Monday, 31 March 2014

Geoff the Stoic...


I was driving past one of the local schools. I was thinking how the school day seems to end a hell of a lot earlier than it used to when I was a kid. Or maybe in reality it doesn't. I always wanted the school day to finish approximately 30 minutes after I arrived and not at 3:30pm when it was scheduled to end. I didn't care much for high school. I still maintain that I would have been better going straight from primary school to working and travelling overseas. But there were these pesky rules and regulations that necessitated me turning up each day and attempting to pretend I cared. 

Anyway - my point is and I do have one - as I drove past the school I was thinking about one of the high schools I went to for around 18 months - I'm an ex army brat. The school always gave one kid the responsibility of ringing the end of day school bell. At Seymour High School, it was a kid call Geoff. He was in a lot of classes with me - most importantly the detestable math class that was at the end of the day. Geoff took his job very, very seriously. I took his job very, very seriously because the minute he stood up at 3:28pm every afternoon, in that dreaded math class, I knew that soon there would be a reprieve and I'd be able to get the hell out of working out the whole algebra, trigonometry and whatever whos-a-ma-jiggery problem I was pretending to be working on. 

Now, the thing with Geoff was he never ever rang the bell early. He was always on time...damn him. This is probably why he got the job. The school wasn't silly. He wasn't an army brat who would, undoubtedly, in a free spirited way who gives a crap way break the rules and ring the bell early and then try and look all innocent-like. No matter how many pleading looks we sent him, Geoff, stoic soul that he was, did his duty to the exact second and never wavered.   

So, what's the point of all this? Geoffs keep us on track. Wanna get off the track? Ask an Amarinda.