How to be true blue
When last we met I was a little excited.
I'm sorry if I seemed a bit over the top, but you're sure to understand why I was gushing. It's not every day that someone gets his own Little Aussie Battler; to have and to hold, as it were.
I just feel so much on top of, well, everything really. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I feel as one with my surrounds. There's a centring within me. And it's all due to the Little Aussie Battler.
I have sat "at the feet" — as it were — of the Little Aussie Battler at every opportunity in order to hang on his lips. (I mean that metaphorically, of course. The strong feelings I bear for the Little Aussie Battler are pure, almost sacred ones, devoid of carnality.)
What wisdom! What depth of insight! What luck!
After hearing much these last years about the Little Aussie Battler and then to be granted many intimacies by this personage has changed my life.
It was only the other day, during an audience with him, that I dared ask: "Master, how can I become like you?"
The Little Aussie Battler thought for a time and said: "Be little, my son".
"But master", I said, "aren't I meek enough now?"
"No, budgie-bum. You must shrink another four inches."
Then I asked him: "If I become small, can I then be like you?"
"No, my son. First you must do battle."
"But I do battle. Oh master, I struggle so hard every day of my life. Why can't I be like you?"
The Little Aussie Battler didn't answer me at first. He just stared out the window in the way he does when lost in thought. After a time he drained his beverage (I think it was Tooheys) and stared straight at me.
"To be a true blue Little Aussie Battler, it isn't enough to struggle or to simply shrink in size. No. It takes much more. To be a Little Aussie Battler, you gotta hate women and poofs. You gotta wanna send the wogs back where they came from. To be a true blue, dinky-di Little Aussie Battler, you gotta be what they want you to be — conservative, small-minded, self-centred and jingo ... jingo ... eh ..."
"Jingoistic."
"Yeah. That. That's what makes a really great Little Aussie Battler. And by god, you gotta love this country. All the sheep shit and blowies. You gotta love all the crap because, good or bad, you're proud because you think it's your own."
"But I'm none of those things."
Then the Little Aussie Battler smiled at me and said: "That's why I'm the Little Aussie Battler and you're not."
By Dave Riley