Regarding Barry Lamb’s question on the dunce cap (C8), few readers actually remember seeing one, and only one, Bob Cameron of Coffs Harbour, had to wear one: “At 71, I certainly experienced the dunce cap during my formative school days. Rather than humiliation, I wore it as a badge of honour.” Simon Staines of Mudgee, who went to school in Barry’s neck of the woods, at Eastwood Public, remembers a dunce cap “being placed on the head of anyone deemed by the teacher to be slow. I, for one, never had the privilege.”
Bob Pitts of Epping “never suffered the ignominy of a dunce cap, but was, on separate occasions in high school, made to stand in the waste bin as I was ‘nothing but rubbish’, and on another occasion made to stand behind the closed door. Unfortunately, for my teacher, the door had a glass panel, so I could see the class, and they me. In both instances, when my hand shot up to answer questions (I was pretty good at maths), the class erupted in laughter. Chaos. And sweet revenge.”
“Clearly that flight attendant’s foot brought the coffin’s movements [C8] to a dead end!” reckons David Gordon of Cranebrook. “An interesting body check.”
“My father used to tell a tale about two men arguing over which was the better beer [C8], Reschs or Tooheys,” writes Glenda Taylor of Stanwell Tops. “They agreed to send samples away for analysis to prove which was the superior brew. The report came back: ‘Both these horses are unfit for work’.”
Time for readers to get sleuthing to help out our friend Anne Baillie of St Georges Basin: “I only visited the Science and Technology Museum in Ultimo once, on a visit from Melbourne in 1971. My lasting memory is the Foucault pendulum in a stairwell. Since moving to NSW, I’ve been to the Powerhouse Museum, but none of the volunteers there knew of it. Does anyone know where it is now?”
“Honestly, you think you know your friends well, then you read Column 8 and discover one has been to South America,” says Alison Brooks of Hope Island (Qld). “Merilyn McClung, we must talk!”
“I need to point out that Amber Laidler, in her Friday evening Channel 7 weather report, was wearing a purple suit and forecasting rain all weekend,” notes Kerry Kyriacou of Strathfield. “Sounds like a hit song in the making.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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