Month: February 2012

Rejoice with me

The anniversary of my father’s death falls on 27 February. I don’t always remember the significance of this day when it comes around, but this year I did.

From time to time on Monday last I reflected on the fact that thirty years earlier when my first daughter was only ten days old my father died.

Strange then – uncanny even – that on 27 February this year, 2012, I had word in the form of an email, that I have passed my PhD.

Yes folks, rejoice with me. I am a happy soul, at least for the moment until the thrill wears off. After all, one of my motives in beginning this thesis, one of my less noble motives, as I have written elsewhere, was to prove myself to my father, who in my mind did not believe that girls could ever amount to much in the academic sphere.

Boys had the brains, or so my father believed. Girls were good for making babies, keeping house and I dare not spell out the rest. Misogynistic for sure.

But I shall not belabour the point here. In any case, this part of my journey is almost done, and once I wear the floppy hat at the designated ceremony, whenever that happens, I shall be able to use the honorific, too. What fun.

I have spent the best part of my life trying to get over the idea – deep-seated in my psyche – that I am an unintelligent, ignorant soul who cannot think. There are many reasons for this view as I now understand but the little girl in the picture below did not. I have exonerated her. She stands here on the left with two of her sisters, unaware of what the future holds.

Thank you, my fellow bloggers, for all your help. There is a section in my thesis dedicated to you all and to blogging as a form of expression that connects with what I have written about elsewhere and here earlier in this blog as a desire for revenge.

I trembled at my decision to include it. Blogging is not usually considered an academic pursuit, though theorising about it can be.

And so my blog life features in my thesis as do so many other aspects of the autobiographical impulse.

I now feel exonerated in my decisions to write as I have done, experimentally in many ways, at least in a thesis, but those three good people who examined my work were happy enough with the results to give me a pass, accompanied by some useful and positive comments, and some more critical as well. To top it off I don’t need to make any changes to the thesis as I submitted it for the purpose of getting my PhD, and this is such a bonus.

Now begins the difficult task of turning my thesis into a book that might be read by others outside of the academy.

The examiners’ comments make sense to me, and so I go off on my day with a load lifted from my shoulders. Rejoice for me.

Just doing his job

The young man at the counter seemed pleasant enough, his dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. It was hot and we were in a hurry to get home. Last stop the bottle shop to collect a couple of bottles of wine and a few cans of gin and tonic, the UDL brand, the stuff I enjoy on a hot day.

‘Where’s your proof of age,’ the man said to my eighteen-year-old daughter who stood beside me.
‘It’s not for her,’ I said. ‘It’s for me.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘No proof of age, no sale.’
‘But I’m not buying it for her. It’s for me.’
‘Sorry, that’s the law. No proof of age, no sale.’

She could have been my best friend’s daughter. She could have been anyone, but because we were together they questioned my right to buy alcohol in the mistaken belief I was buying it for her.

‘But it’s for me, not for her,’ I said again.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s the law. I could get fined $6000.00.’
‘It’s absurd.’
‘It’s the law.’
‘If I go out now and go elsewhere then come back alone later, will you sell it to me then?’ I asked. My daughter tugged at my arm to leave.
The young man shook his head. ‘Coles Liquorland is over the way. You can go there.’

We left the store. I would have battled on but my daughter was mortified.
‘You re such an embarrassment screeching at him like that. It’s not his fault. He’s just doing his job.’

She’s right, of course. He was just doing his job, but a little too rigidly I fear.

Now I don’t know what to do with my rage. I can’t believe it. It’s worse than having the supermarket staff routinely inspect your bags, as if you were a thief.

Maybe all my anxiety and rage at other things gets puddled into this pool. I am livid. Even as I understand the rules about not selling alcohol to minors. Even as I understand the need for young folk who look under twenty five to have proof of their age when buying alcohol.

‘I told you I didn’t want to go in,’ my daughter said to me. ‘You’re such an embarrassment.’

My husband was more empathic. And so we went back later after work to buy said wine and gin and tonic. I saw the young man filling shelves at the back of the shop. I smiled at him. He smiled back. I suspect he did not recognise me from earlier in the day until I said to him that I’d come back, but this time with my husband who was clearly not underage.

I smiled again, in what I thought was a friendly smile, a smile to make peace perhaps. He might have seen it as provocative.
‘I can’t allow you to buy anything within the same day,’ he said.
‘You’re kidding,’ I said.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ my husband said, and called for the manager.

For the next ten minutes we argued with the young man and his manager. The young man had formed the impression that because my daughter had carried those cans of gin and tonic to the counter they were for her. She had no proof of age – she had left her wallet at home – therefore, no purchase.

I can now tolerate the notion that he thought I was buying alcohol for my daughter who had no proof of age, but that he could not then sell me anything six hours later on the premise that I would go home and give it to my daughter continues to enrage me.

The manager in the end let us buy what we had come in for in the belief that we were genuine. But next time, he said, just make sure your daughter has her proof of age.

By the look of things there won’t be a next time, at least not for a while. My daughter is too mortified to be seen in this shop with or without me.

I have not been able to get this situation out of my head. Is it the business of being refused? Is it the stuff of being made to feel guilty or bad? Sure, I have taken it personally, which I need not have done, but it is the second guessing that goes on in such a young man’s mind that bugs me.

Is it the firmness of youth that he should take things so seriously? That he cannot discriminate. The rules are the rules.

The idea that he could not serve me in the twenty four hours following that purchase. How literal must he be?

I do not know how, but this situation has leached into my consciousness and gotten under my skin in a way that I might only understand in the fullness of time.

I begin to feel like a criminal.

Is it because I was buying alcohol and alcohol is loaded for me? My ancestry?
Is it because as a child I once travelled on trains without a ticket and shoplifted lollies from the milk bar? Is the legacy of my childhood wrong-doing catching up with me? Or is it because I am sensitive to rules that have an arbitrary and ambiguous quality?