A Tale Of Two Kellies
A life is made up of many acts, we evolve as people or in my case, get more certifiable daily.
Heraclitus posited “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” I just look confused and say “Whiskey.Tango.Foxtrot?” (actually, I never got my head around the phonetic alphabet, so I say, “Warthog.Tummy-tuck.Fontanelle?” As long as it translates to W.T.F).
I can divide my life almost into two parts. The young, care-free part and the part that cares deeply about scotch-guarding furniture and always carries band-aids. I think the change came at about 25, although it did happen in increments, so exact gauging is tricky, a bit like menopause. The carefree me basically enjoyed all of things that the 45-year-old me simply detests and attempts to avoid at all costs, things like social contact and not being asleep.
There were no mobile phones in the ‘80s when I was a teen (well there were but they cost as much as a car and were about the same size), so we simply spent days just popping in on people or conversely being popped in on by others. It’s a wonder anyone was ever home to open the door, we were all so busy popping places uninvited. Now if someone makes a bid at a ‘pop-in’ without notice, I initially stand very, very still and then carefully transition to commando crawling behind the nearest bit of furniture. Sometimes it works, other times I have to tell people I have taken up a new stylised type of yoga.
If we weren’t trespassing on the peace of our peers, we were heading to places for no reason. At 45, I have to be down to three squares of loo roll, one Weet-bix and half a tin of eight-year-old golden syrup before I can be convinced by my desperate family that perhaps a supermarket run is called for; and I need to take a handful of Benzos and a shot of Grey Goose to get me to go to a mall unless I have a specific sartorial overspend planned. Back then, I used to just go places, for no real reason, just to catch up with other 19-year-olds also loitering without purpose in the same vicinity. Just hangin’ at the mall, completely unfazed by the artificial lighting, screaming toddlers and the fact that you are missing re-runs of last years’ Emmerdale.
Things didn’t get much better in my early 20’s, other than I ditched the lurking and took up clubbing. I had a laissez faire attitude to life, nothing seemed to worry me, it was like I was partially lobotomised. “It will be probably be fine,” was my response to a situation that was anything but, such as accidentally blundering into an illegal cage fight; now, facing the same scenario, I would be yelling, “power up the rocket ship, we leave Earth tonight!”
I feel like the voice-over guy from the crime channel should have been narrating my early life choices, repeating the refrain, “this turned out to be a terrible decision.” Break dancing on gravel, cutting my own hair whilst drunk, leaving the country with a one-way ticket, $200 and nowhere to stay, most of my boyfriends, trying out for the phone-sex line (it appeared saying “track pants and my Nan’s cardi, why?” Is not the response they were looking for to the question, “what are you wearing?”) Where were you crime channel guy, where were you?
Nonetheless, I remained largely lacking the obsessive, worry-fuelled nature I have today (I obsessively chant “I will not obsess, I will not obsess”, even though I see the irony). I don’t think I’ve been as relaxed after turning 30, since the time I was put on a controlled substance after performing my own version of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball, in the chain, rope and rigging aisle at Bunnings.
Sleep was a concept rather than a concrete verb, it was that awful bloody thing that got in the way of your social life. Paradoxically, now my social life is that bloody thing that gets in the way of my sleeping. Then, I would pull a good four hours sleep a night and be off carpe-ing that diem. Now, four hours is a jolly nice nap that falls sometimes after lunch and ends just before supper.
Sometimes, I think that I can capture that seminal moment when the carefree, 25 and under Kellie was invaded, much like Ripley’s crewmates in the Alien movies (but with admittedly fewer things looking like angry molluscs chewing their way through my abdomen), by cautious, early-onset, middle aged Kellie. I was at my mother’s house picking up a spare iron. The fact that I should want her superfluous laundering tools is a pretty telling lead-in to this tale; up until this point, rather than examining fabric care labels like I was decoding the Rosetta Stone, I would simply sleep in my clothes and wear them again the next day. On this occasion however, out of nowhere, I felt a rise of excitement. So many settings and dials and buttons. “Wow Mum, thanks so much, this is really great” and then, the sentence to rule them all, “I can’t wait to try it!” I know, what the actual foxtrot?
My mother, who knows the exact nature of the beast that is me and has never been one to miss an opportunity for a biblical quote (for a Wiccan, she really has got a huge repertoire), looked me in the eye and said, “Oh my, how are the mighty fallen.” She was right. The mighty may hath indeed fallen, but “fontanelle” me, they had a pocket full of band-aids and a bloodstain resistant, scotch-guarded couch, so crisis averted!
