The Squealer

500 Words: Failure

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/56128

“My mother said you can’t come over and play with us because you squeal too much!” She spat the words in my face then took off.

I was only a kid, just like her, but I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to think or what to do.

Squeal? Me? What did her mother mean?I loved playing with the girls across the street. I was hardly ever invited over but when I was asked to play in their front yard, I was so excited and happy.

Squeal? Was giggling and laughing classified as a squeal? Surely not. How else could I vent my exuberance and joy as we played? Were running and chasing, playing hide and seek and having fun, activities that had to be performed in silence?I didn’t tell my parents about what had been said. I felt too much like a failure to talk about it. My ‘squealing’ meant I had failed in the neighbourhood friendship stakes – in my child’s mind I was now an embarrassment to my family and to myself.My younger brother was always being invited across the road to play with the girls’ youngest sister who was in the same class as he was. Since my family knew nothing about the ‘squealing’ accusation, he kept going over to play, whilst I busied myself at home.At the beginning of January, the girls across the road got a brand new above-ground swimming pool. My brother was one of the first kids to be invited over for a dip. Each day of the holidays, he made a very handsome sight, in his swimmers and thongs with rolled-up towel slung around his shoulders on his way to the pool.

I spent many afternoons up in our huge camphor laurel tree, looking across the road and listening to the girls, their friends and my little brother in the swimming pool, diving and splashing and having fun.One Friday afternoon, my father came home from work early, just as my brother was on his way out.

“Where do you think you’re going?” growled my father.

“Across the road for a swim,” my brother replied truthfully.

“No you’re not”, snapped Dad, “go get changed.” He grabbed him by his be-towelled shoulders and spun him around in the direction of the back door. With a howl, my brother retreated inside.

The next day, dad took the family shopping. Pool shopping. He bought us an above-ground swimming pool just like the girls across the road.

When it was all set up, dad told my brother that if he wanted to swim, he would swim here at home, no more going across the road.As a family, we had many wonderful years of fun and laughter in our backyard pool, splashing, diving, having races and even squealing.

I never did tell the family about the ‘squealing’ allegation which made me feel like such a worthless failure. As things turned out, I don’t think I really needed to.