Day 6. Ouch! - Wednesday, 23/11/2005

Today we started the other training level. This is the first time I’ve had Jim for one before, so it was pretty exciting.
Kerri and Rob B. gave their testimonies at lunch today.

Tonight was our first night off. I got pretty narky about it last year, and so I tried to prepare myself this time, but it was no use.



We went to the RSL club and that was ok. I brought my labcoat along, expecting to be told to take it off. The guy at the door just told me to button it up, which I thought made me look rediculous.

We all wrote our signatures on the blank side of the cardboard coasters, because Tim M. had alrady done it a thousand times in an attempt to get his signature right, as he was apparently thinking about it too much.

Then we turned all the coasters over so that the non-blank side was facing up.
Just before we left, I found one more blank coaster. I couldn’t think of anything clever to write on it, so I wrote, “It wasn’t me who wrote on this piece of cardboard.” Then I turned it over and joined the others to find out who owned the pen I had used. I looked back across the room just in time to see that the lady who worked there turn over my coaster, out of all the others.
She laughed at it and looked at me. I still had the pen in my hand. Then she called over another guy who worked there, and after they had both laughed at it, she pointed to me. I gave a nervous wave and went to the toilet. When I came back out a while later, the lady was still showing the card around to workers and pointing at me.

We then went to Macca’s where most of us got icecreams and played inside the playground where I developed a renewed appreciation for my lack of colostraphobia. We read some newspapers to see how outrageously violent the media had made schoolies out to be. HC had some good publicity, so we were thankful. As we were leaving I heard one of the people who worked there say, “Where did all those people come from?”
Another guy answered, “I don’t know! They must have come in a bus.”



Tonight was called the “Mystery Night”, because our next destination was supposed to be a mystery until we got there. I could be wrong, but I kind of got the impression that where we were going was just as much a mystery to Jim, who was leading us there.

We then went to the beach, and that’s when my attitude turned sour. Where we were was very quite, but we could see the lights from where Schoolies were several hundred meters away. I was thinking about how we had just spent the last five days patiently showing the Schoolies that we were on their side, and now if they needed help or there was an emergency, there were suddenly no yellow shirts to turn to. They had all been taken off the beach simultaneously.
And of course we were on the beach, but we couldn’t help them. And even though I conciously knew it wasn’t true, I still felt as though we had turned up at Schoolies, and there were no Schoolies. That this was a really useless night. Everyone started singing Chrismas carols, but even though I knew it wasn’t true, I subconciously felt as though it was a really lame way of cheering ourselves up about the trajedy that there were no Schoolies tonight. I really felt miserable, but no one else seemed to miss the schoolies. They all seemed to need the night off, so I just sulked quietly by myself.

Afterwards, we went to the girls’ church to play basketball. I don’t like basketball, but there was nothing else to do to get my mind off the worst night of Schoolies, so I started playing as soon as we arrived. I was just setting myself up. I knew all of these moods were irrational, but even though I was ready for them, I couldn’t help arriving home feeling really disgusted and sick that night.

Norm also didn’t enjoy the night, because he injured his foot on the beach. I’m not sure whether or not it was broken though.

While we were playing Basketball, Emma came and showed me an SMS she had received that morning, saying something like, “You’re missing an awesome sunrise right now.”