Don't Call Me Ishmael (12 page)

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, to open the debate I call on the first speaker for the Affirmative, Kelly Faulkner, to commence her team's case.'

Kelly Faulkner stood up, walked briskly to the front of the room, took a breath, looked up and smiled. For some reason my heart decided at that moment that it could afford to skip a couple of beats before thudding back to life with a mega jolt.

‘Twang!' Razza whispered from the corner of his mouth.

I rolled my eyes and ignored him. I had no time for his childishness. This was a serious business. I had to focus all my energy on analysing, dissecting and refuting the opposition's argument. I held my pen poised over a blank sheet of paper and waited.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, madam chair,' Kelly Faulkner began calmly, ‘imagine the following scenario. A politician dedicates her life to serving her community. She devotes her time to helping …'

What was it about her voice? It sounded like … like … I don't know … like something happy … something warm … and friendly and close … like a secret … or a Christmas present or something. And those eyes … how do you make your eyes do that? How do you make your eyes smile? My eyes just sit there like a couple of dead bugs. And look at the little bulges of her cheeks … Hey, wait a minute! What was I doing? I was supposed to be listening, you know, so I could analyse, dissect, and refute.

‘… and that is our theme for tonight's debate.'

Theme? What theme? I didn't hear anything about a theme. Oh my god, I've missed the theme! I looked at Scobie. He was writing vigorously on a palm card. Thank god. At least Scobie had nailed the theme. When he had finished he stabbed a full stop and shot the note across to me with a knowing nod. I looked at the card. There was a word at the top underlined by two heavy pen strokes. That is, I was pretty sure it was a word. With Scobie's loopy, slanted writing it could have been a doodle or even a decorative border for all I knew. I was guessing and hoping that it said ‘Theme'.

Underneath that heading were three Unes of writing. They looked like rows of flattened bowling pins. I held the card closer to my eyes. I rotated and twisted it to every conceivable angle. I thought I recognised the word ‘bubblegum'. I turned back to Scobie. He smiled knowingly. I smiled back haven't-got-a-clue-ingly. This was bad. I had no idea what their theme was. I decided to just forget it. The crucial thing was to get down the main points of their argument for rebuttal.

I turned my attention back to Kelly Faulkner.

She flicked over a palm card. God, she had cute hands. I wondered what it would be like to hold one, to feel those soft little fingers. And look at her nails–they were so clean and neat, not like mine, which looked like they'd been cut with a chainsaw. And her hair–all shiny and held back with those little clips. The more I watched her the more I realised that everything about her was just so neat and cute and …

‘… Now for my second point.'

Second
point! What happened to the first point? And what about the team outline? How could I have missed the entire outline of the Affirmative case? OK. Don't panic. Just get the second point. At least I'd have
one
thing to rebut.

‘My second point is that privacy is a basic human right. Surely public figures are entitled to the same rights as everyone else. Just because someone is well known it doesn't make him or her public property. For example …'

Yeah … that's not a bad point, actually. After all, everyone's got to have some privacy, don't they? I mean, even if you are a public figure like a movie star or a politician, what gives other people the right to think that they should be allowed to know … Hold on! What am I doing? I can't
agree
with her. There has to be a counter argument. Think … think …
Think!

Clunk!

Bill Kingsley had attempted to ring the three-minute warning bell but had only succeeded in smothering it with his big mitt. A minute to go! I had to come up with something
fast. Wait, what about the Four Steps of Effective Rebuttal? I was desperate. It was worth a shot. Let's see, the opposition says that privacy is a basic human right. They are wrong because … because … because …

‘… so in conclusion …'

In
conclusion
! No, it can't be. I'm not ready!

‘… the private lives of public figures should remain private because people in the public eye are still living and breathing people–not public property.'

The audience applauded enthusiastically. Kelly Faulkner sat down. Her teammates huddled in, whispering and smiling. One of them squeezed her hand. I wondered what that would feel …
no
, forget about it … I needed to think … I needed to calm down … I needed help! Just then Scobie pushed a stack of palm cards my way. I desperately flicked through them. More rows and rows of scuttled bowling pins. Wait! Was that the letter T? Or maybe a Q? And there, was that something about a woollen balloon? Or possibly … but it was hopeless. I was just kidding myself. I was doomed. There was nowhere else to turn. Or was there?

Razza tapped me on the shoulder. He held out a card. All right! The Big Z had obviously used his superior knowledge of the Four Steps of Effective Rebuttal to blow the opposition's case apart. The Razzman to the rescue! I snatched the card and hungrily devoured his pearl of wisdom.

‘Your girlfriend's got
hot
legs!'

Orazio nudged me in the ribs, pushed out his lips and pretended to fan his face with his hand. I was dead. I was deader
than dead. There were five-thousand-year-old mummies that weren't as dead as me. I was dead to the power dead. I had no time left. The adjudicator had stopped writing and was trying to catch the eye of the chairperson. I was next up. Quickly I bundled up the blank palm cards with the useless ones Razza and Scobie had given me and pushed them aside. The chairperson began to stand. I squirmed in my seat. Something hard dug uncomfortably into my groin. I shoved my hands into my pockets looking for what I assumed was a missing pen, but my pockets were empty. What the …?

‘And now to open his team's case I call on …'

I felt around the front of my shorts. There seemed to be something
in
my pants and it wasn't part of me!

‘… the first speaker for the Negative team … Ah …'

Oh no. The Lourdes girl had squeezed her face into a prune and was squinting at her notes.

‘… Itch … meal … Les … soooer?' she said, like she was gagging on a chicken bone. Thanks again, Dad.

I snatched up my palm cards, fought with my chair and tripped my way to the front of the audience. When I got there, I told myself to relax, to breathe deeply, but my legs were performing some kind of wild tribal dance and the rest of my body seemed to be going into spasm. I clenched my palm cards and held on for dear life.

Four minutes, I told myself. Four minutes and it would all be over.

Little did I know.

It was now or never. I knew the first sentence of the speech off by heart. I looked the audience right in the space a metre or so above their eyes. My legs were jumping like jackhammers. I took a deep breath. I just hoped that when I opened my mouth something vaguely approaching recognisable words would come out.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, madam chair …' Not bad, apart from sounding like I was being strangled by one of those vibrating exercise belts. ‘Tonight my team will prove to you that … ‘ Now be careful here. Don't mess it up. ‘… that the public part of private Uves … um … the public lives of private people … wait … public figures on private property … ahhh … the private part of public property … the public … the private …' Oh my god. The topic had turned to chop suey in my mind. I had to concentrate–get it right and get it out. OK, here goes. ‘… that the private parts of public figures should be made public'

There, at last … wait on … what was that murmuring, snuffling noise? I risked a quick glance around the room. What were the audience grinning about? Why did the spiky–haired adjudicator have her mouth open? Why was that Lourdes girl choking on her water? Why was Razza lying on the desk shaking? Why was Scobie's face screwed up like a rag? What was the matter with these people? Didn't they understand that debating was a serious business?

I had no time to solve this mystery. Best just to keep going. I shifted my legs to try to stop my kneecaps from leaping off. I felt another soft jab high up in my inner thigh. What
was
that? Either there was a part of me that I didn't know about or some foreign object had made a home for itself in my pants. I slid my right hand down and lightly fingered the front of my shorts. I glanced up. Everyone's eyes were locked on my groin. I snapped my hand back to my palm card. I felt like someone had shoved my head in an oven and twirled the dial to roast. Say something, say something … say
something
!

‘Ahhh … ummm … ahhh …' Now I was cooking. ‘… before I … ah … continue with my team's case … ah … I would like to rebut … a couple of points made by the first speaker from the Affirmative team.' Yes, I definitely would have
liked
to, but unfortunately I didn't have a clue
how
to! It didn't stop me, however, from launching blindly into the Four Steps of Effective Rebuttal.

‘She said that privacy was a basic human right. This is not true because … because …'
Come on, Four Steps of Effective Rebuttal, don't desert me now.
‘… because … if everyone had
privacy … people in the magazine industry would be out of a job.'
What? Doesn't matter–keep going.
‘We say if you want privacy, then don't become a public figure.' OK, I know, not exactly brilliant, but who cares? I was home and hosed. Now it was straight to the palm cards, head down and start reading.

I looked at the first card. I saw three rows of flattened bowling pins. I flicked over to the second–more flattened bowling pins. I frantically shuffled to the third … the fourth … the fifth–an entire bowling alley of flattened bowling pins flashed before my eyes! Somehow I must have got Scobie's notes mixed up with Kingsley's. I turned over another card. Surely here I would find something intelligible. The words ‘Hubba hubba!' leered back at me. I told myself not to panic. Fortunately the next card was
very
helpful. Let's see, my first point would be that the private lives of public figures should be made public because … my girlfriend has hot legs. Yes, that would work juuuust fine. I began to shuffle through the remaining cards with skyrocketing desperation. The next card was blank. The next one … blank. Then … blank … blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.
Blanking hell!

I looked back to my desk. Bill Kingsley's palm cards were on the floor under my chair. Would the adjudicator take off points if I crawled under the desk to get them? I glanced up. Everyone was watching me and waiting. My head-oven turned itself up to ‘scorch' and my legs started doing a Riverdance. But not only that, something else was happening. Whatever had taken up residence in my pants was working loose. I could feel it slipping.

I tried to keep still, but I was so nervous my hips were shaking like a hula dancer's. The thing in my shorts dropped down another notch. I twisted my right leg in and up to stop it. I looked like I was busting to go to the loo. I fumbled with my palm cards. The ‘thing' slid lower down my thigh. It was hard and cigar-shaped. I twisted my leg further around till I was balancing on one foot. But it was no use. Whatever was down there was dropping … dropping … dropping … At the last moment I made a desperate lunge and clamped my hand on my shorts. But I was too late. A blurred object shot from my pants, bounced off the toe of my shoe and skidded across the tiles. It pulled up about two metres in front of me, spinning like a dying propeller.

I held my breath.

The spinning stopped. So did my heart.

From vast experience with such matters I can tell you that there are certain times in your life when it's best to pretend that something that obviously just happened, didn't.

‘For my first point …' I said, holding up my left index finger in a feeble attempt at a gesture.

But no one was listening. They weren't even looking at me. Every eye in the room was fixed on the old wooden clothes peg that lay on the floor. It had a big nose and a mop of dark hair.

I abandoned my first point and joined in the communal stare.

One of the Beatles had just fallen out of my pants.

I was pretty sure it was Ringo.

The next thing I knew, Prue's peg person was being swallowed by darkness. I tried to lift my head but my neck had turned to rubber and my legs seemed to have decided that it was time for beddy–byes. Then the whole room turned into a jumping castle and the last thing I saw before I passed out completely was Kelly Faulkner's face rushing towards me.

When I came to, cold and clammy, in another room, all I remember is people fussing over me and asking me if I was all right and my brain working in slow motion so that if I turned my head too quickly everything blurred then sloshed to a halt and left me dizzy.

After that there was the drive home with Razza babbling on until his mum finally said, ‘Orazio Zorzotto, for once in your life, shut up!' When we got to my place Mrs Zorzotto said she'd explain everything to my parents, and so I went straight to my room.

Of course Mum and Dad came up later and told me not to
worry about what had happened and that I had been brave and that they were proud of me. Dad also added that if anyone was going to fall from your pants it might as well be a Beatle because the Beatles were the best group there ever was. He did make the point, however, that if he had his choice he would have picked John, Paul or George to drop from his trousers because Ringo was by far the least talented. Even better still, he suggested that if there was room in my pants it would have been great to have a Fab Four reunion. I think my father might have been trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

Then Prue came in and said she was sorry one of her peg people had caused so much trouble, but she suggested that the probability of something like that happening would be astronomical and that I should feel privileged to have been part of such a mathematically improbable chain of events. I didn't. When she heard what Dad said about the Beatles she said it would have been better if it had been the Sigmund Freud peg that had fallen from my pants because of the ‘sexual connotations' and because then the whole incident could be dismissed as a ‘Freudian slip'. I wasn't sure what all that meant, so we just looked at each other for a couple of seconds and then she left.

When I went to bed that night, I was hoping that I would wake up and find that it was all a dream. (Even though Miss Tarango wouldn't have liked this, because she told us that if anyone in the class ever gave her an essay that ended with ‘it was all just a dream!' she would rip it up, bake it into a pie and make us eat it.).

Of course, when I woke up it wasn't a dream. Miss Tarango would be happy at least, but I was left feeling like a blob of that grey gunk that Dad scrapes out from our insinkerator.