The half Leunig and the duck

Our family, including Pepper and Dr John, went to a friend’s place for dinner last night.  Pepper was the perfect guest and sat quietly in her box, leaning against my left foot.  She loved the nannygai Tony brought up for the barbecue and wasn’t too keen on Vic’s potato salad which was delicious.  Towards the end of the evening, Pepper and I went to help with the washing up, just as it was wrapping up. So I stood at the bench chatting to Detta and Mary while Pepper relaxed in my hand.

     Detta had a light bulb moment.  She marched to the coffee table and returned with a book, The Essential Leunig.

     I raised my eyebrows. 

     ‘The duck,’ she said.  ‘You’ve got the duck.’

     Of course.  I was holding the duck. 

     ‘Let’s get a photo of you with the duck and the book,’ she said.

     I can tell you it takes a bit of muscle holding The Essential Leunig and the four week old duck, but I was thinking about a distant memory.  I had some connection with The Essential Leunig and it wasn’t only a gentle and comical creature.

     Aaah.  I remembered. I am half Leunig.  My mother’s maiden name was Leunig.  There was something else I was trying to remember and it came to me.

     In second year uni, I was most concerned, for approximately ten minutes, about the loss of the family name, Leunig.  McKenna, my surname, was common, but Grandpa Leunig told me all the Leunigs are from the same stock, German settlers from the Black Forest region and there weren't many of us.  Mum had one brother and he had one son.  It was up to me to preserve an endangered surname.

     So, the next day I wandered into the JD Story building at the University of Queensland and changed the name on my enrolment, Catherine McKenna to Catherine Leunig-McKenna.  A simple step to a significant gesture. 

     Perhaps I had given this Leunig-McKenna business a bit longer than ten minutes considering I had to walk from Landsborough Terrace in Toowong where I lived near The Regatta all the way to St Lucia (I had crashed my van at the time, another story).  Anyway, fairly soon after I left the JD Story building, I had completely forgotten my new surname.

     Fast forward to exams at the end of the year, the whole five of them, all year exams.  I wrote my student number 116992868 in the boxes on each answer sheet and scribbled what I needed to secure a pass.  I skipped out of the last exam into the late November heat and over the shrivelled remains of the jacaranda flowers in the great court.

     I didn’t fly home till just before Christmas because I was keen to earn some money and a great employment opportunity presented itself.  I was to become a professional ironer for four weeks.  The pay was good and the conditions were bloody fantastic. Here's why.

     During second year I developed an interest in soap operas.  It was a way of coping with studying law when I wanted to do almost anything else and a career like ironing hadn’t come my way. Committing myself to four hours daily of soapies in the AV room near the main refec achieved a balance that sustained me through my studies over the next couple of years.

Midday.  Santa Barbara

1 pm.  The Bold and The Beautiful

1.30.  The Young and the Restless

2.30.  The Restless Years

3.30 till 4  General Hospital

     Professional ironing ticked all my boxes.  I got paid to iron and watch my favourite shows and develop a new talent.  It turns out I was a mean hand with an iron.  My only regret about the arrangement was that The Bold and The Beautiful screened for half an hour only and less credible shows got an hour of viewing.  That aside, it was one of the best holiday jobs.  There were three or four of us, good mates so before and after the soapies started we engaged in serious conversation about what happened last Friday night and what we were doing next Friday night.  We were 19.

     Underlying this student nirvana was the mild anxiety relating to the impending release of my exam results.  The day was fast approaching, a Saturday in December.  It would happen at the Courier Mail premises in Bowen Hills.  Car loads of students would rock up to wait for Saturday’s paper to be released minutes after midnight.

     A group of us jumped in my 1984 Mitsubishi Starwagon (neatly repaired), more of us than there were seats, and headed to Bowen Hills.  We waited in the dark, along with what seemed like hundreds of dilapidated student vehicles, for the paper to be released.  The moment we were waiting for arrived.  A door opened, a flash of light silhouetted a man holding a pile of papers and one of us jumped out and bought one.

     By the dim interior light, Pam turned to the exam results pages and searched for our names in alphabetical order.  One by one she called out everyone else’s name, the subject code and the grade.

     ‘LA202, 5, LA204, 6 …’ and so on.

     But my name wasn’t there.  Each of us checked, several times, without success.

     At home, I examined the print under the fluorescent light of the kitchen, then the lounge, even the bathroom.  My name wasn’t there.  I had failed FIVE subjects.  I crawled into bed with a heavy heart.  It would have been much heavier had HECS been introduced, but that was two years off.  Put simply, I had spent too much time watching American soap operas and this was my punishment.  I had to cop karma when it was due and fair.

     The matter wasn’t mentioned in the morning.  I sulked around.  I cried.  I threw my hands in the air and asked the ceiling, 'Why me?'  

     I decided not to tell Mum and Dad.  I’d simply repeat the year and they’d never know.  Then again, I could explore a career in ironing and maybe do an MBA with a view to establishing an ironing franchise.  Sob, sob.  Why me?

     I can’t remember what prompted my friends to come clean.  Perhaps it was the irritation they felt following a couple of hours of my wailing and snivelling and questioning the ceiling.  And INXS and Paul Kelly don’t mix well with hysterical grief.

      ‘Didn’t you change your name?’ said Pam as she held the crumpled paper to me.  ‘Does that ring any bells?’

     Of course.  I wasn’t a McKenna.  I wiped my runny nose on my bare arm and ripped to the Ls.  There I was, LEUNIG-McKENNA, CM.  

     Aaah.  I was saved.  I’d just forgotten I was half Leunig.  

     Doesn’t Leunig have a character who is a fool?