A Kid I Taught Called Nick.

Tonight at the Sydney Road IGA I saw a kid I taught when I was at Princes Hill Secondary. He looked exactly the same - that is to say, like a total douchebag. I don't often have personality clashes with kids, but this one definitely irritated the hell out of me, just by being him.

Overall it was a pretty good school though, and the kids generally went out into the world and did some pretty interesting things. I guess I did likewise, moving into alternative education - first on a different continent, and then back here in Melbourne. Lately, though, I've been missing kids like that - kids who are generally excited about knowing and learning stuff, who get your literary jokes, who are engaged politically, who don't want to stab you. I also feel like I've been missing out on a whole heap of serious educational theory - like I've been away in the trenches for the last seven years and have come home to a world that has passed me by a little bit. It's a strange position to be in, and I reckon I've got a lot of catching up to do.

But I wasn't going to start by saying hi to this douchebag. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me anyway - he had his eyes downwards, and was clumping along in that deliberately self-aware, falsely emotive way he always had. I bought some celery and left him to it.

Rosie The Student Teacher.

Tonight at the Sydney Road IGA I saw a girl called Rosie who was a student teacher at a school I was teaching at a while back. I'd already seen her recently, playing for an opposing team in pub footy, which explains how I'd recognized someone I'd known for about two weeks in 2007.

She was always a pretty good egg though, putting up with our terrible jokes and sticking around for hours after school to drink and talk shit. We were a pretty tight-knit group at that school, at least until the broad variety of political philosophies became insurmountable. It didn't end well. I ended up on page three of The Age, speaking out against Christian groups and their incursions into public schools, and left the school soon afterwards.

Rosie also popped up in the paper between her two interactions with me. She was in the Herald-Sun for some BikeFest article, and because I'm around bikes a heap, both virtually and in real life, eventually I saw it. In the photo the sun was shining and she was on some ladies stepthrough, looking the picture of Cycle Chic.

Tonight, though, neither of us were in the news. Instead we were in the canned vegetables aisle. We met eyes, cocked our heads at each other, then went our separate ways.

I also saw the best friend of an exgirlfriend of mine, who studiously avoided me. I was alright with that.

A Guy With An Old School Melburn-Roobaix Musette.

I didn't really need to go to the IGA last night, but I had some time to kill while waiting for a pizza from Dominos, and it was just across the road, so I thought I'd see if I could find some blog fodder. There wasn't anyone I knew though. Just this one guy with an old school Melburn-Roobaix Musette.

It was one of the black canvas ones. There were both black and white ones. Only organizers got one of the colours, but I can't remember which one. I have both, because that year I rode it, and also donated a prize. The year prior Dan Shifter had donated a meat tray, harking back to the pub raffles of old. I figured I'd run with that a little, but give it an XBBX twist. Andy didn't quite know what to make of it when I presented him with a mock-meat tray, full of soy fish that were actually shaped like fish, fake bacon replete with a little line of fake fat, and fake chicken nuggets made of gluten and breadcrumbs. I also decorated the polystyrene box with lettuce leaves, for that fair dinkum butcher's feel. When he stood up on that tiny stage in the Lomond Hotel and announced it as the next prize there was a collective murmur of confusion. But the guy who won it was stoked. "I'm a vegetarian!" he yelled, and promptly started chewing into a piece of slightly-wilted lettuce, perhaps confirming the prejudices of all the carnivores in the crowd.

When I went back to Dominos there was a screen facing out into the shop, telling me how long there was until my pizza was ready. It read four minutes. Five minutes later I was checking my pizza to ensure they hadn't put any cheese on it. And I'm happy to report that the good folks at Dominos didn't fuck it up. It wasn't great pizza, but it was vegan friendly.

A Guy With A Skin Grows Back Sticker.

Tonight at the Sydney Rd IGA I saw a guy with a Skin Grows Back sticker on his Catlike helmet. Why he was wearing his helmet in the supermarket remains a mystery. Percentage chance of me knowing someone who knows that guy: I'd say around 80%. But I didn't know him.

I met Jamie from Skin Grows Back for the first time when I was on the Cannonball Run, the infamous 6 day, one-gear-only, bike messenger rite of passage, Melbourne to Sydney via the coast ride pioneered by Scooter. At some point during the second day we veered off the highway and into the wilderness. I had no idea where we were going, but as I was kind of the noob in that particular bunch of people - and definitely the outsider, having never been a bike messenger on the streets of Melbourne - I just followed along anyways. The roads we were taking became less and less well-travelled, until we were finally on the dirt track that led to Jamie's house. A bunch of the guys had known him while he was himself working on the bike, I think in Sydney. He took us in, fed us, and didn't batt an eye when we used up two or three full tubes of his sunscreen. We couldn't stay long though - I think we must've had a further hundred ks or so to go. As we wheeled our bikes back out to the dirt track he followed us, and you could kind of tell he wished he was also hitting the road, throwing his leg over a bike and pushing off into nowhere.

Locked up outside the IGA was a classic 2007 style track bike, with sensible wheels, suitable rizors and a single spokecard. Percentage chance of me knowing someone who knows that guy: 95%.

Pete Sheppo

Tonight at the Sydney Rd IGA I saw former emo/crust scene legend and all-round funny guy Pete Sheppo. We used to go to shows in the middle part of the last decade and end up talking about footy, doing nothing to shrink my reputation as a jock who discovered punk. 

Once, outside a show at the Arthouse, some kids were trying to figure out if you could actually pick up change while doing the picking up change dance. "I dunno." Pete prompted them, "Why don't you throw down some change and I'll see how I go." The kids emptied their pockets and waited in expectation. Pete simply walked in, picked up their change in a decidedly non-musical manner, then walked back into the bar, leaving those now-a-little-poorer kids dumbfounded. They probably spent the rest of the night updating their myspace blogs with rants about the lack of the unity in the hardcore scene. I think pete spent the money on beer. Or maybe he was straight edge. I don't remember.

I reckon I haven't seen him for five or six years. We met eyes briefly, obviously recognized each other, then went on our own separate ways.