My Nephew Got into My Knickers

I might be matched with a married man who used the dating site for extramarital affairs, a stalker, a child molester who signed up to the site as a means of dating single mothers and getting access to victims or a serial killer and I would end up either buried in a forest in the Dandenongs or chucked in a wheelie bin. I did go on some few and far between dates, but none worked out. One man talked about his ex-wife all the time; another was very arrogant and made it clear that I should be thankful he agreed to date him because as a mother few men would be interested in me; and an absolute loser who got drunk, kept leering at my boobs the entire night while talking about how redheads were supposed to be wild in bed and how he wanted me to prove this assertion correct.

Another reason why I hadn't looked for somebody else was perhaps the lingering regrets from my divorce. I of course thought when Mark and I married in 1999 that we would be together for the rest of our lives and grow old together. In fact our marriage only lasted from 1999 until 2006 and while our separation was amicable and we remained friends, divorce was still stressful and emotionally painful and I always worried that if I was to find somebody else that it would end up the same way.

With my kids away with their father and his new wife and me having been alone for so long, perhaps I was lonely without knowing it and subconsciously wished that Mark and I were still married and taking Ben and Katie on holiday to Queensland together as a nuclear family. In that frame of mind, and with Cody having arrived to stay unexpectedly maybe this had set off a chain of emotions that resulted in me having unnatural thoughts about Cody? That's all it was, and it would pass. Simple explanation, nothing to worry about.

*

With a clearer head, I was able to think more normally as Cody and I headed out to start our fun day out, and we were acting like a normal aunt and nephew.

As we went into the garage, Cody admired my blue all-wheel drive and said, "You've got a really nice car, Aunty Emily."

I laughed. "I can take a hint. Would you like to drive, Cody?"

Cody smiled. "Yes please, I love driving." He then stopped. "I don't have my P Plates with me."

My son had recently passed his driver's test so there was an easy solution. "You can borrow Ben's P-plates." I then paused. "It's a manual, you do have a manual license?"

Cody nodded. "Yes, I was determined to drive a manual when I got my license."

"That's good, so many people these days have no idea how to drive a manual, they only get automatic licenses," I commented as Cody and I put the P Plates on the car, and he climbed into the driver's seat, me in the passenger side.

"Ben got his manual license?" Cody asked as he backed my car down the driveway.

"Yes, I was insistent and when Katie goes for her license in a couple of years' time she will be learning to drive a manual," I said. "Lucky they both want to drive, and I made it clear that I'm not running a taxi service or a ride share driver. I know people whose kids still haven't got their license in their 20s."

"There's lots of kids at my school who aren't interested in driving," said Cody, as I sat impressed at his driving skills despite his inexperience behind the wheel. "Then there's my family. Only Mum has her license besides me, Dad has never driven in his life and Tamara is insistent that she'll never drive because she doesn't want to add to global warming."

That was typical of Tamara and Sven I thought, remembering how my sister and brother-in-law had actually tried to discourage Cody from getting a license but made no negative comment and instead we talked about Cody's football team, his school, his part time job and my own job as Cody drove through the Moorabbin area until we reached the coast near Sandringham, before driving north through Brighton and Elwood until we reached St. Kilda, the sunlight on this beautiful Melbourne morning sunlight reflecting off the blue waters of Port Phillip Bay.

When Cody parked the car and we walked towards the beach and pier through the tall palms that adorned the parkland near the beach, we could see all the way across to Williamstown and further down in Port Melbourne a cruise ship had docked. Looking towards the city, the skyscrapers dominating the Melbourne skyline shone in the sunlight

My phone indicated I had a message, and I opened it to see pictures of the kids enjoying breakfast with their father, step mum and stepsiblings at Brisbane's South Bank, the Brisbane River and Brisbane city skyline in the background. In one photo, an ibis had leaped onto the table to try and scavenge some food.

I laughed and showed the photos to Cody. "Your cousins are having lots of fun up in Brisbane, and they've got a new pet bird."

Cody laughed at the ibis, then said, "You're missing Ben and Katie, aren't you Aunty Emily?"

I gave my nephew a thin smile. "That's just the way it is I'm afraid. I'd love to be up there with them but when you're divorced and sharing custody of your kids you have to accept they can't be with you all the time, it's all about compromise. I mean, Ben and Katie live with me but they spend a lot of time with their father and that's a good thing. There's a lot of deadbeat fathers out there who don't spend any time with their kids and need to be chased for maintenance in the courts."

"I wish my Dad didn't spend any time with me at all," said Cody as we walked towards the pier.

Although I had never liked my sister's weak excuse of a husband I made a point of never speaking negatively about him to his kids. "Come on, now don't say that about your Dad, you don't mean that."

"Dad and I just have nothing in common," said Cody, as we walked along St. Kilda Pier. "He doesn't approve of contact sports so he's never seen me play football once. Same for Mum. Lucky for me, Mum is misanthropic, so therefore she agreed to me playing football when I was younger so therefore she and Dad can complain to all their lefty friends about how their son likes everything they don't. Plus it keeps me out of the house for a bit." Cody laughed.

For such a young man, Cody was pretty good at psychoanalyzing his own family, and the term 'misanthropic' described my sister to a tee.

"I understand it must be difficult for you at home sometimes Cody," I said.

Cody nodded. "Yeah, like Ben and Katie, your kids love you and their Dad. It's the same with Uncle Paul and Aunty Lisa and Zac and Laura. But as for our house, even if we go on holiday we don't have fun and enjoy ourselves. Like even if we went to the Gold Coast and Brisbane there would be no point because Tamara, Mum and Dad don't believe in using animals for any form of entertainment and that means zoos, wildlife parks and theme parks where animals are kept are out."

"I wouldn't go to a place where animals were treated badly, but things are very different now to years ago when animals were kept in concrete cages," I said. "The focus now is on conservation."

"Try telling Mum, Dad and Tamara that," sighed Cody. "And as for the other theme parks, their shows apparently don't fit with the acceptable cultural standards in today's society, and they are prejudiced against fat people who can't get on the rides due to their size and feel left out."

"And did other people catch the fat people, hold them down and force food down their mouths until they got so obese that they couldn't fit on rollercoasters, theme park rides and water slides and felt left out?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yeah exactly," said Cody. "Maybe they could open a new theme park on the Gold Coast called Woke World? All the shows would fit some social justice narrative, all of the food sold would be vegan, all park workers would be non-binary gender from ethnic minorities and there would be no rides so that fat people won't have their feelings hurt if they don't fit on the rides. I'm sure Mum, Dad and Tamara would be on the first plane to Queensland to visit."

I laughed. "Don't say it too loud, they might actually open something like that."

"I remember last year when you took Ben and Katie to Adelaide, I have to admit I was a bit envious as you all had fun and I wished I could go too. Then Mum and Dad say we're going for a trip to Adelaide for Dad's conference about some left wing crap - gender and diversity or some shit I can never remember what exactly - and aside from that part I was looking forward to a holiday to South Australia. Then reality hit when we arrived and what travel with my mother, father and sister is like and well, be careful what you wish for is all I can say. You heard about what happened over there?"

"Oh, definitely heard about it," I said, feeling very sorry for my nephew.

While going to any zoos or wildlife parks in South Australia were out, museums were possible if one avoided any galleries that displayed Australia's colonial past or anything to do with animals and which could trigger Tamara, which made visits to the said museums very short indeed. But in Rundle Mall, the center of Adelaide, there seemed to be plenty of non-triggering things for everyone to enjoy, even a young special snowflake SJW like Tamara.

One could admire the fine architecture of Adelaide's historic shopping malls, browse through the shops, enjoy the iconic pig statues and 'Malls Balls' sculpture and glance up to where the Adelaide Hills and highest peak Mount Lofty were visible. However, Tamara being Tamara she noticed a family sitting on a bench having lunch and that one of the little girls had a golliwog doll.

That was it, Tamara was triggered and she and Rhonda of course had to go and confront the family about something that did not concern them. The girl's mother and grandmother were not impressed and took umbrage to this intrusion and a furious row broke out, the family telling Rhonda and Tamara to 'fuck off'. All the while Sven presumably stood there being useless as usual while a mortified Cody slunk away, and it was lucky that he didn't try and end it all by jumping in front of a tram in King William Street such was his embarrassment.

There were other Tamara triggering incidents in and around Adelaide. A visit to Glenelg ended badly because Tamara was served vegetarian rather than vegan food in a restaurant. A similar trip to historic Port Adelaide on a Saturday was equally ill-fated when there was a classic car rally in the area of which Tamara disapproved because the vehicles were apparently less environmentally friendly than the ones today and had leather upholstery. Then there was a trip to the Fleurieu Peninsula which involved a stop at a place called Jacaranda Tree Farm, where Tamara was so upset that bees were kept in apiaries and that the well-kept farm animals were a tourist attraction that she refused to go inside, and instead stood in front of the parked coach her arms folded in silent protest, her father beside her supporting her. Rhonda did go inside, but only to cause problems and unpleasantness with the owners of the farm about how their business model was upsetting for her daughter and no doubt thousands of other children too.

"It was bad enough being there, but with Mum posting on social media about how proud she was that Tamara had stood up what she believed in instead of seeing the truth that Tamara had acted like some over privileged brat made it worse," said Cody.

"Social media makes a lot of things worse these days," I said. "I have to admit I would find it hard to live without it if it suddenly wasn't there, but the things people put on online just makes me cringe."

"Yeah, social media and reality shows are the worst," said Cody. "You've got social media influencers and mommy bloggers, is that even a job? As for TV, who wants to see people - attention seekers, narcissists and bogans - who have no talent or training dating, cooking, renovating, losing weight or displaying their relationship problems on national television? Then there's the talent shows where people who go on them most of the time for the freak factor, and people who are just famous for being famous. It was better years ago, like when you were on TV Aunty Emily. That was cool."

"Cool?" I laughed and shook my head. "You've sure changed your mind Cody. When Mum and Dad showed put on the recordings from Melbourne's Rising Stars a few years back the way you all carried on it was like you'd seen the most embarrassing thing in your life."

"Yeah, sorry about that," said Cody, blushing slightly. "But I was about 12 back then, I was just a dumb kid, I didn't know any better. It was just kind of odd seeing you on an old TV show that's like nothing you see on TV now. I mean, I know you'd been on TV when you were a kid and I'd seen the car insurance commercial from when you were about 18 up on Youtube, but seeing so much of the show was kind of odd. But now I'm older I realize how much of an achievement it was, how much hard work it must have taken to get on the show in the first place and then learn all those song and dance numbers and acting scenes, as well as going to school. Now I'm really proud my Aunty was so talented and got to do something so great."

I blushed a little. "That you Cody, that means so much to me, I'm so flattered."

I thought back to the time that Mum and Dad had their old video tapes from my days on the show - kept in a storage box and with VCR's now rare as dodos likely to remain unseen - converted to digital format and when the whole family were together one Easter decided to show their six grandchildren their mother/aunt's tenure on an old children's variety show in the late 1980s and early 1990s, embarrassing me in the process but in a good-natured way.

The six kids were all aware that I had been on TV, and they were also aware that before they were born there was a decade known as the 1990s. It was a very uncool decade, and before that was the decade known as the 1980s which was even less cool. This period of time was inhabited by Generation Xers, their Baby Boomer and War Baby parents, some really, really old people from prior generations and the first born Millennials who were too young to know any better that they lived in such uncool times.

Cody, Zac and my own son Ben could not believe what they were seeing on the TV in front of them, watching an old variety show for kids made in a time long since gone. The kids participating in the show wore denim jeans, jackets and skirts, brightly colored tee-shirts, dresses, skirts, leggings, pantyhose and trousers, with most of the girls wearing hair bows and scrunchies all equally bright in color. We also of course wore costumes as part of the song and dance numbers and as part of the sketch comedy routines and all this added up to make the show a perfect storm of the most uncool things they had ever seen, and I was on it!

The three boys laughed at and cringed at the show in equal measures, calling it 'dated' 'terrible' 'saccharine' 'boring' and 'so 80s or so early 90s'. The boys even asked whether we were all part of a religious cult, which granted it might have looked like that to modern children especially in scenes where we all sang together on a stage.

My son Ben was especially worried that his friends from school and his basketball team would find out that his mother had been on this show when she was kid and bully and laugh at him for it. The boys asked how many people watched the show, and Dad's response that thousands of people in the state of Victoria and in Tasmania and regional areas of New South Wales and South Australia close to the borders filled Ben with even more horror.

Cody and I were at the end of the pier looking at the Westgate Bridge in the distance and Cody asked, "So, Uncle Paul getting beaten up about you being on the show when he was a kid. Did that really happen, or was he just bullshitting?"

"It really happened unfortunately," I said, cringing and laughing nervously. "He'd just started high school and thought it was really cool that he had an older sister on TV and was telling some of his new classmates. What he didn't know was that there were some older boys who didn't approve of the show, they thought it was poofter, and when they found out that some Year 7 boy had a sister on the show they decided that he must be gay and went looking for him. Your poor Uncle Paul got beat up, thrown in a wheelie bin and had sour milk poured over his head. I remember when we got home from school, I had to treat his wounds."

"Ouch," said Cody. "Although Uncle Paul was laughing about it with you and Aunty Lisa, so I guess he's gotten over it now. I noticed that Katie and Laura weren't that impressed by the show either."

I laughed. "They thought it was going to be something like the TV show Glee that was popular at the time. They couldn't work out why it looked so cheap and amateurish in comparison, I had to explain that a locally produced kids' show in the late 1980s had a much lower budget than a worldwide smash hit American show produced by a major studio in the 2010s."

"They also asked why you all had such broad Australian accents."

Again I laughed. "Who knows? Maybe because we were Australian kids in an Australian TV show?"

"How is Katie about the show now?"

"Well she didn't go to school and write a story about it like she did with that insurance commercial I was in around 1994. Katie's teacher couldn't work out why she had written such a detailed story about how her mother was a really terrible driver when she was younger. About the show itself, Katie is what you would call 'wary'."

"Wary?"

As well as my red hair, Katie had inherited my love of acting, singing and dancing, and her extracurricular activity was always dance classes, whereas with my son it was basketball. She was always a theatre kid growing up and still was in high school. However, after seeing me on a kids show years earlier, Katie began fearing that underneath the level-headed suburban mother who worked as a chartered accountant lurked a fame-obsessed, demonic stage mother just waiting to emerge and live vicariously through her. That in one of the show's comedy sketches I played a pushy mother who kept meddling in her young son's tennis game probably didn't allay her fears.

"She thinks I might be one of those stage mothers in disguise, you know who are really pushy with their kids and that I'm going to get too involved and embarrass her. Any advice on singing and dancing from me for her recitals at school and she's always very defensive if I overstep that invisible line. It's like the time there was an old 1950s musical on the TV one Saturday and I was going around the house singing the songs to myself afterwards, Katie was all, 'Mum, you're doing it again!'"

Cody and I were walking back down the pier now, and he was clearly amused. "My sister says the show is 'problematic'," he laughed.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course she does."

This was of course typical of Tamara. Most everything was 'problematic' in Tamara's eyes. Australia Day, Anzac Day, the Queen's Birthday, the Melbourne Cup, Halloween (the terrible danger of culturally inappropriate costumes), Christmas and Easter had many issues which Tamara thought meant they should be struck from the calendar. But apparently one of the most G-rated, innocent, family friendly and harmless TV shows ever created and screened in a very different Australia many years earlier was a perfect storm of problems for modern snowflakes.

Some of the issues Tamara had expressed concern about were a 1940s theme episode full of swing dancing and big band music with all of us dressed accordingly, as it apparently glorified war. A 1950s theme show full of rock and roll and with all the girls wearing poodle skirts and bobby sox was also problematic because it created nostalgia for a decade that according to Tamara's infinite wisdom was filled with inequality. An episode filmed on location at a farm was inappropriate because it promoted animals in agriculture, and everyone should be vegan. Given that Tamara, Rhonda and Sven were against dogs being trained as guide dogs for the blind, this didn't surprise me.