an unwanky style it would have read like this.

Thursday Sport

We had to play sport today. I dislike sport. It didn’t rain and it was hot. The girls didn’t want to play and one of the boys hurt his finger.
Do you see what I mean?