My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (6 page)

Jack's dad has a terrible disease. It's something that fathers have suffered from since the dawn of time: CDS. Cranky Dad Syndrome. Maybe your dad has it, too?

Mr D has been going to classes to deal with his CDS. A bunch of fathers meditate and watch videos of dolphins and wear beads around their necks to stop them exploding every time their kid does something wrong.

He's really made progress. He's been in a heaps better mood. But Jack misses the old Mr D. Cranky Dad Syndrome made life interesting, stirred things up a bit. It was like
living in a wave pool at a theme park and now he's stuck in a duck pond with a father who's calm and polite but kind of boring.

So it's Saturday morning and Jack and I are on a mission to save Mr D, to reunite him with his inner Cranky Dad, to bring back CDS.

‘Jack! Did you replace the remote control batteries with sausages?' Mr D says, coming into Jack's bedroom. He holds up the remote and a handful of mashed sausage meat.

‘No, Dad,' Jack says innocently. He and I are playing Monopoly on the bed.

‘Who else around here would do
something that stupid?' Mr D asks.

‘Dunno,' Jack says.

Mr D growls. ‘Are there any other batteries?'

‘Dunno,' Jack says.

‘Well, can we change the channel without the remote? It seems to be stuck on
Thomas the Tank Engine
at the moment.'

‘Nope.'

‘This is
ridiculous
!' Mr D raises his voice. It's World Cup time and he has his lucky Socceroos jersey on. He bought it when he was a teenager. His gut hangs out now and the sleeves are too short but he totally believes that wearing it gives Australia an edge.

Mr D has not yet realised that he only has half a moustache. Jack snuck into his bedroom at 6.15 am and shaved off the left side before he woke up.

‘Are you
sure
you didn't do this to the remote, Jack?'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘Because if you did…'

‘I didn't, Daddy.' Jack grins at his Dad.

Mr D looks as though he wants to dissect Jack like a laboratory rat. But, instead, he starts to whistle. It's one of the techniques from his classes. He's whistling ‘O Christmas Tree'. Or it could be ‘Do You Know the Muffin Man?' I can't really tell. He's hasn't had that much practice yet. After ten seconds or so, Mr D speaks, in a calm, deliberate voice.

‘Don't call me “Daddy”. The game's on in 15 minutes. I'm going to the shop to get batteries.'

He heads up the dimly lit front hall and reaches to get his keys off the brass hook, but they're not there.

‘Has anyone seen my keys?' he shouts.

‘On the hook near the front door?' Jack calls from his room.

‘If they were on the
hook
, why would I ask
you, my
little buddy
?' he calls back.

‘Well, they'll be wherever you put them,' Jack says.

Mr D rubs his forehead.

‘Three seconds till I have my old dad back,' Jack whispers. ‘This was easier than I thought it'd be. Three…'

We peek through the crack near the hinges of Jack's door as Mr D searches his pockets.

‘Two…' Jack whispers.

Mr D rifles through a drawer in the cabinet near the front door.

‘One…'

He slams the drawer shut and closes his eyes. He fondles the beads hanging from his neck with his chunky, bricklayer's fingers. Jack and I poke our heads around the door, watching him carefully, waiting for him to erupt. Mr D opens his eyes and looks right at us.

‘Jacko, have you seen my keys, mate?' he says calmly.

‘No, Grandma,' Jack says. ‘I haven't.'

I cover my eyes.

‘Please, don't call me “Grandma”. And are you sure you don't have the keys?' he asks.

‘Yep. I'm sure … Grandma.'

Mr D has a good, long look at Jack. He takes a small bag of lavender – a stinky purple flower – out of his pocket and has a long, deep sniff, then he breathes out very slowly. ‘Not to worry,' he says. ‘I'll find them. Still got 14 minutes.' Mr D heads down the hallway, past us and into the lounge room.

‘These classes are making him weird,' Jack says. ‘He's no fun anymore.' He takes the keys out of his pocket, goes to the front door, reaches up and hangs them on the hook. ‘Have you got the biscuits?'

‘In my bag,' I tell him.

‘Activate Phase Two.'

I grab my backpack and we sneak out the front door. It's raining outside, so we work
quickly. I stack eight packets of Monte Carlo biscuits on the bonnet of Mr D's work ute. We open the packets, pull each biscuit apart and stick the two halves to the ute, using the cream as glue. We stick biscuits all over the doors, the roof, the windows, the bonnet. We can't stop laughing as we do it. But it's that nervous laugh when you know that something very, very bad is about to happen.

Six minutes later we're back inside, standing at the laundry door. Mr D is on his knees surrounded by mounds of stinking clothes, searching through the hamper.

‘Eight minutes till game time,' Jack says.

Mr D looks up at us.

‘Must be sooo frustrating, Dad. Where could they be?'

This kind of comment would, ordinarily, send Mr D into a frothing fit, but he just calmly piles clothes back into the hamper.

‘Maybe the keys are in the ute?' Jack suggests.

Mr D looks at Jack, heads out of the laundry and walks down the hall. We follow him. As he goes out the front door he sees his keys hanging from the hook. He turns, slowly, to us.

‘Is this your idea of a joke?' he asks.

‘No, Granny,' Jack says, smiling.

‘Did you have my keys all along?'

‘No, Granny,' Jack says.

‘
Don't
call me “Granny”!'

‘I thought you just didn't want me calling you “Grandma”?'

‘Do you think I'm some kind of
fool
?' he says, raising his voice.

Here he comes. I can almost smell the old Mr D now. I'm kind of glad the mission is over before he sees what we did to his ute. Maybe we can clean it up before he realises. Mr D wipes sweat from his forehead with the palm of his hand and whispers the word ‘mango' to himself.

‘Mango' is his emergency code word, to help snap him out of a fast-approaching CDS attack.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, then smiles.

Jack can feel victory slipping through his fingers. He panics and says, ‘Okay, I admit it. I did take your keys.'

Mr D repeats the word ‘mango' under his breath seven or eight times. A deep crease appears in the space between his eyes. ‘Okay … well … that's good of you to be honest, Jack. No harm done.'

Jack has had enough. ‘No
harm
done?' He walks down the hall towards his dad. ‘What do you mean, “no harm done”? You were on your hands and knees searching through my dirty undies on the laundry floor. You rummaged around the entire house. It's
five
minutes till game time, and you can't even change the channel. What's happened to you, Dad? Doesn't any of this make you even a
little
bit cranky?'

Mr D thinks about it for a moment, then
says, ‘I'm a new man, Jacko. Nothing can break me.'

‘It's the
semifinal
,' Jack says. ‘Australia never gets into the finals. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.'

‘Well, I better get going then. I'll be back before the starting whistle.' He grabs his keys and gets ready to leave.

‘This is
mental
,' Jack says. ‘What if I were to tell you that I put the sausages in the remote?'

Mr D stops in the doorway. He turns to Jack. He looks down at his hand where I can still see a fleck of sausage meat. He swallows hard. He strokes his left earlobe firmly three times. Then he smiles again. ‘You and your practical jokes.' He ruffles Jack's hair. ‘You'll be a comedian one day.' He heads out the door.

‘Maybe he's cured,' I suggest.

‘Just wait.'

‘Jack!' Mr D calls.

‘Yes, Dad,' Jack replies.

‘Why is my ute covered in biscuits? And birds?'

We step out the front door. It's sprinkling outside. Mr D has stopped halfway down the front path. He is staring at his work ute which sits in the driveway. And it's true. Not only does the ute look like a five-year-old's birthday cake, but there are about 15 magpies on the car feasting on the Monte Carlos.

‘Would you believe it if I said it was some of the neighbourhood kids?' Jack asks.

Mr D stands there in the rain, glaring at us. He walks up the front steps, towards us.

We back up into the house.

‘I don't think it
was
the neighbourhood kids,' he says. ‘I think it was
you
, Jack. You and your numbskull mate.'

‘No way. Wasn't us.'

Mr D clenches and unclenches his fists, making his way slowly across the front deck.
His half-moustache makes him look lopsided and menacing. The rain pelts down harder now. I'm getting a little nervous, I really am. Mr D looks like he's about to strangle someone.

‘This is it,' Jack whispers out of the side of his mouth.

‘You two…' he says, his shadow falling across us.

I wish I'd never got involved in this. I wish I'd never bought those biscuits. I wish Jack had never been born. Mr D looks as angry as I've ever seen him – a white-hot nuclear reactor of a man with a twitchy left eye. In a cartoon, he'd have steam billowing from his ears. It's a miracle of human biology
that this much pressure and tension can build up inside one man. He starts to rock from foot to foot, mumbling ‘mango,' sniffing his lavender, counting his beads and stroking his earlobe like he's about to rip it off – but none of it does any good. It's too late. The reactor is ready to blow and I can't take it anymore. I plunge my hand into Jack's pocket and pull out the two AA batteries he took from the remote.

‘Here!' I scream, holding them up in front of Mr D's face.