The Opposite of Normal, Andrew Boggan [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

what had to be done to enjoy a better school life and a better person.


Chapter 4
They said I was different so it must be true


The school semester was well underway. I didn’t have any friends to hang out with over the school break so I was pretty much left to my own devices. I had eventually calmed down from my serious emotional outburst which has left me mentally crippled at the moment and I’m not sure when it will pass. At this stage I’ve doing a good job by keeping it hidden from my family, I certainly wouldn’t want my parents to have seen me in the state that I was last week. I think it would have crushed them.

So many emotions were going through my every second of the day, and it was beginning to interfere with my sleep. Over and over again I kept having vivid flashbacks of fists go flying across my face, or fingers being pointed directly at me and the sound of my classmates laughing at me keep playing over and over in my head like a cassette tape that can’t be stopped.

For Christmas the previous year I was given a typewriter. My parents brought it for me because I often used to enjoy writing short stories as a pastime and usually submitted my short stories into competitions when in primary school.

On a bitterly cold winter’s morning sitting in my bed staring at the ceiling I suddenly began thinking of different stories that I could write as a pastime whilst on school holidays. I had one concept in mind about writing a feature film with a thriller concept to it, so I pulled out the old dusty typewriter and began jotting down a few ideas.

I didn’t really start thinking about plot summaries and character descriptions, I just had ideas flowing through my head about the structure of the movie so I began putting those ideas down on paper, and as I went along the feature film script began to take on some kind of well planned out structure even tho I had not given this any thought. As quick as my little fingers could go words and storylines began flowing from my head, down my arms, through my fingers, on to the typewriter and on to paper. For 7 whole hours I sat there not leaving my desk - I had completed my first feature film script “The Gate on Mullhullen Hill”.

The script was about a young family whose father is suddenly killed in a terrible work accident and the mother and son are forced to move to the mother’s sister’s house in an attempt to sell the family home and start a new life. The young boy eventually finds a hole on the top of the hill several meters away from his Auntie’s house. But there’s a deep dark secret beneath the hole. Little does the boy know, it’s an entrance to the demonic underworld. Basically a war is on between good and evil

I sat on my bed that night reading my script over a dozen times and the more I read the script, the more I could visualize movements going on in my head that my mind began to present the movie that I had written in a powerful and chilling way. Could this be a new turning point for me? Have I found something that I’m actually good at? My first aim when I started writing my first script was to pass the time, not to present what I would call a work of art.

I might be only 14 years old but I decided to develop a script based on my recent events at school and how I emotionally copped. I guess you could say it’s a short version of my memoirs.

For 2 entire weeks I worked tirelessly on writing and putting together feature film scripts. As I began writing each story my fingers did all the work. I never thought about what I wanted to write about until my fingers hit the typewriter.

I quickly learnt that from suffering the emotional anguish I recently went through at school, writing opened up a whole new world to me. It allowed me to develop stories of any nature and level and to spread my wings and grow, even if it was just on paper. I began to see that writing became my one and only pass time over the school holidays and it soon turned out to be a great distraction from the recent mental anguish. I truly felt that within my mind there was a door, and behind that door was a world of talent, strength, ability, peace and serenity. Somehow this door opened every time I sat down to write a feature film script.

It was the last night of the school holidays and a peaceful silence filled the night air outside. Inside I was sitting next a tiny lit lamp at my desk with my typewriter. I was in a huge rush to complete one more script prior to returning to school. Because in my scripts I could develop any character that I wanted, I always felt a deep connection with every story that I wrote about and I focused all my attention on this last script. Probably because I was going to back to school in a matter of hours I may have been subconsciously attempting to distract myself from falling asleep.

The clocked ticked over to 1.15 am and I knew I had to get to bed for the school the next day but the ideas in my head was still flowing and nothing had the power to stop me from writing. Come 1.30 am I had finally finished my last feature film script of the holidays. Over the school break I never actually counted how many scripts were written, I just kept writing and writing, but as I completed my last script I counted 25 feature film scripts plus had started work on a novel. Until my next school break, I’ll wait to write until then.

Back in school and back into my set routine and structure – well to a degree at least. The bullying and beatings kept coming and it was the same confrontation with the teachers as well who claimed they helping the situation but it was always making things worse. My attention in the classroom began to suffer as I could think of nothing but writing.

Today I was sitting in the Speech & Drama class. Ms Anderson was a great speech and drama teacher who thoroughly enjoyed writing herself and putting together performances for school events. Although I had never enrolled myself at the beginning of the year to take speech and drama as a subject, I just enjoyed going down to that classroom on my lunch break and reading through the different theatre scripts Ms Anderson had on her desk.

I decided to tell her about all the work I had done over the school holidays. When I explained I had completed 25 feature film scripts she nearly blew off her seat with excitement. “That’s just unbelievably amazing Brendan” she said to me. I went on to explain to her the various plots and scenarios about my work and how I enjoyed just sitting at my desk writing away. To me there was no greater passion than writing and I began to think I was developing my own area of expertise.

“What do you want to be when you grow up Brendan” she asked me. I didn’t really have an answer to that question. I always wanted to be a pilot or a meteorologist but I struggled with great difficulty in maths and physics so that ruled out those two occupations as a career. She asked me “Do you ever sing” I went all coy and red but smiled when I answered “I’d like to but no, I’m a terrible singer”. Ms Anderson said she always loved to sing and growing up in Melbourne, herself and her flat mate would often frequent inner city karaoke bars looking for a spot to sing and dance. “You know what the first thing is that I think of when I wake up in the mornings” she asked me. I just shacked my head, I couldn’t really answer, “Um, karaoke?” I said. “Singing, singing is the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning. When you woke up this morning, was writing the first thing that popped into your head” she asked. “Without a doubt” I said. “If you wake up in the morning and you cant think of anything but singing, then boy your meant to be a singer, and if you wake up each morning and you cant think of anything but writing then you’re supposed to be a writer my boy” she told me. Suddenly I started to have images of my future working as a movie director on the back lot at MGM studios or Universal. Could my passion really take me that far? I’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds I guess to answer that question.

“Here Brendan, I really want you to consider this” She handed me a piece of paper. It was a writing competition for the under 16’s presented by the Queensland Theatre Company. The top 5 winners would have their plays produced and staged. “What a wonderful opportunity for you to show off your work” she told me. I didn’t really thing my work was of such a strong caliber to make it through this competition but I had to explain to Ms Anderson that my writing was simply a way to pass the time; I didn’t really anticipate taking my writing any further than just a hobby.

Ms Anderson could clearly see where I was coming from. Although I didn’t explain to her the real reasons why I began writing, she could see within me the potential to grow my work. I kind of thought that if somebody else truly believed I could make it happen then I had to least give it a shot.

That night I went hunting through every one of my scripts determining which story line would best suit for the competition. During the school break I created a script called “The Waiting” and it was about a group of 3 medical practitioners who claim they had a developed a vaccine for a major flu virus. The 3 doctors go through the clinic injecting their patience’s claiming it’s the vaccine. Little do they know, they were actually being infected with the super bug deliberately planted by the doctors. The super bug has no cure and a team of university medical students attempt to develop a vaccine and a cure for the deadly super bug before it wipes away the population of a small rural country town.

I ended up deciding to submit The Waiting. Ms Anderson was absolutely thrilled that I decided to enter the competition. We both agreed now it was a waiting game ourselves until we await the outcome of the competition.

A few weeks later and it was time for the entire school to gather in the assembly hall for our quarterly parade with the principal. The parades are usually pretty boring and most students in the hall aren’t even paying attention anyway. The principal usually stands up in front of the entire school and talks about the different curricular activities going on, results from major school sporting competitions and academic achievements, well I certainly wasn’t up for one of those.

I was sitting in the hall with my other classmates who were busy poking my ears with bits of paper or