My 18-year old son, having just completed his HSC, is doing an assortment of labouring jobs during December and January.
He worked a full day yesterday in the heat and smoke.
When asked at dinner last night how it was working in the smoke, he looked at me quizzically like I'd just crawled out of cheese.
"Meh, we just worked faster to finish the jobs we needed to do," was his response, as he smashed another potato into his mouth.
I fear my son is a bit of a boofhead and a dullard, without an iota of sensibility.
Because, he expressed zero feelings of "fear for what was happening as (he) gripped the wheel (barrow)"
No "struggle to get oxygen into the body",
No "growing tightness",
No recognition of any "system constricting and closing down"
No feeling of being "buried alive".
"And that I am not the only one. All of us slowly smothered," wrote the author of that article.
Not my son and his workmates evidently. They didn't form part of the author's "All of us" cohort.
No lying on my son's "bed in the cool dark" when he got home, "for most of the afternoon to recover"
Certainly no "anxiety and dread"
And certainly no "profound feeling of futility and depression".
No interpreting a tree's "clumps of leaves and branches move this way and that, communicating a message that speaks of something gone deeply wrong with the world."
No thoughts about “How long before the birds start dropping from the sky?”
No associating "pollution with something totalitarian, a form of oppression manifest in nature."
No "experience of the city and its skies feels like an omen".
No feeling "towards the back of (his) head, right at the base where (his) neck joins it, a dull cloud sitting in (his) mind"
Not a bit of "struggling think straight in this atmosphere that has become a part of (him)
No being "tight and tense"
Not a jot of "registering that (he) is becoming desperate and has no voice that matters."
No inability to "barely call out for help as (he) suffocates spiritually as well as physically".
No "tasting of the ash", and a distinct ambivalence to "the state of emergency the has settled in around us all".
I guess my son just isn't a deep-thinking "a Sydney writer", which is seemingly a kind of person that experiences adversity with highly acute degrees of intensity.
(PS. My son owns a puffer, which he uses for asthma when he is out of breath.)
.
- Forums
- Political Debate
- SMH losing its mind..again
My 18-year old son, having just completed his HSC, is doing an...
Featured News
Featured News
The Watchlist
AGC
AUSTRALIAN GOLD AND COPPER LTD
Glen Diemar, MD
Glen Diemar
MD
SPONSORED BY The Market Online