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| A picture of my young cat |
First year of high school
Hoping to keep my son (let’s pretend his name is Rasmus) amongst friends in the local area I went against my better instincts and enrolled him in the local government high school when the time came. Had my husband (Rasmus’ father) still been alive I think he would have made a better decision, but he was dead, we were grieving, and I wanted as little upheaval in Rasmus’ life as possible. This is one of my greatest regrets in life. The first year seemed to be fine. Though his grades were average, Rasmus had plenty of friends and the school was close by. I remember on his first day of school a very tall, somewhat overweight, Aboriginal girl looking at him with moonlit eyes. Later Rasmus told me she walked home from school with him every day – even though it was not on her way.
Blood-brothers
In the second year of high school everything started to go wrong. Rasmus’ grades dropped, he started wagging, some of his teachers told me they thought he was very bright but that he didn’t apply himself. He had a new best friend, another boy who, like him, had lost a parent and was part Scandinavian, part Brit – let’s pretend his name was Erik. Erik and Rasmus became like brothers for a few years. I liked Erik very much, and obviously I sympathised with him deeply. He had a low level rage about him that channeled itself in rebelliousness. I always had the feeling he would be the most normal boy in the world if he could just get a hug from his mum, but she was dead, and so the low level rage smouldered. One day he was pulled into the principal’s office and apparently he slammed the door in her face. She wasn’t injured, but she was a very short feminist and so she interpreted this as an act of violence. Erik was an overgrown child, he was well built for his age, he didn’t know his own strength yet (because it was so newly acquired), but the short feminist didn’t care about that. Personally, I never experienced any behaviour problems with Erik, but he knew I was on his side. I’m sure he could sense not only my goodwill but also my affection. He got none of that from the principal. She kicked him out of the school and Erik was never able to go to a normal school again. He spent the next few years in a school for boys with behavioural issues because no other school would take him. Erik’s dad moved to the other side of Sydney around this time and so this tight friendship gradually loosened and Rasmus lost his greatest ally at school.
