Harvey - Bucket List of an Idiot

DOM

HARVEY

First published in 2012
Copyright Dominic Harvey 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Allen & Unwin
Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

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Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Phone: (64 9) 377 3800

83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia

National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Harvey, Dominic, 1973
Bucket list of an idiot / Dominic Harvey.
ISBN 978-1-877505-17-1
1. Harvey, Dominic, 1973 Anecdotes. I. New Zealand Wit and humor. II. Title.
NZ828.302dc 23

ISBN 978 1 877505 17 1

Photograph of , courtesy of Betsy Prujean

Set in 12.5/16 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

by Prime Minister John Key

BY PRIME MINISTER JOHN KEY

I AM AN IDIOT...
AND THIS IS MY BUCKET LIST

Hello, my name is Dominic diot.

I am comfortable with that now. I have managed to carve a pretty good career and make a decent living out of being an idiot on the radio. So, far from taking it as an insult, I consider it a sort of compliment.

I have always been one, too. Even in the days before I went professional and became paid to be an idiot. My long-suffering parents were among the first to recognise it:

Get off the clothes line, you bloody idiot!

That was Mum when I was nine and probably more than old enough to know better.

We had one of those old rotary clothes lines and I thought it would make an awesome ride, a bit like a homemade merry-go-round. So I held on to one of the four arms that came off the trunk and ran until I built up a bit of speed, then took my feet off the ground, which usually gave me a couple of seconds of fun. Mum stopped the ride... on that occasion. Eventually I was forced to retire that activity when one of the aluminium arms designed for wet towels bent and then eventually snapped.

Granddad was another family member to recognise my gift for doing foolish things:

Dominic, stop being an idiot! Pull your togs up and sit down or get out!

This came after an awkward incident in Granddads spa pool when I was twelve years old. Granddads spa, complete with artificial grass on the ground, was in a conservatory with a ranch slider. Conservatories were all the rage in the mid eightiesanyone who was doing well for themselves had this bizarre extra room added to their house. The artificial grass was not so popularI believe Granddad selected that based on price more than appearance. This particular day I had my back facing the ranch slider and because the jets and bubbles were making considerable noise I had not heard Granddad come in. My poor old granddad, so meticulous with his spa pool maintenance, had walked in to see me with my togs partially down and my little white bottom half out of the water as I attempted to put my penis into one of the water jets. After that an extra rule was added to Granddads already thorough list of rules on the wallNO SHENANIGANS! I did appreciate his subtlety.

When I left school and got my very first job in radio the name-calling continued:

What sort of an idiot puts dirty dishes back in the cupboard?!

Luckily, Id made it to the end of my three-month trial period before Steve Rowe, the radio station manager, came to the conclusion his most recent hire was an idiot. Since I was seventeen and employed to work the midnight to six am graveyard shift, Steve had given me a lengthy job description which included things like clean the staff kitchen every night. This pissed me offI wanted to be a DJ, not a bloody cleaner! I didnt do any of my own dishes at my flat, I reasoned, so why the hell should I have to clean up other peoples mess at work?

So once my trial period was up I started to cut corners. I would just put any real dirty dishes I came across away in the back corner of the cupboard, still dirty.

My cunning plan was discovered when one of the staff members saw a giant rat in the kitchen one morning. That rat was executed. I was lucky not to be.

Even my first proper girlfriend, Kim, recognised that her first true love was a fool.

Are you trying to burn the house down, you idiot?

That came after she arrived home from work one day and found me squatting totally naked in front of the oven with my underpants dangling on the end of a wire coathanger that I had fashioned into a rod. In my defence, what was I supposed to do? I had no clean undies and no dryer. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

My old personal trainer in Palmerston North, Graeme Sciascia, had to agree with everyone else:

What sort of an idiot doesnt wear underpants under his gym shorts?

Graeme is a man with a big heartand even bigger pectoral musclesbut the alarm bells started ringing for him this one session where he had me doing squats. This is where you have a bar loaded with weights behind your neck and you crouch down until your thighs are parallel with the floor, then you push the weight up again.

On this particular day Graeme had me squatting and lifting 140 kilos, a tremendous amount of weight and way more than I was realistically capable of. I told him this but he said he believed in me. I put the bar on my shoulders, psyched myself up with some deep breaths, then slowly lowered the weight until I was crouching not far from the floor. That was the easy bit done. Then I started to push to get the weight back up again. I pushed with everything I had. My face was red, veins were popping out in my neck, I could feel my eyes watering from the strain, and then it happened. My bowels spontaneously expelled gas from the force and, along with it, a small, perfectly formed poo, bigger than a Malteser but smaller than a scorched almond, which fell from my shorts and rolled across the floor. I was mortified. I put the bar up and, without saying a word, I grabbed a handy-towel, picked up the evidence and walked to the toilet to dispose of it. When I went back to the squats area, Graeme shook his head and uttered that sentence above, which did little to put my mind at ease. Had I been wearing undies or lined shorts I would have still had the accident. The only difference is it would have saved me considerable embarrassment. I have not done a squat or defecated on a gymnasium floor since that day.