used to teach at a very, very fancy private school. The kind of school where it cost the parents a house deposit to send their kids there each year. One Friday morning, I received a phone call from one of my student’s grandmothers, Violet. She liked to call me to talk through the homework I’d set for my class so she could help her grandson, Josh when he went to stay with her on the weekend. They were going to go out for lunch and then to see a movie that Saturday, after they did some school work in the morning. I said it sounded like an excellent weekend plan and Josh was a very lucky boy to have such a cool grandmother.
After I hung up the phone with Violet, I suddenly felt really angry, which is obviously an unsual reaction to a lovely conversation but just hear me out.
You see just a few weeks before I started teaching at this fancy school, I did a relief teaching day at a jail school. On this particular day, I taught a girl who had been on a steady cocktail of drugs since she was ten years old. Her name was Heaven. She turned fifteen the year I taught her. The pupils of her eyes were permanently blown out and milky like she was wearing scary contact lenses. She was tiny, because she never grew properly and she wore baggy tracksuit pants low on her bony hips and her face was covered with an unfathomable amount of make up. She was heartbreakingly affectionate. I had only met her for the first time that day but she immediately asked me to straighten her hair and made me five friendship bracelets because I was her best friend.
This girl’s mother sold her to a pimp for a slab of beer and a rock of heroin when she was eight years old. Fast forward seven years and that little girl has now been jailed for armed robbery. When she’s released, she’ll re-offend because she has no choice. She’s an addict, with no education, no skills and no choice. She never had any choices. She’s a victim of circumstance. It makes me want to smash stuff against walls when I think about what she could have been if Violet was her grandmother. What if she had Josh’s parents? What if she went to a fancy private school with a uniform and had a bedroom of her own? She wouldn’t be this crumpled little broken bird, with those horrific eyes. Permanent scars of her unfortunate birthright. She’d be healthy and she’d do gymnastics and travel overseas on her school holidays. Instead she’s in jail at the age of fifteen when she should be at home watching The Bachelor while doing her homework. She’ll grow up to be one of those people who come up to you in the street and ask you for money and tell you to get fucked when you say you don’t have any to spare.
I have a mate who’s homeless. His mother was a prostitute and he was raised in foster homes. His name is Bobby and he spends most of his days hanging around outside my local Woolies. One day I was waiting outside the supermarket for Mr Smaggle. Bobby took a seat next to me and started chatting away about his day. He was drinking from a brown paper bag and yelling quite enthusiastically but he was having fun and we were both laughing.
While I was sitting there at least three people walked past with these looks of panic on their faces. Their eyes seared into mine silently asking ‘Are you okay? Is he bothering you?‘ and hovering around to see if they’d have to intervene.
I understand where their concern comes from. I think it’s really wonderful that people are looking out for each other and I especially appreciate it being a woman and a statistical target for random street attacks. However, if I’m chatting to someone in broad daylight, outside a busy supermarket with hundreds of people walking past and I’m laughing and smiling, I’m fine. These people weren’t looking at me to see if I looked uncomfortable. They looked at Bobby with his bare dirty feet, his yellow nicotine stained fingers clutching a brown paper bag in one hand and a filthy rollie in the other. They took one look at him and automatically assumed I was in trouble. I wasn’t. I was just chatting to my mate.
You see Bobby is one of my kids, all grown up. I never taught him and he’s older than me, but he’s one of my kids. One of my Heavens who tied woven bracelets around my wrist and begged me for another Milky Way bar from the treat box. Drug addicts can be unpredictable and more often than not they’re completely untrustworthy. I know that, but once upon time, they were just little kids that randomly popped up in this world in really horrible lives that they can’t ever, ever escape.
I hate the assumption that Bobby is going to hurt me. I’ve been hit on in bars by much scarier and much more threatening men, wearing expensive suits and drinking $40 glasses of whisky. No one ever tried to save me from them.
Just because someone isn’t wearing shoes doesn’t mean they’re dangerous. It usually means that they simply didn’t have lovely grandmothers to take them out for lunch on the weekends when they were kids. I didn’t choose my parents and Bobby didn’t choose his. Heaven certainly didn’t choose hers.
I won this random lottery of ancestry and I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable about it.
47 Comments
-
Lady Smaggle, what a great pice you have written. I feel like that all the time. By virtue of postcode and birth we become the people who get to look on and make judgements about people who were not given the same start in life. We are the ones that enrol to vote and make choices about ‘law and order’ as it applies to us and our very comfortable lives. I look around and see a country that prides itself of equality and the idea of giving everyone a fair go. It’s just not true. Those of us lucky enough to be born into the world of grandparents like Violet need to be the same ones who advocate and give voice to the Heavens and Bobbys of this country. Just like you have today Smags. Well done. You rock. PS: I think Edenland would be very proud!
-
Author
Thank you. I always feel very nervous publishing pieces like this because I don’t want to sound like a peachy arsehole. Our country does falsely pride itself on equality and sometimes I look around and I think we almost have an unofficial caste system. That’s why I get so angry at people who are born into privilege and waste the precious gift they’ve been given. I did think a lot about Eden while I was writing this. She’s such a cycle breaker and I fucking love her for it – Thank you for taking the time to comment. 🙂
P.S I love it when people call me Lady Smaggle… It’s been about 4 years since any of my social media said Lady Smaggle but I think it’s gorgeous how it’s stuck! 🙂
-
-
Thankyou lovely lady for giving me pause for thought. I consider myself blessed to have the family and friends I do, and I try to pass on kindness daily. I hope in some small way my daily thoughts and actions for others make a difference, but Im honestly not sure what realistic difference I can make for people in such shitty situations? If it seems overwhelming for me I cant even consider what a child in those circumstances must feel and do to deal with it.
-
For a start, we need far better child protection laws in Australia. They are appalling. I once had to hand a little girl back to a parent who had repeatedly burned her legs with cigarettes the night before. I called DOCS and they couldn’t anything about it. It’s completely fucked. I just wanted to drive over to her house and take her away forever and ever. I didn’t sleep for days after that.
-
-
Incredibly well-written darling. Couldn’t agree more. xx
-
Thank you darling! I was very nervous about publishing this one. It’s such a massive and emotional issue. x
-
-
What a great piece. I don’t think you sound a bit like a preachy arsehole, just a very caring and aware woman who knows that she is lucky to have been given opportunities not afforded to others. I hope that this gets shared to the billy-o and that a few more people have their eyes opened to the fact that the homeless (such as the guy with his cute little dog Minnie who sits outside the train station near my house) are not always the worst people on the street.
-
Thank you darling,, that’s wonderful feedback. I didn’t want it to sound like that lame cancer speech that Samantha does in the Sex and The City. It’s easy to get sentimental and miss the point.
-
-
Wow moving-I too won that lottery. And kids like that break my heart. I worked in the public schools in a nice area and there were so many hurting kids. Not preachy at all.
-
Thank you. I think teachers often see the worst of it. xxx
-
-
Wonderful piece
I may be screwed up mentally, but I have all the supports around me that have kept me from falling down that rabbit hole. People able to take me in. to care.
-
That’s exactly the point. It’s so important to recognise the blessings in our lives. x
-
-
This was excellent Carly. I think it’s really important to acknowledge that none of us have control of the situation into which we are born. It’s so obvious but I often think people forget that when they tell asylum seekers, for example, to go back to where they came from, as if they chose a life from which they would risk everything to escape?! Madness.
-
That’s so true! As if anyone would risk their safety and their lives to escape their own country if they weren’t in dire need. So many people live in bubbles in Australia and it really frustrates me.
-
-
Beautiful post x
-
Thank you lovely. x
-
-
What an amazing post Carly, I am so sad for Heaven. I completely agree and I think teachers see a lot further than their own bubble than most of the rest of us.
-
I think about her often. The worst thing was how excited she was when her mum came to visit. She still loved her, it was horrible.
-
-
This piece is just incredible. I have been hurt by men, boys, two of them. And they weren’t homeless and they certainly had shoes, one was the son of a famous author. No one ever tried to rescue me from them (well, that’s a lie, the Viking tried to rescue me from the one before him). We need to stop making assumptions.
-
Exactly. And I’m really sorry darling. That’s total bullshit that you’ve had shit experiences like that. x
-
-
The story about Heaven broke my heart but also want to scream knowing that there are kids like her everywhere and our useless fucking government does nothing to protect them. If it wasn’t for people like you I would have no faith in humanity left at all.
-
Thank you. x
The governement drives me mental. We need far better child protection laws, we’re so obssessed with rights of parents that the rights of children get completely ignored. It’s bullshit.
-
-
This was such a great post lovely, you are such a gem of a person. No one can control the life they are born into. If only kindness was peoples first reaction to less fortunate people rather than fear.
-
Definitely. I live in a very dense area where lots of homeless people hang around and people are awful to them. It’s just unessessary.
-
-
Gah. Beautiful piece, and so very well timed for me personally. I work for an “elite” university (elite in Australian terms, anyway) and spend a lot of my time in private schools, talking to students about going to uni. There’s only so many times you can listen to one of those kids ask about how they can special consideration or if there are any other pathways of scholarships available to them before you reach breaking point, and I think I’m very close to reaching it! I went to a private school myself, I get that mindset, and I don’t think it’s really the fault of the kids themselves. We all need to take responsibility though for what we can personally do to address these deep seated inequalities, and I don’t think I’m doing enough right now….
-
Tell me about it. Half the kids I taught were SO LAZY it made me so frustrated. All the money, all the love and all the oppurtunities in the world and I wanted to do nothing at all with their lives. So upsetting.
-
-
On this page https://www.facebook.com/UTurnHomelessMinistries I read the following:
“The death of a homeless person sleeping outside a luxury vehicle showroom in Cape Town recently made headline news. Alan Storey, the minister of a local church (see http://www.cmm.org.za) wrote a poignant reflection of this tragic event which we feel should be circulated wider. Thank you Alan for making us pause and think. Please read, like and share!
31 Aug 2014, Grace and peace to you …
During the early hours of Tuesday morning a terrible thing happened in this city. A driver — allegedly drunk — lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the Viglietti sports car showroom on Roeland Street. What makes this story so tragic is that a homeless person who was sleeping in front of the showroom was crushed to death in the process.This sad event is a tragic parable for our times. And as with all parables there are layers upon layers of meaning and, in this case, layers of tragedy:
The first layer is that we live in a world where cars get to sleep inside while some human beings sleep outside. We live in a world where motor vehicles are of more value than human beings — and I am not just referring to Ferraris and Maseratis. We live in a world where the combination of metal, glass, rubber and leather are treated as more sacred than flesh and blood stamped with the image of God.
The second is that we live in a world where obscene wealth and desperate poverty lie down together side-by-side. Every time I drive past this particular showroom at night I see this glaring truth glow guiltily before my eyes. Sports car and homeless separated by a see-through pane of glass. We dare not plead ignorance.
The third is that we live in a world where the poor are the victims of our way of life that has gotten out of control. We are drunk (although we deny it) consuming way too much and the poor pay for our reckless living with their lives.
The fourth is that we live in a world where the poor are seen but not acknowledged or known. They remain anonymous. In the article I read about this event it was so sad to read that nobody knew the deceased’s name. We are trying to see if we can host a memorial service for him.
Grace Alan”This saddens me so much. Thanks for your very well written piece.
-
Wow, what an amazing tribute. So true. Especially this bit about cars being given homes over people. That’s just revolting and something a lot of people probably have never even considered before.
-
-
From a grandma from Minnesota.. BRAVO Dear Carly..
-
Oh thank that’s so lovely! I get very excited when I hear that grandparents read my blog. My own grandparents do to!
-
-
I love this. And in my opinion, feeling uncomfortable is a good thing at times. It is the catalyst for action. Action which you have already taken by acknowledging that Bobby is a human, just like the rest of us.
-
I think so too. It’s the stuff that makes us concomfortable that makes us take action. 🙂
-
-
Oh Carly, what a thought provoking piece. Made me want to cry. I regularly give a silent little “thanks” for being born here and not one of the world’s many troubled nations. But you are right – more and more lately I’ve been thinking about how Australia prides itself – but we have so many homeless, troubled people. Heck every time I get a power or water bill I even wonder how a pensioner can possibly afford to live on the pittance they receive. It makes my blood boil when nations waste millions and millions on probes to see what’s going on on Mars. Who gives a f. Open your eyes and see what’s happening down the street! Hopping off my soapbox – for now. Xx
-
Thank you and I totally agree – I think getting a giant electricity bill and actually having the means to pay it is a giant blessing. One another note I’m actually quite a big supporter of space travel and exploration because there’s so many technology advances that have come from it, the investment is just objectively worth it. For example dialysis machines, the internet, smoke detectors, artificial limbs and solar cells. I agree it seems like a lot of money but the US spend only .58% of their government budget on NASA space exploration. I have a MUCH bigger problem with countries spending money on wars than space travel. – Sorry for the rant, I just wrote a freelance article about the benefits of space travel and exploration and now I’m hooked. 🙂
-
-
I absolutely love your post Carly. So beautifully written and great food for thought. My heart breaks for that little girl. So often we don’t look beyond the person to see the bigger picture. I’m as guilty of that as anyone but I’m going to try to do better. X
-
Oh excellent! I love hearing that! xxx
-
-
Best post I have read this year. Thank you Smaggle
-
Thank you so much! What a wonderful compliment!
-
-
I can’t even begin to express how much I love this . . Thank you!
-
Thank you so much! I’m so glad it was well received. x
-
-
Just letting you know I featured this piece in my weekly wrap up: http://bit.ly/1swQ0wY xx
-
Thank you!!!! xxxx
-
-
Ugh I wish I couldn’t relate to this post but I can and I can’t. My father is homeless somewhere in Spain. He doesn’t even know I’m halfway around the world. After trying, for years, to make him realise he needed to take responsibility for his actions, I had to come to the realisation that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
I tell you this because what really upsets me is that he is now part of the invisible nation. Part of the nation that society, as you say, tries to rescue you from. No one will know or care that my father is a father at all or the circumstances that took him down that path and it saddens me beyond words, despite my (right) decision to walk away, that he is not only no longer seen as a human but he will no longer be seen at all.
Lovely post Carly x
-
What a devastating story. It’s so difficult because once people are in that postion, it’s almost impossible to save them. You can fix almost anything but a broken spirit. I know your decision was but wrenching but you did the right thing. You have to look after youself first. x
-
-
Dear Carly, this is one of the most well written, thought provoking articles I have read. Well done! We live in such a judgemental and fear driven society. I see it everyday where I live. So many people think that someone with money is worth talking to more than someone without. Some of my friends talk about others where the first line is….”Do you know X? She lives in the most amazing house, her husband is doing seriously well” It makes me feel sick, I don’t care how much money they have, or how amazing their house is. You are telling me nothing interesting about them that would make me want to know them. The world needs more people like you.
-
That’s so it! I know someone who is like that with her children. Every time I see her she asks me immediately what I’m up to and if she deems it as less awesome than what her kids are doing (who are my age) she’ll tell me all the cool stuff they’re doing. If they’re not doing anything awesome then she won’t say anything. I’m like ‘Who cares???’ and the ‘awesome’ stuff her kids are doing are bullshit things like getting married and buying country houses. I want to hang a sign on myself that says ‘Unless your kids are doing something usefull or meanigful for someone other than themselves, I don’t give a shit.’
-
-
Carly, beautifully written and important (not preachy at all!) piece. Thank you for your thoughtful contributions!
