Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 28, 2018

Something great happened to me the other week and now I’m concerned about repercussions.

On Thursday, I lost my phone. I’d been siting on the bus and made the fateful decision to hop up and sit in a different seat with a better view. Without my realising it, my phone had slipped from my pocket* and fell between a crack in the seat.

* As such, I would like to point out that this whooooooole thing would not have happened if women were granted the same pocket practicality as men. I don’t understand why having a uterus automatically equates to less pocket space. Seriously, what gives?! We can’t use that thing for storage, people! 

A few minutes later, I’d realised I was without phone and was madly rifling through the vast expanses of my gym bag. Fear struck me and I hopped off at the next stop, checking if I’d left my phone at the bus stop.

The run back down town was like something you’d see in a romantic comedy – it was even raining, for heaven’s sake. Leaving my inhibitions (and, as it turned out, my phone) on that blasted bus, I was running past men in suits and women with well-maintained shoulder-length haircuts. It was the part of the movie where the protagonist realises they can’t live without the conveniently-attractive love interest who is minutes away from stepping on a bus/plane/train and out of their life forever. I, however, wasn’t running towards my happily ever after. I was sprinting towards a combination of wires and metal with no password lock that contained screenshots from a rather salacious group chat with my closest friends (this is my Clifton girl gang – people who have known me since around the time I began to master the control of my bowels, so you can imagine the intensity of incriminating honesty which colours that conversational cesspit) and a series of rather unflattering selfies where I’m trying to work out which one of my eyes is smaller (I think it’s the left one, but I just can’t be sure*).

* After going through my pictures, it turns out there are several burst of these selfies on there. It would be terribly embarrassing if they appeared on a missing persons poster for me… but they’d be chosen because they give the most accurate depiction of me. 

Alas, no phone.

I went back to work, hoping I’d just left it at my desk.

No phone.

After plugging my details into the “Find My iPhone” feature, I discovered my telephonic communication instrument was still on the bus, having recognised the route from the coordinates it was giving off.

I was able to remotely lock my phone*, thus preventing whoever picked it up from deducing just how boring I am, based on my camera roll.

* Dad was amazed at this. He didn’t quite get it, but he was amazed. 

Cautiously hopeful, I instructed my phone give off a sound. I realised this was risky, as it had could potentially alert a scummy scumbag to the fact that there was a lost smartphone nearby for them to pawn (ideally they’d use the money for extra-strength teabags, sturdy pillows and maybe a few cheeky fireworks). But I realised that if the phone had slipped into the crack/abyss between the seat and the wall, it might never be found. The battery would eventually die and it would remain there until someone bought the bus to convert into a caravan in order to beat the dismal housing prices in Sydney.

I had to take a chance.

And, as it turns out, the gamble paid off. The person who found it was no scumbag.

She was a uni student and, from what I gather, a youth worker for a church just 20 minutes from my office.

That’s the exact person you’d want to find your phone. First of all, she’s a young and, probably, cash-strapped person who understands my reliance on my phone and could empathise with me on just how crap it would be to lose it. Plus, she had the moral fibre of someone who, presumably, voluntarily spent her spare time enriching the lives of children. I’d hit the jackpot.

I met the sweetheart (at her church, bless her) and gave her a scented candle I found in an unpacked bag the weekend prior as a way of expressing my gratitude – because the best way to express oneself is via either scented candles or interpretive dance, and I didn’t have a boombox handy.

But I worry I’ve been too lucky. I’ve heard lost phone horror stories and I had a fairy tale on my hands.

I’ve not done anything particularly kind of late. I’m very quick to judge, particularly people on reality television. I passive aggressively take out the rubbish, being purposefully loud while I do it. The only charity I’ve donated to in recent months has been the “treat yourself fund”*.

* The fund is still desperately seeking donations. 

And then something lovely like this happens.

This is karmic credit.

And just like a loan shark, Karma’s gonna get its money back somehow.

I’m dreading the metaphorical repayment notice, which will be coming in the mail any day now. And geez will that interest sting when it hits.

If there’s no column next week, assume I’ve spilled tea on my laptop or I’ve fallen into a manhole on the footpath.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 14, 2018

There are some songs you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve heard them on a dance floor.

Songs don’t become cemented as personal classics from being over-played on the radio. You need to form a personal connection to them.

There needs to be something that animates them in a way that transforms them from a collection of sounds into an anthem that lights a fire within your soul.

You hear other people rave about these songs, but you just don’t get it. It’s not as if you don’t like them. You might even sing along with them in the car. But it’s not until you’ve heard them at an event where someone has taken off their shirt and attempted to waterslide along a wooden floor on their belly in puddles of spilled beer and obscenely-potent mojito mix that they really make sense.

To illustrate my point, I’ve compiled a list of songs I didn’t truly appreciate until I heard them on a dance floor:

Take Me Home, Country Roads – John Denver

You’ve heard it on the radio enough to know the general gist of the words. But it’s only years later on your mate’s sticky lounge room floor when you’re shouting the lyrics that this tune truly kicks you in the metaphorical guts.

You’ve moved on from that little house on the edge of town and are in a new world with traffic lights and water that doesn’t corrode pipes. You’ll never forget where you came from. Suddenly, you’re thinking of that New England highway turnoff. Are you crying? Maybe.

Boys From The Bush – Lee Kernaghan

You’ve heard this a lot. It’s on your Drinking With Dad playlist. Heck, you may have even jogged to it a few times. But it’s not until you loudly proclaim you’ve been “droving caaaaaattle” after you’ve kicked off your shoes and the party has dwindled down to your closest and/or drunkest allies that the spirit of piling in the ute on a Saturday night really hits you.

5, 6, 7, 8 – Steps

If you’re aged between 25 and 30 and you were educated within these acres of opportunity, chances are you’ve probably heard this one. But even if you weren’t herded into a classroom each morning for line dancing drills, you’ve probably heard it on the radio.

Back in the day, that initial strike of the fiddle signified forced group exercise, but now it heralds an explosion of nostalgia-fuelled ecstasy.

Not as overdone as The Nutbush or The Time Warp, this is a novel trip back to the group dancing phase from the past that you actually want to take. As you fumble through the moves your fuzzy brain struggles to recall, you’re taken back to a time when life was good and your only stress was convincing your parents to let you go to the pool.

Outback Club – Lee Kernaghan

Another banger from the bloke in the black hat, this one is more of a rallying cry than his aforementioned party anthem. If you can ignore the cringey part about the female member of said Outback Club being the “kinda woman any man’d be proud of”, it’s extremely unifying.

It’s the kind of song you put your shoes back on for, squeezing back into a pair of heavy-heeled clodhoppers so you can stomp obnoxiously to the beat. This is best accompanied by purposeful, powerful clapping and screaming the lyrics to the face of the nearest person.

Party in the USA – Miley Cyrus 

You hear it on the radio and write it off as another piece of soulless trash. But then it comes on when you’re in a dance circle with your favourite people and you realise just how wrong you were.

It’s upbeat. The lyrics are easily punctuated with coordinated movements (see: “I put my haaaaaands up”). And there’s a fabulous, drawn-out “yeah” that is pretty much begging for you to scream it with everything you have inside you. It’s like a joyful exorcism.

Chicken Fried – Zac Brown Band

You didn’t know the lyrics before and you probably never will, but the words you did pick up (“chicken fried”, “night”, “just right”, “radio oooooon”) are somehow etched into your soul now. If you’re like me and didn’t grow up in a Garth Brooks household (country music was strictly Lee and Slim) you’re used to mumbling your way through country bangers. This one is probably one of the easiest tunes to pretend you know and even though you know the people you’re with know you don’t know the words, you also know they don’t care – they’ll dance with you anyway. These are your people.