When I was a kid I played cricket.
I kinda sucked at it. I used to go to training, but I was a crap batsman, and a crap bowler. I was good at catching the ball though, so I did my job in the field.
I blame practice. I always felt I could be good at it if I was given an opportunity to learn how to do it, but since I always got out straight away, and was never asked to bowl, I just didn't ever really learn how. I suppose I should have spent more time practicing “off my own bat” (heh, nice pun) but I never did, so I always sucked.
Anyway, I played for a couple of seasons with a local team. I guess I would have been about 10 years old, but I'm just guessing.
That's only background though. My story is a strange one. Over my life I've seen or heard things that have bothered me for years, then one day while I'm day dreaming because I'm older and wiser than I used to be I'll realise what what actually going on at the time, or whatever.
That reminds me, when I was in Year 1 my teacher said that gravity worked because the earth was spinning and it kept us stuck to the ground. She was saying basically that it was some sort of centrifugal force that kept us in place. That never made sense to me, and I grappled with the notion literally for years. I couldn't help thinking that if that were how gravity worked that we'd all be thrown off earth. I even got a soccer ball once and put a small object on it, and tried to spin the ball really fast but it never worked. I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be happening at the poles either. Basically I was confused until sometime in Year 8 or so, when I found out about matter. The reason I guess that I couldn't understand was that one of my premises was flawed, that premise being that “teachers know what they are talking about“. I know better know. Stupid teacher. (nice aside be me.. here's another one in the same vein:)
When I was in Year 4 my teacher was explaining to the class how digestion worked. She was saying that food went into your stomach and was digested and then moved into your intestines as waste. I interrupted to tell her that she was wrong, because as it happened I'd been reading a book on human biology at home, and literally the night before I'd been reading about the intestines and villi, etc. She yelled at me for being a smart arse, and I got in trouble. I probably cried or something. I don't remember the details, I can remember most of Year 3 and Year 4 was like crying. It wasn't my fault that I was right and they were wrong. Luckily for me I found the Hobbit that year and then the Lord of the Rings. They were my reason to live and what I spent most of my time doing, I read them like 3 times. Hmmm.. back to the main thread..
So anyway, I played cricket. One day we had a game on and my folks were out of town or something, so I had to stay at the house of one of the kids from the team so that his folks could take me to cricket the next day. We got picked up and hung out for the day and whatever. It was all pretty cool. I didn't stay at other people's houses much at all when I was a kid, and all I was thinking was how weird everything was. When I grew up we didn't have a TV. Mum cooked dinner every night and we ate at the dinner table as a family when dad got home from work. But that wasn't how things were done at the house I stayed at. Their life looked altogether different to mine. They ate microwave lasagne on beanbags in front of the TV. So the really strange thing that I saw, that I don't think I'll ever forget, that I just totally didn't understand might simply have been attributable to the obvious fact that these people did things differently to how my family did them.
We were at this kids house, and his mum and dad were both there. Then we had to go to “this other house” for a while for something or other. So we went there with his dad for a few hours. When we got there his dad walked up the steps of the house and started snogging this lady. Like a huge tongue kiss to say hello. I totally didn't get it. His mum was still at the other house, and his dad was snogging this other lady at this house. It seriously didn't make sense. But the kid from my cricket team (I'd say mate, but I never really felt like I had “mates” when I was that age, just “kids I knew”, I guess because I figured that in order to be mates we'd have to speak to each other about it and agree that it was OK for us to be “mates“ and I never had the guts to ask, but we used to hang out and do shit together, so I guess that made us mates, although I never felt like I got the kind of loyalty I expected out of relationships like that so maybe we weren't *mates*, I digress..) didn't bat an eyelid. I wanted to ask, but somehow it seemed like that wouldn't be appropriate..
I'm 23 years old. That would have happened over a decade ago. I was sitting here tonight and finally I realised...
The answer is DIVORCE.
John.