Posts by Kerry Weston
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what we need is a new generation of sissy men for whom it is permissible to go to bed with a tub of ice-cream and cry when your girlfriend dumps you.
Indeed. It's hard to gauge whether that has been/is happening to a greater extent now. My boys and their friends seem more comfortable with their emotions & expressing them, but I don't get to mix with many other young men, so i dunno whether it's just their own group?
I also think that the not telling about things that happen is also about accepting responsibility for your own life - you got into that mess and you got out, somehow. The fact you got out in one piece means you handled it. Maybe not the way yr parents & family would, but your way.
The way society divvies up who is "good" and who is "bad" also makes a difference? It's much harder to speak up when perpetrators of vileness are in the "good' and/or powerful camp. And as the Veitch affair shows, such things can become huge, spreading stains. When all you want to do is get past it and get on with life.
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Just to give all the PA parents the heebie jeebies:
My best friend at high school lived near the school - her house backed onto a reserve and had a back gate. One school morning, we each sneakily phoned the school saying the other one was sick, then trotted out her back gate and changed into jeans etc that we had stashed in our schoolbags. We walked up to the main highway to Taupo, about a mile away ( we were in Napier) and hitchhiked out.
Made good time and spent a few hours lolling about Lake Taupo, swimming etc then hit the road for home at about 2.30pm. Got a ride in a truck as far as the Rangitaiki plains - when a storm broke over us. We were on an unsealed stretch, when suddenly, the windscreen shattered. The driver let us out and there we were, two pitiful, drowned rats hoping for a ride home. After 45 miserable minutes, we faced the inevitable - one more car and then we'd go across the road to some roadhouse place and phone her mum to come get us.
Miracle! The next car stopped for us - a smoothie in a sports car with, wonders of the modern age, a hairdryer! He drove very fast and we managed to cruise home only slightly late, with our wet clothes hidden and our hair dry ....
never got sprung for that one! We were all of 15 and not a soul knew where we were.
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Why not use a real artist's work?
Pat Hanly for instance - crib one of his paintings featuring sails, if Aklnd wants sails. The protest paintings against Muroroa, maybe, there's some stunning work which is suitably iconic.
His works are bright and zingy, he was an Aucklander most of his painting life and he sure as hell could outcreate Kevin Bloody Roberts!
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You'll have to excuse my cloudy jabber - home with the flu - and I couldn't remember why I told that story, but it's come to me that it was about instinct.
My instincts told me to stay still and look him in the eye. That if i ran, I would be kinda irresistible, like a bunny target. Your instincts don't work too well if you don't use them - kids learn strategy like when to shut up, when to hide, blend in, sneak away, run away or front up. negotiating teenagerhood is putting those lessons to work, trusting yourself.
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hullo, truck, licence plate, police, sirens, "sir did you fire a shotgun at a young woman at the side of the road?"
I was too totally freaked to think that coherently. As soon as he took off, my legs turned to jelly and I fell over! Blubbing like a baby. I was probably too scared to report it, hitching being a naughty thing to do, and the " you got what you deserved" kinda thinking that operated at the time (late 70s). And what proof did I have - no witnesses.
I think it put me off hitching tho...
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Emma's post has just reminded me that as a teenager, maybe 17 or 18, I used to hitchhike around, as did quite a few others.
I was walking along a main highway beside the sea - glorious day, not much traffic. A truck came the opposite way and pulled over. The driver called out "Hey girlie" and pointed a shotgun out the window at me. Looked him in the eye, thought if I'm going to die, he has to face me. My feet felt encased in concrete, couldn't run anyway! He let off a few shots, just over my head, laughed maniacally and drove away....
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this photo of my gran, circa 1920.
She's gorgeous, Giovanni. My Danish grandmother got sent out here in early 1900s to marry grandfather - older friend of father - after she blotted her copybook back home, she must have been quite young, 20 tops. She knew no-one in nz at all - talk about exile.
And Victorian kids worked legally at eight.
My teen sons (15 and 18) - I figured I had until about 15 to influence them with my values etc. I don't have a cellphone so I don't txt (hate them) - I just pretend it's the 70s and if older son needs to get in touch he will - there's still landlines, after all. I ask him what he gets up to, knowing full well i get brief & edited accounts,(altho I know a few things I wouldn't have told my own mum) but I figure they can't be independent unless you let them. Glad we don't live in a city, tho.
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But. glory be, all healthy. thriving now, and diversifying-
you ever want to to come fishing south - here is a good place-
Glorious indeed - can really only hope for a big dose of happiness for them. Wandering and painting down south is definitely on my agenda, a spot of fishing would be grand. Haven't been down the Coast for about 20 yrs - did a memorable tramp somewhere up behind Hokitika with a chap called Andrew Buglass who I believe has done alot of work preserving old huts. Loved it but will have to get off my studious butt and get fit for that sort of carry on.
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Even now, I think I may have made a terrible mistake, and I should've picked the archaeologist option...or maybe the chef?
Nah. No mistake there. And you are a fisherperson and chef of the catch, as I recall from another thread .... made me realise my deprivation in the seafood department, possibly because fish have always ignored my feeble efforts at catching them.
I was kinda hoping my boys would be something useful like plumbers or builders...a matriarchal fantasy, I fear, where I get to be chieftaness of my own little kainga, which they of course would build. A forest is stronger than a single tree and all that.
My younger boy has it in him to follow the creative path, it will be interesting to see if he gets hooked. I can't possibly recommend it as a sensible path in this world of getting and spending but secretly I'd be thrilled.
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There are some kids who know what they want to do from pretty young - and follow through. Then there's the ones who do what one of their parents did, be it teacher, lawyer, nurse, layabout etc.
It fascinates me how those ones who do have a set path "know" that's what they want - how do you know what you want? Maybe it's dreaming yourself into into it somehow. I kind of envy those with that kind of certainty and ambition - me and ambition in the 'must get ahead' sense are strangers!
My eldest is leaving skool at the end of the year, 18 and not had a proper job - he hasn't a clue what he wants to do. Seems quite passionate about enviro stuff - the state of it all - so maybe that's a future path. He worries tho, that he hasn't got a firm direction. And what can one say? Chill out, have a gap year and try a few things out has been my response, just hope it's the right one.