Naive Psychologist

…she hadn’t enjoyed listening to Carole Whitelock and Nan on the radio on the way home, banging on about how parents don’t teach their children manners anymore. Adelaide herself actively discouraged manners in her children and was particularly proud of her children and her own parenting skills when her children snatched at things without a please or thank you in sight.

Another reason that she should have caught the tram. Adelaide sighed. All those carbon credits she had to create for a trip that had caused so much pain.

Being an excellent mother with a middle class income at her disposal, Adelaide took her children to see Sharon Keep Ya Hair On. She was no theatre critic, but it was, as all Patch Theatre Company shows seem to be, a most excellent experience. One that her children truly enjoyed and so did she. She could have done with one less trip to the toilet, but it was excellent nonetheless.

Until they got to the part where she had to pay for the carpark. Eight dollars. They weren’t even there two hours. $12 for an adult, $10 for a child and $8 for a car.

Of course, Adelaide could have caught the tram, but she was a bit more tired than usual, having been up at least twice in the night tucking little boys back into their beds. Plus, she had just discovered she didn’t get a job she hadn’t necessarily wanted, but would have been bloody excellent at; a piss-ant weekend course had rejected her because her experience was ‘in excess’ of other participants (read into that what you will about her age which she was already feeling slightly sensitive about, being about to turn 37 and ineligible for just about any course or program that might be the tiniest bit interesting); the financial advisor at the bank had suggested they could stop the income protection on her life because the only real liability on her “balance sheet of suffering”* was the approximate cost of $10,000 for her funeral; her oldest child was about to start school and her youngest child kept calling her booger-head; she was menstrual as anything and what was the point of being menstrual when all the sensible parts of you knew you couldn’t have any more children anyway even if your soul was yearning. And didn’t anybody ever pick anything up?

Things could have been worse, Adelaide knew that, but she didn’t feel like catching the f***ing tram. She wanted to walk out of her front door, get into her car, drive it past the tram stop and into the city and park it as close to the door of the theatre as possible. Without paying eight dollars for less than two hours.

Adelaide’s dark underbelly had been exposed.

*real, actual words used on the insurance assessment

Adelaide loved a man in an apron. An Australian flag apron, a green and gold apron, an apron with fake breasts. Adelaide loved them all.

On Australia Day, as Adelaide took her family on their annual walk from one end of the sprawling city’s esplanade/boulevard/drive to the other – from North Haven to Christies Beach – Adelaide took a sausage from every sizzling apron-wearing man they met along the way.

She winked at everyone she passed. She liked the sound of her clicking tongue and the way her husband said ‘G’day’. She liked the buzz of the helicopters overhead, the Australian flags fluttering on cars. It was wonderful being Australian and it was Brilliant being Adelaide.

She couldn’t eat all of those sausages of course. She was full by Semaphore, her husband was full by Grange and even the kids had eaten enough by Henley Beach. She started to slip the extra sausages into her bag. It was a trick she had learnt not last year but the year before.

Tonight, she would fragment the sausages and throw them into a stew. Or maybe a curry. Yes, they would havea curry, just for a change.

‘Funny to think we won’t be living in John Howard’s Australia this time next year,’ her husband said. He had that far away look in his eyes as he spoke. After so many years of marriage, Adelaide knew it wasn’t her turn to speak. She waited for him to fill the silence. ‘The way he didn’t choose Tim Costello for Australian of the Year. That’s the biggest sign yet that he’s ready to hand over the reigns to Peter.’ Still Adelaide waited. Her husband’s wisdom would come. It always took him a while to find the words. ‘You know, so Peter’s got a chance to name his own brother Australian of the Year. Next year. Or maybe the year after that.’ Adelaide nodded and smiled at her husband. The man spoke a lot of sense. ‘I thought it was real…well, real Australian the way John Howard did that. You know?’

Adelaide’s husband looked at Adelaide and Adelaide looked at him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I do.’ And they held hands for the rest of the walk.

Adelaide had gone to bed feeling Great and woken up feeling Brilliant.

She peeked through the crack in the ensuite door, took a peek at her husband cleaning her teeth. Adelaide smiled.

Adelaide had a decision to make.

Was it more economical to a) buy a multitrip and validate it every time she got on the tram; or b) buy a ticket from the conducter on the observation that they only got to you about half the time.

Being both an oldest child and one of the few remaining people committed to public health, education and transport Adelaide knew she would go with the multitrip in the end. But every now and then, Adelaide liked to pretend that she was a radical anarchist who thumbed her nose at authority. Just every now and then.

Adelaide had surgery to fix her bleeding heart. It was quick, but complex, surgery. In in the morning. Out in the afternoon.

Aorta get more nurses, Adelaide thought as she left the hospital that afternoon, and aorta get more doctors. She thought for a moment more. Aorta let more South Australians study medicine. And aorta bugger the Constitution.

She caught the tram home. No one stood up for her of course. Aorta put windows on the trams, she thought. And more seats. She sniffed as she looked around at the boring, barren things. Aorta just drive these trams out to the airport and park them there. That’s what aorta do.

Meanwhile the temperature rose. Aorta do something about this heat, she said as she turned the air conditioner up. She heard about the blackouts. Aorta do something about that, she said and turned the air conditioner up again. Thank Goodness they had the ducted system now.

Aorta do something about the surface of those courts, she said to her husband as they watched the tennis that night. And aorta have ratings on that, she said as they watched the news. It’s not right, we’ve got kids watching that.

In the end, her husband called the doctor out.

‘Adelaide’s got aorta disease,’ the doctor said in quiet tones. ‘As I’m sure I explained, it’s an uncommon – but not rare – side-effect. You’re lucky there’s an election coming up. That’ll get you over the worst of it by the end of March. Early April at the latest.’ He smiled lightly first at her husband and then at Adelaide. ‘Here’s the address for the letters to the editor. And here’s the talkback numbers.’ He smiled again as he handed the information to Adelaide. ‘It’s a pity it’s ended up this way, but I think you’ll find aorta disease is much less trouble than a bleeding heart.’

The doctor smiled again at Adelaide. She let her husband show the doctor out.

Adelaide put down the paper and went and looked in the mirror again.

With all her strength, she made herself smile.

Adelaide knew what it was to lose.

She had lost every race she had ever run, every swim she had ever swum. She had missed out on law. She couldn’t find a job.

But her defeats were confined to her own small world. She had never lost on the international stage. Adelaide looked out the kitchen window and tried to imagine how Leyton Hewitt must feel. Knocked out of the Australian Open. In front of his home crowd.

Adelaide was no fan of Leyton Hewitt. She preferred a man who kept his cool. Still and all the same, Adelaide wished him no harm.

‘Go Ley-Ley,’ she said to herself. She shook her head and she did not smile.

She started stacking the breakfast dishes away. She hoped that people would not be too harsh. He had done his best, she thought. Still and all the same, Adelaide knew the realities of life.

Nobody likes a loser and people can be cruel.

Adelaide was getting old.

She had seen the statistics and now she had seen the proof. Jimmy Barnes was coming back to play on Australia Day. At a family concert.

Jimmy Barnes was playing at a concert for families.

Adelaide could only assume that a family concert would be alcohol free.

Adelaide rubbed at the skin on her cheeks, looked down at the skin on her hands. She went to the mirror and made herself smile.

She had seen the statistics and now she had seen the proof. Adelaide was ageing.

It was the same thing as getting old.

These are funny times, thought Adelaide.

It was funny that Mike Rann was calling for the Legislative Council to be abolished. And it got even funnier when Adelaide heard Chris Schacht talking about it on her ABC just yesterday. Nick Xenophon should run for a House of Assembly seat, Chris Schacht said. I strongly believe the Legislative Council should be abolished, he said (or something remarkably along those lines, she couldn’t be sure of his exact words without checking the transcript, a budget item she simply couldn’t justify). And that was funny too, because Adelaide was sure Chris Schacht used to be a Senator. And wasn’t the Senate an Upper House too? Weren’t the Senate and the Legislative Council modelled on the same thing?

Adelaide took a sip of her coffee, put the cup back down. She had to agree that the Legislative Council was a touch broken. It was possibly harbouring people who weren’t pulling their weight. But can’t we fix it? Adelaide wondered. Instead of just chucking the whole thing out, can’t we fix it and make it into something that promotes representative democracy?

Adelaide scratched at her elbow as she thought. She took a bite of her lemon slice.

When Adelaide went – briefly, tentatively – to explore the world, she had lived in New Zealand where they had kindly given her the vote although she wasn’t a citizen and never intended to become one. And it was a good time to be voting too, because they were having a referendum on a new voting system.

Under this new system, as Adelaide’s rusty brain remembered it, you kind of got a couple of votes. You voted for your seat, then you voted from a list of people, and the ones on the list who got the most votes went and sat in parliament alongside the members who held a particular seat.

It led, some people suggested, to a more diverse and representative parliament.

It seemed to Adelaide, that in these politically homogeneous times such a system might just work here. It would let a disenchanted electorate pick and choose from people a bit more. It meant you didn’t have to vote quite so much along whole-of-party lines. It meant voters didn’t have to give implicit endorsement to policies they didn’t necessarily support. It meant small parties and independents (like Nick Xenophon) might have more chance of getting up.

Adelaide looked around before she took another piece of lemon slice. Such a system would probably appeal to a man like Mike Rann, who had the vision to appoint his cabinet from a range of political sources. Perhaps he would use the safety of his likely majority to explore such a thing.

Adelaide was ruminating on all this when it occurred to her that there was already such a system in place.

It was the Upper House.

Perhaps, thought Adelaide, if Messrs Rann and Schacht wanted to continue their discussion of the abolition of the Legislative Council they could look to Mike Rann’s former homeland. Maybe they could reform the South Australian parliamentary system. Maybe South Australia could lead the world in democractic processes, unleashing a whole new wave of widespread political engagement.

Adelaide scratched at her elbow some more then she shook her head (Adelaide shook her head a lot). Goodness knows, thought Adelaide, someone, somewhere needs to do it. She brushed the crumbs from the table, picked up her coffee cup, took it to the sink, then looked at her watch.

I’d better get cracking, she thought. Eleven o’clock already and there was still the ironing to do.