There was no shortage of red faces… Back in the day, when I was impressionable and fresh out of Year 11 at College, I made a momentous decision. Based on the very encouraging school report comments from my art teacher (“Mark has refined and developed his drawing skills” and following…

Corporate Success? Stardom? Or Prison? — Writer Susie Kearley recently wrote a heartbreaking account of being bullied during high school, which led me to think: who are these aggressive people, what makes them behave like they do, and what becomes of them when they leave high school? Her article is here: I Was Assaulted & Everyone Just Watched The ‘bystander effect’medium.com According to Pacer’s National Bullying…

Why a guy was known as Boofa — Nicknames have been used to describe friends (and people who are NOT friends) since the 1200s and, according to Wikipedia, is a term used to express affection, amusement, or as an attempt to describe a character trait. That is true, as some of my closest friends over the years have…

The Earthquake and Tidal Wave Premonition — It was early January 1976, and the city that my family and I call home, Adelaide (South Australia) was experiencing a hot, dry summer, which drew a large number of its residents to its beaches to enjoy the cool tranquil waters of the Gulf of St Vincent. House painter and…

“Help Choking” was changed to “Hello Clowns” — Back in 2005, a software developer at Apple was leading a team working on a revolutionary new type of mobile phone. This phone would have a glass screen with its keyboard incorporated into it, very different from the separate mini keyboards on the “brick”- type mobile phones of that time. …

Breathing Life Into Your Older Articles — Yesterday one of my favourite writers, Britt H., shared a story about an amazing challenge that writer Kerry Purvis (also one of my favourites) is sharing. It is called the ICYMI Challenge. This stands for In Case You Missed It. Unfortunately, I was one of those who missed it —…

The bands that my parents couldn’t handle… When I was a sensitive, impressionable eight-year-old lad trying to make sense of Grade three mathematics at primary school, my mother, Elli Kleimann, made a momentous financial decision. Among the many complaints that she had about my father, Eric, was “Dare is no…

The bus’s brakes were gone — It was early 1988 and I was a slightly naïve young man, with my life ahead of me. My social life was my church’s youth group, the Box Hill Lutheran Youth (Victoria, Australia), which was one of the largest, most lively groups. It contained some very colourful characters. Every four…

Welcome to Cringe Central — As a somewhat “older” man who is well into his 50s, I am very interested in things that I should not be doing (or wearing). This is to minimise cringey reactions from my wife, pre-teen daughter and 11-year-old son. This interest increased recently when a former AFL (Australian Football League)…