Come ere, your uncle Clint wants to say something to ya. This is a heads up, okay, and I’m not gunna repeat anything so this is thinking time, right? Right. Shoulders back. Heads up, backs straight. Knees pressed together, shoelaces tied separately. Eyes open, mouth shut. Pencils down, balloons up. Please use graph paper for all notes. Clag has been dispensed. Today’s tuckshop menu has been cancelled. Complimentary apricot delights will be administered prior to your polio injections. Girls, boys. Attention, please. This will only take a moment. Why are you not wearing your sports uniform? I’m not interested in whether you got dacked at the school assembly or not. It serves you right for wearing leopard print underpants to school in the first place. The silkworm experiment has been declared a complete failure. As an alternative, you will all be involved in the painting of a large-scale mural on the side of the Myer building. Most of our work will be done under cover of darkness. I’m sure you know why that is, so don’t ask. That’s called rhetoric. We don’t have time to explore the many levels of irony today, children. Please turn to page (x) of whatever John Marsden book we’re reading at the moment. Yes, that one will do. Right. It’s time for a bit of U.S.S.R. Not a peep out of any of you for a good half-hour. All right, you can go to the bubblers. Walk, please. That’s not good enough, you’ll have to wait. I don’t know. What? Yes, that’s right, what he said. Books open please. Mouths shut. Where are you going? No, no, no. Detention is this afternoon. We’ll be there for as long as it takes. I don’t have anything better to do.
