Make the hero a heroine,take it from Bordertown to Bendigo,set it in winter rather than at Christmas,make the mother in the story a Latvian rather than a lesbian ... the story is yours. Writers are bowerbirds who filch many blue things from across their neighbourhoods and arrange them prettily to impress.
Illustration:Robin Cowcher.
The usual way they justify theft is to say that there are only seven types of story and that if their latest story resembles another it’s because they share a category. The categories are overcoming the monster,rags to riches,the quest,voyage and return,rebirth,comedy,tragedy.
I don’t know which category the story of the one-armed boy fits into,but I stole it from Scottie after hearing him tell it one night at dinner. Perhaps it’s comedy. Maybe it’s overcoming the monster. But it actually happened to Scottie,and he told it beautifully,still astounded years later by how the day turned out for him.
I put myself in the central role,and told the story at paid speaking gigs as if it happened to me. It went like this. “When I was a schoolboy,we were going to play St Colmans at footy,and before the game,our coach,Murray,tells me he wants me to play on a kid with one arm. A scrawny little one-armed Catholic boy. I flatly refused. No known way. I said ‘Murray,that’s an insult. And cruel. The feats I’ll perform opposed to a three-limbed lad will scar him in the mind forever. He doesn’t need that. I’m not doing it. You mistake me for one of those heartless boys. Put an oaf on him. Choose Syme.’
“Murray replied ‘you either play on the one-armed kid or you clean the team bus’. So,OK,pass the Deep Heat. ‘All right,Murray,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to let him get a kick or two,just in case his Mum’s here.’ And I tapped my chest where I guessed my heart was,just to let Murray know I was bighearted.
“Well,as you might have guessed,the scrawny Catholic kid turned out to be a sort of lop-sided Robbie Flower. He made it seem like a pair of arms was an evolutionary flaw. By quarter time he’d kicked four goals … from the halfback flank. He took hangers over me. He ran off me – while bouncing the ball. I began to feel like that Indian god with a heap of superfluous arms.
“And as I watched the fathers come out to our quarter-time huddle,I saw my old man slip Murray a fiver to take his son off the one-armed boy. Now,you might think it a depressing moment,a moment of some indignity,to witness your father bribing your coach to take you off a kid with one arm … but I recognised it as an act of love. He was using every means in his power to limit the social and psychological damage I was suffering at the hands,or shall we say at the hand,of this Catholic boy.
“When he got to our huddle,Murray looked at me and said,‘Nice charity work,Mother Theresa. A happy day for one-armed kids. You got a massive heart. Why don’t you take a spell on the bench and draw up plans for your first orphanage.’ ‘Hey - the one-armed kid’s a gun,’ I said. But Murray wasn’t listening.”
It was a true story. And it got a lot of laughs at lunches,affirming that Anson’s pride goeth before Anson’s fall,and making everyone feel good by proving disability is no disability to the determined. The last time I ever told it was a few years ago to a lunch of about 300 people raising money to fight male suicide. I was halfway through it when I spotted Scottie sitting at a table near the front,open-mouthed,apparently aghast to find me “repackaging” his story.
After lunch he approached me,looking sad. I figured I’d let him down and was set to apologise. But he put a hand on my shoulder and said,“Commiserations,Digger. He got you,too.”
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