MY EDUCATION: PART TWO. THREE KISSES

I sometimes believe the ‘stuff’ they do not teach you in schools can often be your best education. After completing year 12, I moved the very next day to Brisbane. Within a week I got a job on Bribie Island. So I moved from my friends couch, to my Grandmothers house on the island.

Me, back in 1985.

It was here, with Pat, I believe I got some of the best education and life skills I could have ever hoped for. Some bad, she taught me how to drink anyone under the table. Yes I was once a drinker. I also became a full time smoker with her. After all, you can not have a drink in one hand with out the ciggie in the other. OMG, her house must have stunk with the two of us puffing away.

But it was over these two bad habits that each night we would talk. I remember coming home from work and we would sit on the back veranda in summer, or on the couch in winter, and talk and talk.

Pat talked to me about everything. She was the first person that I learnt to debate with. We would argue and we would agree. But always we respected the other person’s opinion.

There were conversations about sex, Pat and I had the most honest conversations about sex I had ever had before. I remember the first time she talked of oral sex, I almost chocked on my wine. But then she said, women need to learn from each other. That sex is good as long as you are having for the right reasons. As in to please yourself, and never have sex to please anyone else.

Pat spoke of religion to me, and said it does not matter what god we believe in that every god has the same version of this one rule, that being “Do unto others”. If we treated everyone else how we wanted to be treated, the world would a better place.

We spoke of many things, but the most important lesson I think she taught me is that it is never too late to change. That there isn't a use by date, to learn new skills and to improve yourself and your mind. That to close your mind is the true sign of ignorance.

Pat I miss you more than I would have ever thought possible. I think it is fitting that three of Pat’s life lesson stay with me to this day, as Pat would always give three kisses hello and three kisses goodbye. Three kisses, I love you.