1 week Ago By Parnell Palme McGuinness
Nothing in this life is certain, Benjamin Franklin said, but death and taxes. I’d add school reunions and columns about school reunions. This column about high school, inspired by an upcoming reunion, owes something to Franklin.
The draftsman of the American Declaration of Independence understood that freedom has to be earned by challenging unreasonable authority. If I were to stick to the highlights of high school, it would be a very short column. Around the time I entered year 9, some insufferable school-captain type (she’s now a PhD in gender studies, so still obedient to the prevailing fashions) came to give a talk at our school assembly.
One of my very few attempts at keeping a diary reminds me never to let my memory become so distorted that I start to believe the hokey “best days of your life, girls!” cliche she rolled out. Pick the ‘Little Miss’. “If this is as good as it gets, life will be pretty damn depressing,” I pondered.
“I must never succumb to that kind of lazy thinking.” I have heeded the warning from my younger self. But perhaps I scrubbed too much from memory.
It turns out that some of my hijinks were quite memorable, at least to others. Most recently, a story was dredged up because I was due to join the ABC Q&A panel. My careers adviser – who may or may not have forgiven me for refusing to consider doing law at Oxford “because I want to be a Balmain basket-weaver” – posted the promo for Q&A to a Sydney Girls High School “old girls” page.
One teacher commented about me with words to the effect: “I can’t stand her.” “She always was a Little Miss,” an English-history teacher tut-tutted. “Remember her Wuthering Heights fiasco?” Loading Now, I will not dispute that I was indeed a “Little Miss”.
I hope life has been kind to the teachers who had to bear me at that age because they have earned some rest. But I have no memory of this Wuthering Heights fiasco. To be clear, the combination of words sounds plausible.
I had a weird obsession with Emily Bronte’s intense, gothic novel in those teenage years. And fiasco? Well, if I didn’t have too many names already, I’d own its place slap-bang in the middle – Parnell Fiasco Palme McGuinness. But I drew a blank.
I became consumed with curiosity about what I had done to become the talk of the English and history staff room. In a private chat, the former teacher finally agreed to tell me the story. So this is it.
This is the great Wuthering Heights fiasco. I wrote an essay, just not the one they wanted. That’s all.
It was probably a good essay, too, given how well I knew my subject..
