Have you ever had that feeling you get when there’s an opportunity in front of you that you’ve got no choice but to on to grab by the scrotum? That moment when you realise “this is your time?”

 

That has happened to me twice in the past few days.

 

Sometimes you feel those moments coming up in the walls of your gut. You know they’re coming and you know you have one chance not to screw it up. It’s knees weak, Mom’s spaghetti kind of shit. You don’t want to stay in the metaphorical trailer park of shame all your life, so you take your shot. Sometimes you get booed out of the club, other times you go double-platinum and name yourself after a type of chocolate.

 

Both of those things happened to me in the past few days.

 

The first was when I was interviewing a senator about things of a political nature, hardly surprising given the man’s occupation and the whole federal election thing that’s coming up. As a small town local journo, it isn’t often you get chance to talk about things that impact just about every bastard on this dusty island we live on; and most of the time you don’t really care that much. Generally if something doesn’t almost exclusively relate to the people within a 25-kilometre radius of your post office, it’s not going to run. So most of the time you find you actually don’t know much about what’s going on in the world because the world of a small town journo only stretches to the back of a bloke called Bruce’s paddock, the fence line of the local showgrounds and the inevitable Boundary Road that is in every single township of Australia (seriously, if you’re ever stuck in a town you don’t know and have to lie about your address, just say “aw, it’s just off Boundary Road” and no one will question you). But if a figure of general importance does venture into your neck of the woods, you try to jump on to the “there’s a chance my friends back home could potentially find this relevant” bandwagon.

 

I was listening as this senator talked about budgets and finding savings and supporting health and I knew I had an opportunity to ask about the tampon tax. The gist of it is that tamps and pads are slugged with the Goods and Services Tax, while things like condoms, lubricants and nicotine patches are tax-free as “important health goods”. This isn’t me saying those other items aren’t necessary, but I’d hardly class an item used to stop the bits of torn up uterus from dripping out of a woman as “unnecessary”. Without those products, we’d have to replace a fucktonne of bus seats. Carpets in public buildings would be a mess if we didn’t have a suitably absorbable barrier between the depths of our wombs and the rest of the world. Going without them would produce a nation-wide slipping hazard, if nothing else. And considering this liquid may was well be the milk of Satan past its use-by-date and left out of the fridge for days by most men, you’d think they’d want to encourage us womanfolk to contain the thick ooze of evil.

 

I was going to be bold, I was going to be strong, and I was going to be graphic if I needed to. I was going to be a serious journalist professional, brandishing my pen in all its might. I was going to put these guys to task. On the surface I looked calm and ready to drop bombs.

 

Unfortunately, I included the word “guys’s” in my first question, pronouncing it like “guises”. It was like I was a 16-year-old popular girl in a 90s movie reciting her c-grade oral presentation to the class. You can’t come back from that. The best part? The media team were recording everything and were going to distribute the transcript nationally. Everybody’s chokin’ now, the clock’s run out time’s up, over, blaow!

 

I had blown my big shot at glory. I was never going to reach the top. I would never collaborate with Rhianna.

 

Thankfully, when the universe closes a door, a window is cracked open.

 

I was in the supermarket when my next big opportunity to cement myself as a legend presented itself. It was standing at the deli and I felt the tingles , but looking back I didn’t know what was coming. I was just focusing on my order. I have very specific needs when it comes to deli items, which is compounded by my drive to economise. I needed just four slices of bacon. When I told the deli worker what I desired, I had no idea what I was asking for was a second shot at glory.

 

I noticed the lad struggling to spate just four slices from the pack.

 

Me: Oh whatever you have there is fine, it’s bacon, it’ll get eaten.

Deli Lad: No no, it’s ok.

Me: …

I was going to say something along the lines of “I suppose you didn’t want to look like you couldn’t count to four” or some shitty joke like that, but something held me back, just for a second. And thank goodness that I didn’t because otherwise I would have cut his next sentence off.

 

Deli Lad: The pieces were just sticking together.

 

Me: …

Every cell in my body explodes. Fireworks go off in my brain. Champagne corks a popped all the way down my oesophagus. This was a once in a lifetime chance for greatness. Totally organic, completely by chance. What this Deli Lad had said set me up for an eternity of exaltation. Fate had dealt me a hand I couldn’t ignore.

 

I knew what I had to do.

 

This was it.

 

Don’t blow it.

 

After half chocking on my own throat, something magical happened.

 

Me: Sticking together is what good bacon does.