In 1977, my teacher for Year 9 Literature and Writing reported: “Julie has a very good future ahead of her if she continues to show the application and interest in this subject that she showed during Term 2”. Although I was part of the misfits, the rebellious cigarette smokers with older bad boy boyfriends, my school friends had an expectation I would grow up to be an author, even though our only reading materials were pop music magazines Sweet and Spunky, the book Go Ask Alice, Dolly magazine and literature force fed to us by the Victorian Education Department.
Sometimes, at lunch or recess, we would sneak into one of our smokers’ hides and between nicotine drawbacks and smoke rings, we’d read aloud our creative writing. As each of my friends turned fifteen, one by one they dropped out of school and we lost touch, until I saw them again at a reunion in 1991. I remember their disappointment and shock when they discovered I was a boring secretary at a plastic manufacturing plant. The good kids were visibly disappointed I wasn’t dead or in jail.
Even though it took years, I hope I have exceeded their expectations.
