The other half of the story
A little while back I wrote about the time that I hosed my mother down on Guy Fawke’s night. I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I was a complete and total brat, so I’d like to provide a little context for that story.
When I was a kid I played rugby on Saturday mornings. It was usually cold — Christchurch gets pretty heavy frosts in winter. The shaded end of the pitch was usually frozen solid if we had a 10 am kick off, while the other end of the field would thaw and get quite muddy. It was that sticky sort of mud, the kind that cakes up and stays stuck to your skin and clothes in big lumps. I enjoyed the mud; it was part of the fun of Saturday morning rugby.
My mother did not enjoy the mud. She didn’t like the mud getting in the car, or in the house, or in the shower. And fair enough, I suppose.
Her solution to this problem was to have me stand by the back door and hose me down until she had gotten all the mud off me. This proceeded in two phases. First she would hose off my uniform, then, once she had gotten the mud off that, she would have me strip down to my underwear and continue hosing until I was clean enough to be allowed indoors.
So when doused my mother that Guy Fawke’s Night, it was not an entirely spontaneous act. There was a degree of old-fashiioned eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth score-settling involved.