Though there’s pressure to conform with up-to-the-minute vocabulary, Dad remains a walking encyclopaedia of catch phrases. If your own dad’s a working-class Anglo Australian over sixty, feel free to play along with word bingo at home. Whenever we get to a friend’s house, Dad will call out from the front door ‘Is this where all the action is?’ Any boy under the age of ten is shaken hands with, vigorously, while Dad will repeatedly say, ‘Weighs half a ton’, before refusing to let go of the kid’s hand and pretending it’s the kid who won’t let his go.
If you’re anywhere even vaguely pleasant or relaxing, he’ll announce, ‘You wouldn’t be dead for quids,’ to which you’re supposed to respond, ‘Well, you couldn’t pay me enough.’ Alternately, you’re expected to initiate the exchange with, ‘I wonder what the poor people are doing?’ and he will reply quick as a wink with, ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’ If you’ve had a pleasant meal, you finish it by saying, ‘That filled the hole,’ and if that meal contains lamb you must refer to the meat as ‘hamramor’.
If you tell a joke and it’s met with laughs, while you’re laughing along you must tell your audience you’ve got a million of ’em. It’s only been in recent years Dad has decided he likes re-telling jokes. Formal jokes, often with a long set-up and a punchline you could have guessed by about the second word. Unfortunately, the things that tickle his sense of humour belong about four decades back in the past and, try as you might, you just can’t find the funny in them. The poor bugger tells them so excitedly and keenly to gauge your response, so you’re forced to laugh as genuinely as you can while saying something encouraging but ultimately meaningless, like, ‘That’s a good one, Dad,’ or ‘Oh, I saw that one coming.’ If you don’t, then you must be in a bad mood or just having a rough day, because how could you not find it as funny as he apparently does? If I mention my goats (which happens to be a daily occurrence) he’ll cut me off with an incredibly witty ‘you’re kiddin’. And I mean every single time.
The irony of this is that, when we were kids, most of us found our parents absolutely hilarious. If my dad told then the same jokes he tells today, everyone would have laughed heartily at his humour. So really, it is us who have changed, not him.
Knowing their stories, jokes and vast chunks of their language are from an altogether other era, I’ve tried to train Lucy and Charlie to prepare a couple of questions for when they spend time with my folks. Sadly, this only seemed to work when they were younger and showed the slightest inkling in pleasing me or doing as I asked. Perhaps that’s why I recall (treasure) one particular day they excelled at this (and one, let’s face it, that shouldn’t have to be forced or staged). I mean what possible thing of interest could an old person have to say?
Mum called me immediately after the kids had left for Brisbane.
‘Your children are so amazing,’ she said. ‘They’re interested and curious and we had the most beautiful chats between us.’
But generally, our parents’ ability to converse with the young is as limited as our kids’ interest in anything other than pseudo (micro) fame on social media. There just doesn’t seem to be a mutually agreeable middle ground where both generations find the same thing interesting.
Mum and Dad don’t seem to question their grandkids’ ownership of incredibly expensive pieces of technology or the fact that what they receive for Christmas is probably ten times more valuable than what we got when we were kids. That’s probably because one thing that doesn’t advance as quickly as their age is their expectations of price. Whatever you paid for it in 1982 is, without question, what it’s worth today.
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It’s not only the adding of ‘s’ and ‘your’ to words at random that I don’t really understand about my parents.
Why does Mum lick her fingers before turning the pages of a magazine?
Why does she lick her thumbs before she jokingly pretends to punch you?
Why in winter do they sit watching TV with a small bar heater at the front of the room and Aunty Marl’s crocheted blankets over their knees, when they paid over ten grand to install a reverse-cycle air-conditioner?
Why does Dad go around topless every day from the 1st of October to the 31st of March, when they paid over ten grand to install a reverse-cycle air-conditioner?
Why does Mum insist on standing for hours on end to water her large garden by hand, when Jeff spent days installing an irrigation system for her?
How do doilies make their way back into the house, under every vase, statue and ornament, when we went to great lengths to throw each one out when they moved to their new house five years ago? That aside, what is the purpose of a doily?
Why do they insist on calling KFC ‘Kentucky’ and every other takeaway chicken shop ‘Big Rooster’?
Why has Mum joined the battalion of women over fifty who only wear three-quarter length pants (never shorts or full-length), when they make her appear considerably shorter and squatter than she really is?
Why does Dad cover himself liberally with talcum powder after a bath? Why is talcum powder still manufactured?
Why have neither of them ever flossed a day in their life?
Are there really no health or safety issues with leaving chunks of frozen meat to defrost on the kitchen sink all day?
Why do they insist on hand-washing the dishes after every meal when there’s a perfectly good dishwasher at their knees?
Why does Mum hang every hideously designed inspirational plaque anyone has ever given her? And why, when you mention that they’d be better at the tip, does she react like you’ve asked her to hand over one of her children?
Why is every knife and pair of scissors in their drawer blunt? And why is the third drawer in their kitchen always so full of never-used knick-knacks?
Why don’t they ever open any windows in their house? Is it because they paid over ten grand to install a reverse-cycle air-conditioner?
Why is their front door always locked when they know you’re coming but unlocked whenever you make an unannounced visit?
And why (Oh dear god, whyyyyyyy?) doesn’t Dad lock the front door when he’s going to be walking through the house starkers?
How is it that their front doorbell never works when you’re locked outside pressing it repeatedly (so you have to call their phones to tell them you’ve arrived, which they will of course fail to answer) but the second Mum unlocks the screen door, the bell springs to miraculous life and works perfectly?
Why is any food cooked on a skewer called a ‘ker-bob’?
Why do they still have vinyl records and video cassettes when they no longer own a turntable or VCR player?
Why are either of them still wearing jeans, or anything denim?
Why are they still using hankies?
When we go to restaurants, why do they repeat the entire menu when they’re ordering? I’ll have the crispy roast pork belly with the apple and sage butter, crunchy duck-fat potatoes, charred carrots and the smoky buttered greens thank youpe.
Cyndi Lauper comes on the car stereo and I hear both Dad and Jeff groan. Which raises another question: why don’t they listen to modern music or watch modern films? Is there a point where you can’t take on anything new?
Dad’s musical tastes stopped in the 1950s. Mum’s at least stretched to the early 1970s. I doubt either of them could name a singer of the past forty years other than Madonna and Michael Jackson. That might be a slight generalisation but if they can name more, you could probably count them on two hands maximum. You think of how much brilliant music has been created since 1975, and how most of us go back to appreciate at least some of what came before we did, and yet so few people stay current or change their tastes with the times.
Jeff and I invited Mum and Dad over to enjoy an outdoor fire one night and, to make it a bit more fun, we decided to play ‘name that tune’. We started with the decade of the 1970s but I was too dominant in that so conceded and moved to the ’50s and ’60s. The idea was to name the tune before the chorus was sung and I think I got all bar two or three songs before Mum or Dad did.
‘I thought these were meant to be your eras,’ I said, egging them on.
‘I can’t really hear it above the fire,’ Mum fibbed.
‘Yes, well, if Todd gave us half a chance,’ Dad said shortly to the night air.
