Plastic Plane Morality

It’s no secret that I listen to The Edge radio station every morning. I love the Morning Madhouse – they seem to have the perfect balance of male, female, married, gay, pervy and the voice of morality (yes, this means you, Jay-Jay).

Each day they have the Twitter Top 10, where Jay-Jay collects 10 tweets that have caught her eye in the previous 24-hours. Then they pick one and it becomes the “Twitter topic” for the day; the basis for a general discussion with listeners.

I’m honoured to have had a few of my tweets mentioned on the Twitter Top 10 since it started.

Anyway, today’s Twitter topic was – did you go to school with anybody famous?

I didn’t enter the discussion, as I scoured my memory for those schoolmates that had gone on to great and mighty things.

Oddly, the only person of note that I went to school with was New Zealand’s first AIDS victim. I think he contracted it via the needle. He was in and out of prison a lot, and once it became common knowledge that he had AIDS he was treated abysmally. Prison officers wouldn’t even touch him without wearing rubber gloves.

Now, the small evil side of me was unsympathetic. And it has nothing to do with the disease – it was just that he stole a part of my childhood innocence.

You see, in my first year at school, at age five, I took my favourite toy to school. It was a little plastic aeroplane. I was fascinated with aeroplanes at that stage. I had this weird idea based on the war stories I saw on TV and from war stories my Dad told me. I was convinced that if any little Cessna or Piper Cub flew innocently over the town, that if I wasn’t under cover, it would swoop down and bomb me.

I would hear the plane and sprint for the nearest garage, or run inside the house. It was kind of a junior OCD.

Despite this, I loved aeroplanes. And so I took my favourite plastic aeroplane to school. And at playtime I went out to the sandbox and practised my take-offs and landings.

So I was playing innocently when this boy comes up and says: “Can I play?”

I was a sociable kid, so I said: “Sure.”

Then he said: “Can I have a go with the plane?”

Dubious, I said: “Do you promise to give it back?”

And he said: “Yes.”

So I handed over my treasured plastic plane. He took it and it swooped and dived with such violence that I feared for its structural safety. I became worried for the safety of the plane’s passengers.

So I said: “Can I have it back now?”

And he said: “No. It’s mine now.”

I said: “But it’s MY plane.”

He said: “No. It’s mine. And you can’t have it.”

I, naturally, burst into tears. C’mon, I was only five. Even the expression “suck it up” wouldn’t be invented for another 20 years.

But a teacher came along and, while possession is nine-tenths of the law, she knew that he was a thieving little shit. She made him give it back to me.

So my precious plastic aeroplane was returned. But it was somehow tainted by the experience. As was I. If that teacher hadn’t come along, I would have lost my treasured plane simply because I was being generous; as my upbringing had taught me to be.

This is why I will never forget him, even if, 36 years later, I cannot assuredly recall his name.