Public Service Announcement
by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus
You know how some shops stock scissors that are sold inside two pieces of hard plastic? And the plastic is welded together? And it’s only when you get home that you realise that you genuinely, actually, no jokes, need scissors to get your scissors out of the packet? There is something about the level of incompetence, nay negligence, nay outright malfeasance required for a human person to impose a domestic outrage such as this on the lives of ordinary hardworking Australians, that explosions of raw unadulterated feeling are par for the course. If you have feelings that require expression at the moment, may I encourage you to find some examples of domestic injustice into which those feelings may be channelled. For it is these small outrages – a jar that is wedged shut or a shin-high coffee table in the middle of the night – that enable us to heartily banish any attempt to be cheerful. They call on our reserves of emotional anguish and unleash them on the object to which they belong. So shout at the shin-high coffee table. Yell at the bin juice. Be a jerk to the person on the radio. Doesn’t matter that they’re probably a nice person. We’re not online. They’re not going to read the comments. Go for it! I once walked in on a friend of mine sneering and shaking his head and muttering at the radio – “Oh yeah and what would you know about it?” – which I then discovered was in relation to a discussion about the relative hygienic properties of
different sorts of kitchen sponges. Not a topic I was aware spurred such vitriol in the heart of this mate of mine, but here he was, sweeping the floor and being really very rude to a person trying to be helpful on the radio. “People shouldn’t talk about things if they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said in his own defence. Indeed. And if you aren’t going to tell them that curtly in your own kitchen while sweeping the floor, who is? When you swipe something on a smartphone and it completely takes you out of where you were, even though that’s not what you meant, and suddenly the thing you were reading is gone forever: this is not a problem. We know that. It is also necessary to say “WHAT THE HELL, COME ON!” at your phone for being stupid. The watching of shameful television you wouldn’t normally be seen dead watching is not only acceptable sometimes, it is also recommended by experts. Me. I’m recommending it. I actually am an expert. Ask me anything about rom-coms. I even do Christmas specials. Trying to put on a jacket when you’ve realised too late that one sleeve is inside-out and you have to decide whether to remove the jacket altogether or attempt to further shove your arm up the inside-out sleeve: yes it’s small, but these are decisions that make us who we are. I am the shove-your-arm-in type. I do it while selfrecriminating and swearing at the jacket. On a bad day, I can crowbar a lot of my impotent fury into this moment of domestic bastardry. So yes. You may bay at the moon. Baying is also permitted at the sun, the clouds, the hills, the trees, and on some occasions good friends who are baying back at you. Sometimes though, baying seems exhausting, self-indulgent and a bit of a cliché. So why not channel all your pent-up rage, anxiety and grief into the small, dreadful domestic wrongs that so oppress us all? Public Service Announcement: You don’t always have to be cheerful. Yell at the radio. Roar at the jam jar. It might even cheer you up.
Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.
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here’s a lot of stuff around at the moment telling people to be cheerful. Things aren’t so bad, they say. In history, things have been worse, they say. Look at that person over there who is worse off than you, they say. And they’re right. There will always be someone worse off than you are. So, with that objective fact alive in our minds, let us run the following Public Service Announcement: It is okay not to be cheerful. It is okay to be bored or furious or sad or terrified or confused. Thing is, most of us are pretty good at living with those feelings bubbling away in the background until suddenly, out of nowhere, they’re right up in our business. It is important to maximise those moments when we can. What am I talking about? So glad you asked.
17 APR 2020
Reasons To Not Be Cheerful