The Lamb Bomb

Story-time this morning, for no other reason than the fact that I was ruminating on how poorly adults can do things.

When you’re a kid, you think that adults are more than just sensible. You think they’re omnipotent, and that they know everything, that their views are more than just legitimate, they’re quite literally the unshakable orthodoxy.

And then there comes a period in every child’s life where the thin veneer of adult-truth evaporates revealing wobbly gnosticism. For me that happened quite early on, because like a few other kids in the 80s, my parents divorced. This is not a post where I re-litigate the poisonous immolation of two boomers at war – it’s all very predictable. What I will do is to tell you a story about how adults use kids to get at each other, for no other reason than to marvel at the fact that I am now older than my parents were at the time, and still marvelling at some of my contemporaries who are engaging in exactly the same behaviour. Some things never change.

By the time I was about 8 my parents had both ‘re-partnered’ and ‘the children’ would visit my Dad and his partner in the school holidays, twice a year.

Now, without getting too maudlin I’ll say I was not a happy kid. Things were not going well with my Mum’s partner. And, it was the mid 1980s. I was tall and skinny, an effect amplified by the fashions of the time. Bedecked in pastel ‘stirrup pants’ with my short hair shellacked in gel I resembled a pissed-off toilet brush. Socially, it was a bit of a low point.

So, I looked forward to holidays with my Dad, who was mostly working while we were visiting, but a comforting presence nonetheless. Dad lived in a pretty remote area and at the beginning of the holidays I acquired a sickly lamb from a neighbour that was immediately dubbed Schizo.

Being a miserable, introverted girl I latched onto that poor little animal like an organ transplant. Four times a day I’d mix up a giant bottle of powdered “Anlamb” and gently cradle Schizo while he bobbed his nugetty little head against my chest, slurping down all the milk, often shitting it straight back out again. Schizo had what my Mum referred to later as, ‘the scours’. This lamb was not destined for term three.

But Schizo kept me occupied for the two weeks of the school holidays which was undoubtedly the point. When the time came to go back to school I cried and cried at the thought of leaving Schizo behind, but was assured that he would be taken good care of, and that my Dad, who had never cooked so much as a plate of baked beans for his own children would assiduously stir up warm bottles of powdered milk several times a day for an undercooked lamb.

I hated returning home. Mum would attempt to soften the blow with a nice tidy bedroom and sometimes some new undies, such were the excesses of 1980s New Zealand. The following evening, after I’d returned from my first day back the Ritual Shaming Institute (school) Dad called. Pretty much the only time we had any contact with Dad was in person, twice a year. So when he called I knew something was wrong.

Dad had bad news. Schizo was, of course, dead.

I was devastated and cried for three days.

The beauty of his “play” never occurred to me until last night, when I was furnishing the latest episode of Epic Fails of Pet Husbandry for my daughter with the tale of Schizo the lamb whose only characteristic was attempting to shit himself inside-out every day.

I realised that My Dad and his partner had sourced the sickest lamb in the South Island for me to keep on death’s door, until five minutes after the car pulled out of the driveway at the end of the holidays, at which point they no doubt tipped the Anlamb down the plughole and left the animal outside for nature to tidy the ledger. And then they waited until I was home from school to deliver the news to my Mum so she could relay it to me after they were safety out of harm’s way. The Lamb Bomb.

Now, my Mum grew up on a remote sheep station and so her regard for sheep in general was murderous at its most generous. However, she also possesses a studied, impenetrable calmness that I like to refer to as, ‘The Rock’ and it was The Rock that listened gently as I recounted spending the entire holiday tipping endless bottles of powdered milk into Schizo’s warm carcass, his demise no doubt apparent to her from the moment I burbled out the teary words, ‘his Mum didn’t want him’. By the following day she was presented with an inconsolable child to deal with, whilst managing all the other usual crap that comes with full-time work and parenting.

I’m painting one team as the villain here but as anything who has had any experience with an acrimonious separation can tell you, there is always give and take. All parties covered themselves in glory during The War Years, but the lamb was a particularly apposite example.

The story about The Richardson’s Guinea Pigs was funnier.

Post Script; If you find yourself in a similar situation, the correct response is this; The next time the child visits (months later) you take the child to a paddock full of sheep and point at the happiest one and say, ‘There he is! With his flock! Isn’t he happy!’

Parenting is two parts wiping and one part lying.