In assembly this week, Poppy, Year 10, showed us that we can own our stories when we share them with all their unique and wonderful quirks.
When I was in Year 7, my grandma, who lives on a farm in the upper Hunter Valley, asked if I would help clean her freezer. I said “yes” because I love my grandma very much. Also, naively, I didn’t think this task could be any more disturbing than when I had previously helped her ‘clean out’ her pantry, which simply involved sorting everything into an ‘expired’ pile and a ‘very expired’ pile and then putting it all back because according to my grandma, you never know when chips that went stale before you were born, could come in handy.
So, the Year 7 me dutifully opened the freezer and got to work. Until I came across a mysterious plastic bag containing a large, scaly object that I assumed was a fish or something else you might normally find in a freezer. But upon emptying this bag, I quickly realised I was looking into the eyes of a preserved red belly black snake.
As somebody who is petrified of snakes, I can’t even describe the terror I felt at that moment, even though (as my family loves to remind me) a frozen reptile couldn’t possibly be alive, let alone dangerous. To be honest, even knowing this now, I still shiver a little every time I am in my grandma’s kitchen – which she finds quite amusing because apparently, collecting snake corpses for environmental research isn’t actually that unusual.
Despite being an incredibly frightening experience, upon reflection, I’m not sorry this shocking encounter with a frozen snake happened. Some of my friends and family sitting in this audience are probably a little bored right now because they have already sat through my retelling of this event many times over the years. And just like the other random and weird anecdotes we have shared; this story has provided us with much laughter and merriment – a great antidote when we’re a little worried about something or have a big test coming up later that day.
I believe that where we feel comfortable to do so, accepting and sharing the moments in our lives that didn’t quite go to plan can be one of the most powerful forms of expression – acknowledging that, at times, we will all feel scared or embarrassed or a little silly, allows us to create authentic connections. Our out-of-the-ordinary experiences make life interesting, and laughing at our inevitable mistakes and unexpected mishaps, helps us focus on the silver lining and brings smiles to each other’s faces. Using humour, in support of each other, rather than at the expense of or exclusion of anyone in our community, can be very powerful.
Next week, some of us will be attending Cadet camp, many for the first time. And it will largely be our ability to find humour and positivity in the things that might go wrong or be unfamiliar to us, that will bring us closer, help us grow as people and have fun.
Over the next few years, our lives will be rich with new experiences and interactions and inevitably, unfortunate ones too – that same concept will apply. Those initial uncomfortable moments when you find a snake in your grandma’s freezer or accidentally run into someone and exclaim ‘sorry so much’ without thinking or get on the wrong bus and only realise when you are 40 minutes from home, are not so off-putting when you remember they will make a great story. Well, maybe those specific examples are unique to me, but you get the idea.
So, if there is one thing I hope you take away from this speech, it is to beware of my grandma’s freezer. But if there are two things you take away, I hope the second is that while some of the challenges we face will be deeply personal, and it is up to us to choose how we share our stories, there is great joy to be found in being open about our unique, weird, wacky and unexpected experiences.
To finish with a quote from Nora Ephron, a filmmaker born in the 1940s, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.”
