Memories of Pants

I was talking to a friend of my son today who ripped his pants around the butt area while playing volleyball in school.

This reminded me of the time my class went swimming and somebody stole my trousers.

I think I was eleven or maybe twelve at the time.

We went on a school expedition to the pool so all my mates were there to see the show.

One of those 'mates' probably still has me 'strides' in his house somewhere.

Never mind, I'm over it now... practically.


The teacher had to give me a lift home in his new car with a towel wrapped around me for modesty. But modesty hadn't really prevailed back at the pool as I hunted for the missing article(s?) in the changing room.

Nobody helped me much in my search and everybody seemed to derive much outlandish enjoyment from the fact the I was wearing purple underpants.

I figured that I was in for a hard time when I turned up in school the next day but I was wrong, nobody even said a word.

In fact, many months passed and nobody ever again mentioned the purloined trouser incident.

I have to admit, I was impressed.

Apparently, what happens in the changing room stays in the changing room. Fun and Gaiety may be derived, from a lad's lost trousers, within the confines of the male changing area but outside of there, the subject was seemingly out of bounds.

Or so I thought.

One day, deep in the Summer holidays, I was arguing with my friend Steve out on the street - doubtless about some obscure rule of soccer. I was winning the argument hands-down when his little four-year-old brother, Gavin, suddenly and quite eloquently sprang to his defence.

"Shaddup you," he roared, "ya bleedin... 'Puppel Knickers'!"

(sic)


These little things can scar you...

Hard to Tell 2

The story I wrote in my previous post is a largely-true tale about something that happened way back in 1991.

At the time, when all the facts of the matter became clear, it was one of the funniest thing I have ever witnessed. That Saturday afternoon we laughed and laughed at the memory of what had happened.

I love to write down these stories as best I can and I have read quite a few of them out on a radio programme called Sunday Miscellany .


But the writing of this one daunted me. Many times I have said to myself, "Must get that one down Ken."

(And I have answered myself back, "Please don’t use my first name, we hardly know each other")

I guess I was daunted by the complexity of the story. Of course, it’s a very simple tale about one man’s quest to be readmitted to his place of work. But how to get the story across, pass on at least some element of the humour and not tie the whole thing up in knots?

Look at some of the difficulties:

The action takes place simultaneously in two separate locations.

At the end of the story, nobody in the story knows that anything has happened.

Nothing funny happens at either of the two locations in the story – it is only in the over-view of the two coinciding narratives that the humour emerges.

The best bit is in the middle of the story. What happens at the end is not funny at all and must be cut out.

So, with so much narrative complication for such a simple tale, I never sat down and wrote it.

Until last Saturday.

"Come on Ken!", I shouted at myself, "just write it."
("I’ve warned you about names already," I replied, "and don’t you dare exclaim at me.")

So I just sat down and… wrote it. To hell with the consequences. Bugger the complications. JUST WRITE THE DAMN THING.

And I did. Wrote it, left it to cool, tidied it and fired it up on the Blog here. I don’t usually move from writing to posting so fast but speed was of the essence here, before the narrative-angst-bogeymen caught up with me again.

I had also written a whole spiel at the front of the story detailing my nervousness about the narrative complications therein but I decided to cut all that out and just let the story stand up on its own two legs. The only hint I put in that first post was in the title.

I’m actually quite happy with the way this little story turned out and I’m most grateful for your positive feedback, dear visitors. I brought it along to my friends in Castlebar Writer’s Group last night and raised quite a few laughs with it (which is my pretty much my food-and-drink).

Interesting, the best laughs were at the point when Richard remembered his bag of apples. I think that moment when an audience finally realises where a story might be going – that’s a good moment.

I hate morals. So the moral of this ‘story-about-a-story’ is a motivational chant which I guess I should listen to more often.

"Don’t get it right, Get it written."