The topic for this task
was Mitigating Circumstances and members were asked to write 300
words. See below for some of the
responses.
Penny Come
Quick—
(Rhyming Slang for Trick) ... by F N Karmatz
The other kids call me Jimminy Cricket because my name
James Creighton and I am very quick with my hands. They don’t
know how quick, nor does my regular seventh grade teacher,
although she almost accidentally caught me yesterday.
It all started last year, when Foxxy, Wesley Foxx, that is,
taught me a lot of his sleight of hand and magic tricks—his
father is an amateur magician. And Foxxy learned all this
sleight of hand card trick stuff from his father. He’s an
eighth grader and gets a lot of A’s on his report card. He’s
got a fab memory, because his Dad showed him how to recall the
first ten names and telephone numbers on any page of the
telephone book. I forget the exact name he called it, but it
was something like association. Open to page 234 in the book
and the first name listed is Drummond and he looks at it for
about 2 seconds and hands you the closed book, then talks
about something else for a minute, then tells you to open it
to page 234 and he looks skywards and rattles off the first
ten names, addresses and telephone numbers.
Anyway, I see the possibilities of getting higher marks in
maths, history, Japanese and stuff, not from memorizing, but
from the sleight of hand. I secretly practice making cards
appear and disappear when I am doing my homework. Only instead
of using playing cards, I am making up special cribbing cards.
I put a key set of formulas on one, dates on another and
difficult to remember kanji words on another. Works like
magic.
In a maths exam, Ms Howe prowled around the classroom and
strolled up the aisle from behind me; I was looking for a
certain formula and she wondered what I was staring at in my
hand. I stared back at her as I released the crib card. The
rubber band neatly pulled the crib up my sleeve as I fingered
my pencil and Ms Howe just continued up the aisle.
Up to last year, I was a pretty ordinary student, not a
nong mind you, but I couldn’t hack studying. I’d fake it a lot
to please the ole ‘cheese’. Anyhow, by the end of the year, I
was in the top five in the class. All because of Foxxy. We’re
good cobbers ‘n all, but I never told him how well I learned
his old man’s tricks. I’ve even gone to the state library,
because the local library branch didn’t have much on magic
tricks. Found one slim volume just on sleight of hand and
copied it.
This year’s even better, I’ve worked out a way to use
several cribs at a time, from under my belt. I can release any
or all of them by scratching my shirt sleeve--you might say
I’ve used every trick in the book.
I still listen in class, more carefully than I ever did
before, take great notes, then spend the hard yakka at my desk
distilling them down to the real nub of the lessons. I’ve
virtually got the cribs memorized these days. I take them to
every exam including the finals, even when there’s several
monitors lurking around. Funny thing, though, I find I am
doing this association bit like Foxxy. I don’t really need to
use the cribs much any more. Just keep them around for
insurance, I guess.
You know, a larrikin’s gotta do what a larrikin’s gotta do.
Fair dinkum.
F N Karmatz
