Emptyhead
“Who sang ‘The Stranger’? Emptyhead asked me. He was called that because he had the IQ of a fence post. I mean, I wouldn’t say he was slow but it used to take him an hour and a half to watch ’60 Minutes’. He had been trying to stump me with all these music questions without a great deal of success.
“Billy Joel.”
“What about ‘Running Scared’.”
“Who’s Running Scared?”
“No, the song, who sang it?”
“Roy Orbison.”
“Sailing?”
“No thanks, I get seasick.”
“The song smartie.”
“Rod Stewart.”
“Happy Jack.”
“Who?”
“That’s right…… Hey, you know them all, don’t you.”
“That’s four-nil to me, eh, what about you , do you know any?”
“Try me.”
“Who sang: I call my baby Hinges ’cause she’s something to adore?”
“Don’t know that one.”
“Who sang: I wish your eyes where close to mine instead of close together?”
“Dunno.”
“Six-nil.”
Wally
The firm employed this old cleaner called Wally, and boy, was he a ‘wally’. He was at least 85 years old and walked, or should I say, shuffled, with his body straight but his knees were permanently bent. He would carry his mop and bucket and the soggy end of the mop would always brush the bottom of his trouser leg making it permanently wet. As skinny as a rake and no teeth he was a very comical sight. Being the ‘Good Little Boys‘ that we were, we used to play tricks and practical jokes on him constantly.
Through little holes in the walls of the darkrooms we would squirt water at him out of plastic bottes so he was always walking around as wet as a shag, wondering where all this water was coming from.
Other times I’d be sitting at my light table and as he had just shuffled past I would call out: “Hey……… Wally!!” By the time he came to a stop, slowly shuffled his feet around to face the direction of the voice, we would, all have our heads down in ‘concentration’. By the time he turned around again and resumed his course I would call out again and again the whole procedure would start all over again. It would take him ten minutes to walk from one end of our department through to the next one.
One day realising that it was probably me calling out, he yelled out at the top of his voice: “You’re nothing but a bloody wog!!”
He hated new-Australians, and anyone not born here, according to Wally, was a ‘bloody wog’. All the boys had a good laugh about that and ever since then I have been nick-named ‘The Wog’.