Naive Psychologist

Adelaide finally made it to the SASMEE Millswood train park. She had been watching that train park since she was seven years old, and now, one day after she turned 37, she was finally here.

Adelaide wasn’t sure which best she liked best. Lining up with little boys bouncing with the joy of life. The officious fully enclosed shoes signs. The shade of the trees on a day that was almost too hot. The woman who stopped the trains to hand out cups of sticky orange drinks to the drivers (volunteers all). The old men controlling their boats by remote and happy to give little boys a go. The grey-haired woman with two little boys on the bowling green who couldn’t work out how to get through the fence. Men who were young enough to know better wearing railroad hats covered in gold-coloured stick pins. Groups of men polishing their trains at the end of the day. Walking back to the car with little boys still bouncing with the joy of life.

But by the time she got home, Adelaide knew exactly which bit of the day she liked best. She liked that at the young age of 37, Adelaide had discovered the meaning of life.

It’s trainspotters that make the world go round and there was hope for Adelaide yet.

Adelaide was not invited to the launches of WOMADelaide or the Adelaide Festival of Arts. She was not invited to the opening of the Federal Law Courts (which building, by the way, she quite liked and was willing to give a chance to see how it settled down). She did not get a guernsey to the Jacob’s Creek Tour Down Under corporate tent. She had not even – despite her name – been at the launch of Adelaide Writer’s Week.

But as one of the state’s industry leaders, she did get the nod for the secret meeting with Business SA to discuss the appallingly embarrassing situation of the new Adelaide Airport terminal which was bringing in nothing but international shame. All eyes were on Adelaide. It was front page news – every second day – in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Courier-Mail. It was on page three of the AFR three times a week plus Saturdays. It was all anyone interstate and overseas was talking about.

The meeting was timely, Adelaide thought. Something needs to be done. Adelaide was very pleased to take advantage of the excellent on-site creche facilities provided by Business SA for not just the duration of the meeting, but also the networking opportunity which followed. It was never too early to get your toddler mixing with the state’s future best.

It was an excellent meeting. One of the best to which Adelaide had ever been, and it certainly suited her outcome-driven style. There was so much this small, but influential group could do, and by the end of the meeting they had identified the key stakeholders with whom they needed to engage and agreed that the engagements would begin next week. The first phone call would be to the agenda-setters over at ABC 891.

‘So who exactly was there?’ her husband asked when they were safe in bed discussing the day they had just spent at the state’s cutting edge. Adelaide could trust her husband, of course she could, but if she were honest with herself (which she could be, because the light was out), she enjoyed the opportunity to have just a little more knowledge than him.

‘I’ll just say this,’ Adelaide told her husband, a curious – but not nosey – man. ‘There was more than one soy chai latte ordered from the Cibo delivery express.’

Adelaide got an iPod for Christmas and now it was February and her life still hadn’t changed.

‘So you see,’ Adelaide said to her father who was one of those jaded apolitical they’re-all-the-bloody-same types. ‘An Opposition doesn’t need to be a negative nay-sayer.’ She cut the article out ready to send to the federal opposition this afternoon. ‘Look at the South Australian Opposition. If this isn’t a positive policy announcement I don’t know what it is.’

Her father sniffed. He looked at the clipped article. He nodded and his eyebrows lifted as he read.

‘They’re right,’ Adelaide said. ‘It’s definitely time to ‘rebalance the agenda’. Isobel Redmond is spot on the money. It’s gone too far.’

Adelaide herself had too often found herself in the embarrassing position of getting a job purely because of her breasts just because she was a woman. Isobel Redmond was right. It was demeaning.

‘And it got worse once I had kids,’ Adelaide said. ‘Remember? All those jobs that fell out of the sky and into my lap once the kids went back to school.’ Her father nodded. He winced. It had been a terribly demeaning time for them all.

‘Men are reluctant to seek assistance, have difficulties juggling work commitments and family life, and forty percent of men over 40 have serious health problems.’ Adelaide read through the rationale behind the policy published on the website. She couldn’t argue with any of that. And with only a little experience, Adelaide could see that classrooms certainly didn’t suit everyone.

She folded the newspaper clipping, slipped it into an envelope. And there was no better way to address those problems than to redirect the money away from women, thought Adelaide.

Adelaide stood at the gate and waved goodbye. Her child was happy, but Adelaide was sad in the depths of her soul.

And she was sorry that her little boy’s shorts were too loose and slipped down to his knees everytime he bounced (which was often). She should have checked them yesterday. And she was sorry that he looked like a bit of a dork with his name written on the front of his hat, because she had only remembered to write it on when they were running out the front door.

She was sorry and he was happy and she was sad.

Adelaide was sitting on the beach, watching the passing parade of faces she vaguely recognised. It was getting late, but it had been a scorching day, so Adelaide stayed, glad of the relief.

Children splashed in the shallows. Lovers held hands. Buffed bodies jogged past. It was a Brilliant day to be Adelaide.

Adelaide leaned back on her arms and smiled as the sun disappeared. The sky was still a glorious orange.

And the Dogs were off their leads. Poodles, Labradors, Boxers and all the breeds between. A not-small Dog approached Adelaide’s child and Adelaide moved towards the Dog. Her heart was beating and her legs were shaking, but she kept walking, because a Dog was approaching her child.

‘Oh, don’t worry about him.’ There was a shrill voice in Adelaide’s right ear. Adelaide turned and she was face-to-face with a woman whose lipstick was bleeding into the smoker’s lines surrounding her lips.

‘He’ll lick you to death soon as bite you.’ The woman smiled a pink and toothy smile. ‘Won’t you boy?’ The Dog jumped. His jump splashed Adelaide.

‘I’d prefer we didn’t die either way,’ Adelaide said and she smiled an Adelaide smile.

The woman pursed her pink lips and shook the jangly lead. She sniffed a small sniff then screwed up her nose.

‘You’re not a Dog Person, are you?’ she said to Adelaide.

‘I’m a monkey,’ said Adelaide. ‘My most compatible match is a Dragon. Or a Rat.’

The woman sniffed again and Adelaide knew it was time to go home.

…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.