Impractical Jokes (11 page)

To seal the deal, he had planned a function. A veritable who's who of tie industry fashionistas and the department store manageriat were invited to a cocktail party and tie-based fashion parade. Despite the lofty list of invitees, Richard didn't forget his roots. Opie Ties was a family business and as such, a select group of his nearest and dearest were also invited to give the event that personal touch.

My father duly received a formal, printed invitation in the mail. It read:

You are cordially invited to the launch of
the new range of Opie Ties
In conjunction with David Jones department stores
Thursday 17 August, 1988.
Cocktails At 8
Dress: Hawaiian

Dad was excited. Finally a highbrow social event where looking like an idiot was not only sanctioned but mandated. Not only that, but it was the ultimate opportunity to unveil the Hilo Hattie's three-piece Hawaiian ensemble he'd had made for him while on a family holiday to the aloha state.

It was without a doubt the ugliest triumvirate of tailor-made clothing in the history of the world. The three pieces themselves were all made from matching fabric that could best be described as audiovisual. One first had to overcome the noise created by a palate of primary, secondary and tertiary colours, as well as a few that apparently dropped out of school altogether. Once adjusted to the volume, the viewer was treated to an overwhelming collection of hibiscus flowers, pineapples and palm trees. Just so there was no confusion as to the outfit's origin, the word ‘Hawaii' was also stamped across it diagonally from left shoulder to right hip. The three pieces were a short-sleeved shirt, a pair of three-quarter length knickerbockers and a matching legionnaire's cap with an extra long back flap. It was a fashion monstrosity and had the unique ability of making anyone who wore it look both tropical and mentally retarded. If you put Henry Kissinger in this outfit, you would expect the first words to come out of his mouth to be, ‘I'm a big boy. I dressed myself. I like traffic lights.'

On the drive to the party, Dad wore the hat. He didn't have to wear the hat. He
chose
to wear the hat. The way he saw it, there was no point limiting his audience to the cocktail party guest list when there was a whole world out there he could entertain. Without the hat, the people he drove past would have seen him merely as a guy in an awful shirt. The world is full of
them
. With the hat, he immediately became
someone
going
somewhere
. He had the power to be a conversation starter just by pulling up at the lights, and he played the part. He sat up straight, head tilted at a proud, semi-regal angle; eyes always facing ahead, save for a few mannered and conspicuous glances at his blind spot. It was impossible to behold this man without wondering who he was and where he was going.

I feel like this says a lot about my dad. It's like when you rent a dinner suit for a Friday night function. If that suit isn't due back until Monday, come Saturday morning you begin to hear a little voice. The little voice starts out asking, ‘What else do you have on this weekend?' It quickly moves on to, ‘What outing isn't improved by wearing a dinner suit?' Once you start to listen to that voice, it's a matter of time before you're at the football in a tuxedo. My dad will always listen to that voice.

The drive to the party was one of those moments that makes me feel for my mother. A lot of the time the only witnesses to my dad's childish behaviour were people close enough to understand. Mum could just laugh along and occasionally throw in a well-timed roll of the eyes, a knowing look or a little ‘you know Ron' for good measure. But when the wider community shared the insanity, my mother had few places to hide. As the Hibiscus Express made various stops, garnering confused looks as it went, Mum gradually gave up on becoming invisible. She instead began working on a facial expression that could say, ‘in the short time that we are stopped here it would be impossible to communicate the context that would make you understand my husband'. Make no mistake, my mother loves his antics. Whenever things get bumpy, it is their shared sense of humour that gets them through and she wouldn't swap him for anything in the world. At the same time, she knew that this would not be the only opportunity she would have to work on that particular look. In short, it is safe to say that they each arrived at the party with a different sense of how the drive went.

With a spring in his step, my father entered the party first. He walked through the door to stunned silence. The bar stopped serving drinks, the record player skipped and two hundred people turned to look at him. Two hundred people were simply unable to carry on their conversation above the noise of Dad's outfit. Two hundred people were in silent awe of this fusion of fabric and nausea. Two hundred people in black tie were all focused on my father, who was apparently dressed to play the lead in a mentally challenged production of
South Pacific
.

As it turned out my mother didn't look too out of place. She had worn a simple floral sarong with a hibiscus behind her ear and had it not been the dead of winter, she would have fitted in completely. As it was she drew a constant stream of praise and flattery. The general consensus at the party was that she was the very picture of grace. Not only did she look so lovely, but she was so caring and compassionate the way she doted on her clearly brain-damaged husband.

My father doesn't take kindly to being made to look brain-damaged. As discussed, he may take some pride in doing that for himself, however, he chooses to do so on his terms. He would not soon forget the sting of tropical indignity. He could always handle self-inflicted embarrassment, but embarrassment at the hands of others could never be allowed to go unpunished.

Needless to say, Richard's take on the evening was a very positive one. The launch itself was a resounding success. The clients were happy, the press were glowing and the guests were thoroughly entertained. On a personal level, it was an especially proud night for him. Not only had Opie Ties arrived on the national department store scene to a very warm welcome, but he even found time to serve his best mate a cheeky appetiser of payback washed down with a nice big glass of abject humiliation.

Despite, or possibly because of, my father's ridiculous appearance, David Jones inked the deal soon after. Part of the deal required that Richard take out a month's worth of advertising in the Saturday morning papers. For four consecutive weeks, full-page advertisements would tell the world of the arrival of Opie Ties on the nation's shelves. This represented the largest ad buy Richard had ever made and he was petrified. This would cost him thousands upon thousands of dollars, and in his mind, anything could go wrong: he could send the wrong photo; he could send the wrong slogan, or worst of all, do something that would put David Jones offside. Over a beer, Richard explained to Dad just how worried he was.

‘What if the paper comes out advertising Opie Ties now available at Bavid Bones?'

‘Well, I think that's highly unlikely.'

‘That we wouldn't notice the typo?'

‘That you'd use a ‘B' twice. I mean typos happen all the time, but two Bs in a row, that would be extraordinary.'

‘You're not helping, Ron.'

‘I didn't realise I was supposed to be helping.'

‘Ron, I'm just so worried that we'll make a mistake.'

In the end the only real mistake he made was mentioning his fear to my father.

On the first Saturday the ad was to run, a nervous Richard Opie made his way out to the footpath to collect his paper. It had been delivered earlier and, as is the practice with home-delivered newspapers in the post-Cold War era, came rolled up in a tight cylinder which was comprehensively wrapped in cling film. From what I can tell the practice of hermetically sealing newspapers is aimed at delivering two major advantages. First, it increases the newspapers' ability to withstand water damage, by all accounts a traditional weakness of newspaper. Second, the increased aerodynamics enable the delivery boy to get genuine momentum from his throw, thus increasing the number of truly interesting and hard to reach places from which one may expect to retrieve their paper. Yet on the morning in question, Richard found his newspaper waiting neatly in the middle of his driveway. He tucked the laminated news tube under his arm and headed inside to allay all concerns he had about the campaign. What he didn't know was that on that particular morning, the paper had actually been thrown four feet into a small shrubbery that bordered his driveway. Or at least that's where my father found it, before promptly exchanging it for the previous week's newspaper.

When Richard tore into the cling wrap and started furiously flicking through the pages of the paper, his thoughts were not of news. He was hunting only for his ad. Page after page was scanned in an instant, looking only for a photo of a tie and an absence of capital Bs. It was on the third pass that the swearing began.

‘Bloody hell. Cheryl!'

‘What is it, Richard?'

‘Bloody hell!'

‘Yes?'

‘Damn!'

‘What
is
it Richard?!'

Whilst it had all the appearance of a conversation, no actual information was being exchanged. Cheryl, frustrated, was keen to get on board, but Richard's train of thought had well and truly left the station. It was by pure chance that it stopped to collect her at all.

‘It's not here.'

‘What's not there?'

‘Shit.'

‘What's not there, Richard?'

‘The ad! The bloody ad!'

‘Are you sure it's not there?'

Richard was now waving the paper wildly above his head.

‘How many effing thousand dollars have we spent on this effing ad and the effing thing isn't even effing there.'

‘Is it really that bad?'

‘Yes. Yes it is, Cheryl. There's actually quite a good chance that we are now effed. And if . . .'

As he lowered the paper, he trailed off. The front page had taken his attention. The headline wasn't particularly exciting and the story itself was of little consequence, but the photo was strangely familiar.

‘Bastard!'

‘What now?

‘Bastard.'

‘Who?'

‘Pickering.'

‘Ronnie?'

‘Bastard.'

‘Why?'

‘This is last week's paper, Cheryl.'

‘Bastard.'

‘That's right, Cheryl. Bastard.'

Seven days later it was a far more vigilant Richard Opie who trundled out to the footpath. He picked up his watertight scroll, checked the date, smiled and walked inside.

Satisfied that he was in possession of the correct newspaper, Richard flicked through it at a leisurely pace. He took time to actually read a few articles. Then he lazily filled in a little of the crossword and even checked the comics. A quarter of an hour later he knew that seven down was ‘hubris', Garfield still hated Mondays and everything appeared to be in order. He even poured himself a second cup of coffee before he went looking for his ad.

‘Bastard.'

When Cheryl looked up, she saw Richard's seething face, framed by a perfect rectangle of newspaper. That morning my father had meticulously unwrapped Richard's paper, used a scalpel to remove the ad and re-wrapped it, placing it back out the front of Richard's house with no visible signs of tampering.

By the time another week had passed, my father had had a fortnight to get to work on his real plan. For two weeks he had aggressively collected newspapers. On top of the ones we had delivered to our house each day, Dad gathered up those delivered to my grandparents, the one from work and the two real estate funded local papers that came once a week. To really get the numbers up, Dad even harvested papers from unsuspecting friends and neighbours, and I was more than happy to help out as the lead player in an elaborate cover story.

According to the scam I was a burgeoning artist who would gratefully accept all possible help in achieving my vision. We would drop in on people and Dad would do the talking while I stood by looking wistful and doing everything I could to tug on their heart strings.

‘You haven't got any old newspapers lying around, have you?'