Whip Cracking Easter

Whip Cracking




Keeping Up



Disturbing the Peace





I often wonder how my children would have turned out if I was a Labeller. By Labeller I don't mean one who likes to file away personality types. I'm talking in the more literal sense. You know, like if I was to get my Brother P40 and make labels for everything in the home. Labels such as "leftovers 13/3/2008", or, "White Undies size 10", or, "Please Place Your Stinking Rubbish In The Bin and DO NOT Leave It Lying On The Floor Or I Will Kill You".


If I had been a Labelling Parent would I have had enough spontenaity about me to want to teach my son how to crack a whip (as shown in the photo above labelled "whipcraking").

My father taught me how to crack a whip and this weekend I displayed the technique as I was taught it to my 17 year old nephew. Since my nephew was a toddler all he has ever wanted is a farm of his own, full of big bad bulls to boss around and because whip cracking is an essential farm-owner skill he knows how to do it well. He dared to challenge my technique and my claim that my father had taught it to me. In his gruff 17 year old manner he grabbed the whip from my hands and said "Grandy would never have taught you to crack a whip like that. You'll knock your bloody eye out" and proceeded to show me how it was done. I didn't admit it to him but he was good and although I could crack it my technique was crap. He can swing that thing around his head and crack it one billion times while it's still airborne. I'm not even kidding a little bit. It's not surprising really. My father, who taught my nephew had a favourite trick; to have us hold a lit cigarette in our mouths just so he could knock it out with the whip. I don't want to hear any of you saying that it was child abuse because I was a fully grown adult at the time and that was his way of saying "don't smoke".

I was trying to teach Henry the technique that I claimed my father had taught me but my nephew took over. After a long observation time of approximately thirty seconds Henry thought he had it down pat. He ordered his father to "stay out of the way Dad, just stand back, this is really dangerous". He then proceeded to try and swing that whip around his head just like he'd seen his cousin do. He almost got it right.

He also thought one afternoon that he would join Maya and Riley for a bike ride. Unfortunately they were way too fast for him. He tried hard to keep up as they rode down the driveway and out the gate. As they got further away his feet left the pedals and hit the ground. He must have thought he would somehow go faster that way.

The Easter bunny came and left some eggs in his Easter nest, made from an old hat and some grass and the cow, heavily pregnant, kept to herself despite Henry's best efforts to disturb her peace.

We had a fantastic time and it was a shame to come home. to avoid the weekend traffic we drove home via the inland higway and enjoyed the scenery but it took us a very long time to get back. If I was a Labeller I would probably have printed one that said "Successful Family Weekend" because none of us fought...much.