Okay so here’s a naughty story to tell. But it’s one of those that never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Back in 1990 when I was 16 I was so very into Skid Row. And they were going to play a gig at the Hordern Pavillion of which I was a proud ticket holder.

Now, the show was on a Friday night so my cousin, her boyfriend and I decided to wag school for the day and hang out in the city, maybe try and find the band at their hotel room.

I lied to my parents and told them I was going to school but was going to go to my sister’s workplace straight after school and we would head into the show after that. Lucky I have a sister who was never nasty enough to dob me in.

Anyways, there were the 3 (me, cousin and her boyfriend) of us were hanging out in Hyde Park in Sydney soaking in the sun when we noticed a bunch of kids on a school excursion.

Kind of squinting trying to focus in on the kids I thought to myself “you know, that uniform looks like ours…..HOLY CRAP it is our school uniform“.

My eyes quickly darted around trying to work out what the hell was going on I spotted my Society & Culture teacher Mr Grey and then I remembered he was taking the Year 8 kids out on an excursion. Damn it. Why didn’t I listen when he said which day he was doing that.

You know when all of your senses are suddenly switched on and you have a thousand thoughts running through your head, yeah that was me at that point.

I couldn’t get caught. Because that would mean I would miss the show that evening and I was not going to let that happen. The three of us realised we couldn’t just make a run for it because that would bring attention to ourselves.

We need to get out of here; we need to get to the train station and get the hell out of dodge. We were half way between Museum and St James and scanned around and noticed that Elizabeth Street was littered with bus shelters all along. So we swiftly made our way down to Elizabeth Street, quickly but not too quickly and we made it to the first bus shelter.

Safe for the minute we peered around the bus shelter and noticed the group of kids heading our way. We needed to get out of there. So Mission Impossible style we quickly moved from bus shelter to bus shelter making our way to the St James train station entrance.

We were at the last bus shelter and there was about 25 metres between the shelter and the train station entrance. Okay, we really needed to move now because we were definitely within recognisable range. Heart racing and a little prayer to the man upstairs we made a run for it.

My cousin’s boyfriend made it to the entrance first. I was close behind him when I heard my cousin from behind scream out an expletive. I turned and saw she had dropped her massive artline texta.

I’m going to be melodramatic here but do I go back and save the injured in the warzone possibly compromising both of us or do I just save myself and hope my cousin has enough to get out alive?

This sounds selfish but I kept running. Because honestly, who stops for a friggin’ artline texta anyway?

My cousin found the courage and co-ordination to pick up that artline texta even though it had been crushed under her foot and make it safe to the entrance of St James.

We were happy but still not sure if we had been caught; so the adrenaline was running high.

We thought, even if our teacher saw us and called the school, there was no way of finding us. I would go to the concert enjoy it and suffer the wrath from my parents the next day if I had to. But I didn’t care because I would have seen my beloved Skid Row.

If you want to read more Happy Place posts, head on over to Easy Peasy Kids. Nathalie is the brain child behind all this.

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