alt="image"/>
Scholar Celeste Barber mid-Ritalin as a Senior. St Joseph’s College, Banora Point, 1998. No big deal!
Working the room.
@kyliejenner
I’VE NEVER REALLY ASKED MY DAD if he wishes he got an official diagnosis and subsequent medication, because I think I know the answer. ‘I’m fine as I am, Princess. If I can last this long without it, then why would I start now?’ Well played, Neville, well played.
My dad is everybody’s mate; everyone loves a bit of Neville Barber. ‘Nifty’, as he’s affectionately called. If he’s not making you laugh, he’s laughing at you not laughing.
There are three certainties about my dad.
1. He Doesn’t Share Food
Dad: If you want some I’ll buy one for you.
Me: No, Dad, I just want a bite.
Dad: Well, I’ll buy you one and you can bite that.
Me: But I don’t want a whole lasagne, I just want to try some.
Dad: Well, I do want a whole lasagne, that’s why I bought it.
Me: Are you serious – you’re not sharing with me?
Dad: Deadly.
And with that he will set up a barrier around his food, made up of salt and pepper shakers, sauce bottles and glasses, while firmly holding a knife in his hand as a weapon.
2. He’s the Originator of Dad Jokes
Neville Barber’s go-to joke:
A grasshopper walked into a bar and the barman said, ‘Hey we have a drink named after you.’ And the grasshopper said, ‘Really? An Eric?’
And that’s it, that’s the fucking joke. But it’s not about the joke, it’s about the joy he gets in telling it. He doesn’t usually tell jokes to make you laugh, he tells jokes – well, to me and my sister anyway – to annoy you. If he knows he’s onto a winner he will repeat it over and over, breaking the main rule of comedy: ‘Don’t treat your audience like idiots.’
Dad: Get it? The grasshopper’s name is Eric?
Us: Yes, Dad, we get it.
Dad: But the bartender meant he has a drink called a grasshopper.
Us: Yes, Dad.
Dad: But what the bartender didn’t realise is the grasshopper had his own unique name.
Us: DAD! FUCK.
Jackpot!
Neville 1, the Barber daughters 0.
3. He’s Always Ready First – ALWAYS
When we were kids, if Mum said we were leaving the house at 6pm, at 5.45pm Dad would be sitting on the couch with the car reversed out of the driveway, air conditioning running, cooler bag of lemon, lime and bitters* and a nice bottle of white wine for Mum. He would wait patiently for her as she figured out what perfume to wear from the collection he had bought her over the years, and for Olivia and me, who were fighting over whose acid-wash drop-waisted skirt was whose.
When we paraded down the stairs at 6.05pm Dad would always greet us with a compliment. ‘You look lovely, dear,’ he would say to Mum. ‘You look lovely, girls,’ he would say, continuing the compliment. Then we were in the perfect-temperature car and off!
My dad is solid like a rock, always there for anyone and always happy to tell you a dumb joke that you will roll your eyes at then excuse yourself from the conversation to go to the toilet and record in your phone so you can recite it to your friends later at the pub.
He was an only child, and lived in the same house from the day he was born to the day when he and Mum moved in together. Dad lived on a dairy farm near Tweed Heads and when the local milk carrier would come by at 7am to pick up the milk, he would also pick up Dad and take him to school. The school was so small that on a number of occasions the principal would call Nana Rita to make sure Dad was going to school that day, as no one had turned up and they needed him there to keep the school open. He was four.
As Dad got a bit older he would ride his bike to and from school along a dirt track every day. Once he got home from school on a Friday afternoon, he wouldn’t see anyone apart from his mum and dad until he was back at school on Monday morning. If a car went past, the family would go onto the balcony to watch the big display. He kept himself busy, no dramas, no complaints.
His dad, Harold, was a tough man, old school, he didn’t show any emotion. Nana Rita and Dad were a team. And when Dad met Mum, Nana took her in as the daughter she’d always wanted.
Dad was super-close to his mum. Rita had wanted more kids but Harold wasn’t into it, so in those days that was that. I reckon my dad would have LOVED a sibling or 10, but he will never tell you that, because that would be complaining, and that’s something Neville William Barber doesn’t do. He’s grateful for his life and is more than happy just to go with the flow. He’s a master at keeping busy and not imposing his time on anyone for any reason.
My dad works as the maintenance guy at a private hospital on the Gold Coast, a job that started as a one-week job in 1996, and because he’s so excellent to have around and good at what he does the hospital just keeps creating work for him.
He’s so loved that when he was in hospital for the second time in his life (the first was the time he was born), the staff put him up in the presidential suite and there were nurses who weren’t rostered on that day visiting him to make sure everything was OK. (He had tightness in his chest, which freaked everyone out. Turns out it was gas. Classic Neville.) My mum, who has been in and out of hospital her whole life due to dodgy lungs, is lucky to get a bunch of flowers on her hospital visits these days, whereas Dad gets a full-blown fanfare if he gets so much as a blood test.
When I moved out of home at 17, my dad wrote me notes of encouragement on the backs of business cards. Every time I would go backs home, or he and Mum would visit me, he would have a fresh business card with a fresh note of love and encouragement. The business cards have been replaced with official and professional texts.
Celeste
Just looked at e mail from the copy editor
Just another one of your talents
