Impractical Jokes (18 page)

‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!'

Mothers have an unmatched ability to make involuntary noises of an infinitely entertaining quality. It's as though three sentences want to say themselves at once and come bursting past the lips together, like shoppers at a boxing day sale who all want the same fridge. The result being that each word is completely audible but, taken as a whole, the outburst makes no sense. Invariably delivered in the key of squawk, the overall effect is nothing short of spellbinding. The sad thing is that the mother never sees the humour in it, a fact my mother had no hesitation in pointing out once she had landed back on solid ground.

By the time she had returned to earth the garage door had closed itself. When she opened the door again, Gavin was still there only now my dad was next to him, on his knees laughing, pounding his thigh with his fist. He was
very
pleased with himself.

After that there was no limit to the variety and frequency of the circumstances in which Dad would surprise us with his full-sized Gavin Wanganeen. He would be waiting in the toilet for you. He'd hide in the pantry. Some mornings my mum would walk into the kitchen to make cups of tea, only to find Gavin standing at the kettle. Some days Dad would leave the house, pull up out in the street, get Gavin out of the boot of his car, walk around the back of the house and leave Gavin at the back door to greet poor Sandy, our once-a-fortnight cleaning lady. Every time Gavin made an appearance, whoever found him made the same noise.

‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!'

Have you ever woken in the night to find one of the AFL's leading footballers standing very still in your bedroom? I have. And let me assure you, that shit stays with you for life.

Then Gavin went missing. Dad was adamant he simply couldn't remember where he had left him. My sister and I were pretty sure that Mum had had him destroyed. Either way, we would walk around the house hoping to catch a glimpse of him, asking each other, ‘Have you seen Gavin?' For six months we lamented the loss of Gavin, saying that the house just felt empty without him and for all the trouble he caused, it sure would be nice to have him back. Then, on the first cold day in Autumn, we heard a familiar sound.

‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!'

My dad's face lit up.

‘Of course! The cupboard! I hid him in the winter coats!'

Dad then resumed his original uncontrollable laughing and thigh punching. For six months, through spring and summer, Gavin had lain in wait in the cupboard, holding a football over his crotch with that permanent smile on his face. Just biding his time; waiting for his moment. Truly he was one of the great attacking defenders.

‘That is it! Ronnie, this is the last time. I want Gavin Wanganeen out of this house!'

To be honest, I was about to protest. I was about to say, ‘But Mum, it's not Gavin's fault. He didn't do anything wrong.' But I caught myself, remembering at the last moment that this wasn't a real person. Dad promised to get rid of him and we all thought she'd put an end to the full-sized Gavin Wanganeen madness once and for all.

But Dad thought otherwise. In Dad's mind this was merely research and development. He'd perfected his act; it was time to take this show on the road.

Everyone at the Opie household on Shasta Avenue looked forward to Wednesday nights. For Cheryl it was because she hosted her guided meditation workshop. Roughly a dozen people would remove their shoes at the front door and sit cross-legged on the floor of the sitting room at the front of the house. Cheryl would then walk them through visualisation exercises aimed at deep relaxation and, I dare say, spiritual enlightenment. All of this happened to the relaxing sounds of whales, rainforests, oceans and panpipes—all of nature's aural sedatives. My mother was an occasional attendee of the classes. My father and I, on the other hand, were not welcome.

I had been barred from the group after my first and only visit because of an incident that took place while exploring the nooks and crannies of my cave. If you have never done any guided meditation, your cave is a place you go in your imagination. You are occasionally asked to walk through a made-up desert or conceptualised windy cliff-top to get there, but once you arrive it's the ideal place to find tranquillity and peace. Or so I'm told. I wouldn't know for sure. I wasn't in my cave long enough to find out. At a crucial point in my journey Cheryl said the words, ‘you are entering a state of deep relaxation'. Unfortunately at that precise moment my sister, whose head had lolled onto her chest, began snoring and I, naturally enough, burst out laughing. The willing suspension of disbelief that all meditation caves rely on was instantaneously and irreparably broken for the entire session. We sure lost a lot of good caves that night. I was told that my behaviour had been inappropriate. I was adamant it was my sister's fault for snoring near my cave in the first place, but I was banished from the group all the same, at least until I grew up and could take it more seriously. It is safe to say neither of those criteria has yet been met and I have not been back since.

My dad was unwelcome for different reasons. On more than one occasion he had snuck into the house while a session was in progress and tampered with the shoes. Initially he was amused enough just to move the shoes to the opposite side of the hallway, achieving a subtle sense of disorientation. One week he stepped things up a bit, moving them out of the house and onto the front lawn before laying them down in a perfect circular formation that would have made Busby Berkeley proud. But, as with all things my father does, the stakes were inevitably raised. One week he replaced everyone's shoes with muddy football boots. The following week they were replaced by an assortment of children's roller-skates, ballet shoes, gumboots and school sandals. And the following week nothing at all happened, largely because Dad had received more than one threat of physical violence. I've got to tell you, for a suburban guided mediation group, they sure could kick off.

Wednesday nights were special for Richard for a different reason. With Cheryl confined to the sitting room, Richard had the rest of the house to himself and for exactly an hour he employed a little guided meditation of his own. Richard's version of the cave involved a hot bath, a generous pour of single malt and ABC Classic FM, with its unique mix of history's great composers and announcers so soporific they have been known to put themselves to sleep. Beside a window overlooking a softly lit fernery, Richard would lie back in the bath, drink his whisky, close his eyes and drift off to a very special cave of his own. This was Richard time.

But one evening in 1993 it was also Gavin time. Dad snuck past the shoes in the front hallway—fighting the urge to swap them all with snorkels and flippers—tiptoed past the bathroom, through the living room and out into the back garden. Gavin, who was tucked under Dad's arm, remained smiling and impressively quiet. The two made their way around the side of the house and to the edge of the fernery, where they stopped and waited for confirmation that Richard was at his most vulnerable.

After a few minutes of Tchaikovsky, Dad began to hear Richard's accompanying aria in snore sharp major. He then carefully placed Gavin in the middle of the fernery facing into the window.

By all accounts the sound Richard made when he realised he had company was loud enough to reverberate into the depths of the cave of even the most resilient meditator. All attempts to reach any kind of enlightenment were promptly postponed until next week and Cheryl hastened her way to the bathroom, fully expecting to find that her husband had accidentally electrocuted himself. What she found was no less terrifying.

Richard's ‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!' had been accompanied by a spasm of fear that saw his whisky somersault into the bath and his transistor radio go flying across the room before smashing in the corner. Soap, shampoo and back-scrubbers had also been spread over a large area and a towel rack had taken leave of its wall mount. The overall result was a mess that looked like someone had indeed met their end, but had not given up without a fight.

The mess was the second thing she noticed as she entered the room. The first being one of Australian football's brightest stars standing at the window holding a football over his crotch.

‘Ohmygodsweetlordshitgavinohbloodyron!'

Once she had landed and taken in the chaos, she was relieved to find her husband naked, muttering to himself and fishing around in the bath for an empty whisky tumbler. His dignity had apparently been washed away like so much single malt.

‘Look at you, Richard. This has got to stop.'

‘Cheryl. The only way that this is going to stop is if someone puts an end to it.'

‘So you're going to quit all this nonsense?'

‘God no, Cheryl. I couldn't possibly admit defeat after a brazen attack like this. All I said was that for this to end, someone will need to end it. I never said it would be me.'

Cheryl immediately fled to her cave.

In a way, Richard was right. The coming months saw a number of harmless pranks come and go. Dad received a strippergram at work for his birthday, Richard's driveway was the site for an unoffical scout bottle drive, our house received unsanctioned Christmas decorations and the favour was immediately returned. What was clear was that this would never end unless something monumental ended it. But not even Richard, the bathtub prophet could have seen it coming.

13

Operation Lovely Rita—Part 1

I
will admit that I am at least partially responsible for what happens next. You see, in January 1994, I read an article in our local newspaper saying that the council would be replacing all of their old analog parking meters with newfangled electronic ones. According to the article, the existing system of inserting a prescribed number of coins in return for parking had become insufficient to satisfy the needs of the modern motorist. Apparently what the parker of Today desired was a small digital display and the added step of printing a small paper ticket to be displayed on the dashboard. Thankfully this ticket would be printed on paper so thin that the action of closing the door would invariably cause it to blow onto the floor. The cutting-edge driver would then have the pleasure of fossicking around for their keys, unlocking the door, returning the ticket to the dash and then attempting the seemingly impossible task of closing the door gently. The electronic parking meter would add value to the overall parking experience that conventional parking meters could only dream of, as well as being squarer, uglier and more impersonal.

What was of most interest to me, however, was that immediately following this great leap forward, the council would be auctioning off all of their old parking meters. The article said that they would be ranging in price, condition and quality. At the time I wondered exactly how much variety there could be in parking meters. I also wondered if Dad found the whole idea of a parking meter auction as ludicrous as I did.

‘Hey, Dad. Take a look at this. What kind of losers would go to a parking meter auction?'

It turns out the Pickerings are exactly the kind of losers who would go to a parking meter auction.

It also turns out, if I may say so, that the kinds of losers who go to parking meter auctions are a rather special breed of losers. As in category nine, off the Richter, put them in a time capsule to show losers of the future how it's done type losers. These are the people trainspotters make jokes about. Gathered in a council maintenance shed-cum-auction hall, were tweed caps and coke-bottle glasses as far as the eye could see. Slippers outnumbered shoes 2 to 1 and after a quick scan I calculated that eighty per cent of the crowd had some kind of stain on their pants. I've been to nursing homes with better stats than that. One look at this circus-worthy collection of freaks should have told us that we had gone too far.

Yet none of this entered Dad's focused mind. He quickly became something of a self-declared parking meter afficionado and once three or four lots had gone under the hammer, he created a checklist of what represents value in a second-hand parking meter. For those interested in making a similar purchase the list included the condition of the paint job, whether it was still in working order and, above all, what colour it was. Grey, he concluded, was too common to hold value in the competitive market of parking meter resale. But not yellows and reds: now that's where the money was! Brighter, more noticeable colours, he surmised, were rarer, more appealing to parking meter enthusiasts and all but guaranteed to appreciate in value. Once Dad had this idea in his head he set about proving the theory with his own money, getting involved in a heavy bidding war for a parking meter simply because it was red.