Bruce Jenkins
Bio
Memoirist, music writer, editor, record collector, psychologist.
Melbourne, Aus.
Stories (3)
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DISPOSABLE. Content Warning.
I need to buy some new undies. Several pairs reveal a parting of ways between the elastic and the cotton fabric and, as my mother used to say, what if you were taken to hospital and were wearing those? As a child I had no real idea what she meant. Like when I had my appendix out? Is there special hospital underwear? But like a puppy I picked up on the tone of voice. Shame. It would be shameful to have decrepit underpants viewed by… well, by anyone. I remember her repairing her own nylon undergarments, sitting by the window where the light was best, bending over the needle and thread. It was a necessity; she had no income of her own and the only way to purchase personal items was by putting a few pence aside from the weekly housekeeping. That scrimping and saving was preferable to the stressful, yet ultimately inevitable, conversation with my father about increasing the housekeeping money. Though conversation isn’t the right word. Inquisition. Interrogation. Ritual humiliation. Any and all of those.
By Bruce Jenkinsabout a year ago in Families
REVELATION
It was a time of change for McKinnon High School. No mere slaves to long-established convention they had taken the radical step, just in time for my enrolment, of abandoning caps for boys and gloves for girls. Girls still had to wear hats, of course. Who knows what passions might be inflamed in twelve year old cusp-of-adolescents if they encountered liberated hair? Experienced staff members shuddered at this collapse of values, while newer recruits to the ranks of late-60s educators quietly rolled their eyes.
By Bruce Jenkinsabout a year ago in Beat
