I volunteered to help out at my kids' school fete today. If "fete" isn't a word you know, it's that special day in the school year where you donate a whole lot of stuff to the school then go there at night and buy it all back again. They disguise the deception with show bags, jumping castles and garishly lit caravans selling three days on the toilet in a bun for $7.50. The teachers also take the opportunity to get revenge on you for inflicting your kids on them, by making you sit through hour after hour of performances by the school musical groups - many of them featuring recorders or brass instruments of some kind.
The particular brand of deception that I volunteered to collude in involves a tub of water, an indeterminate number of plastic fish and a small fishing rod, comprising a length of dowel, some knitting yarn and a magnet on the end. The patsy - let's call them a "child at the school" for the sake of the discussion - pays 50c and is then given the opportunity to retrieve a fish using said rod. Success is rewarded with a chocolate frog whereas failure gets you booted out of the school for being stupid in a manner dangerous to the public.
Now, in the old days, I would have just put my name on the roster for the most convenient half hour slot and that would have been that. I forgot, however, that we now live in the 21st century. Having agreed to be an accessory to fraud, I was then asked to go through the workplace health and safety induction and sign a form to that effect! Workplace health and safety !? What could possibly go wrong?
Clearly I'm naive and haven't given adequate thought to the possibility that I might try to scratch my eyeballs via my nostrils with the rod or could lose concentration for a moment, pitch forward in my excitement and drown in the shell-shaped pond in which is the native habitat for the fish.
Being careful is just something I'm not sufficiently attuned to. It's obvious.
The school did it properly - made me sign the form, helped me differentiate between my a*&e and a hole in the ground. Then, recklessly, I went ahead and endangered others without a thought for the paperwork.
I got in my car and drove. Two tonnes, kerbside weight, of metal propelled at unseemly speeds down the road. What if a sinkhole had opened up? What if a parachutist had fallen onto the road in front of me? What if the wheels fell off? Had I given adequate consideration to the management of those risks? I had not.
My next stop was a cafe for breakfast; also owned and operated by irresponsible lunatics. Where was the health and safety induction before they handed me a hot cup of coffee? Where was the personal protective equipment to go with the sharp pointed objects they gave me to consume my eggs benedict with?
So I've learned my lesson. The next time you come to my house for a BBQ, it won't be just "second door on the left down the hall if you need it", you'll get the full induction. We will go through an identify the trip hazards; front door mat, the join between the carpet and the tiles, the odd Duplo train. I'll give you a careful induction on which is the hot tap and there will be a short quiz to make sure you know your left hand from your right. Only those who have attained a Certificate IV in Tong Mastery will be allowed near the BBQ and all children will be confined to a specially penned off area with a pool-lock gate, soft fall on the ground and nothing they can climb above 30cm.
Then I can safely say I am a responsible adult!
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