My Life Began in a Toilet

Firstly - this is fiction, clearly, and it is YOUR responsibilty to make sure I finish it one day.
Yes, I mean you.

My life began in a toilet. And it seems like this event set the tone for the rest of my life, but more about that later.

A toilet of a 24 hour MacDonalds Restaurant at 3.46am. Now I don’t remember this day. I’ve tried my hardest but can’t seem to get anything before the age of two, and even then it’s just vague memories of thoughts and colours, not actual events. Like I remember thinking my brother was so old because he was seven, and I remember one summer when it felt like we went for a picnic every single day and I remember the day we threw out my cot and got me a big bed. Sad but proud, that’s how I felt.

You know how they say if walls could talk? Well that’s what this story is. This story is as if walls could talk, and they did, and they told me everything, from the most insignificant little detail to the climax of the event, the screams, the blood, the gasps. And now I’m telling you.

So it was 2001. January 26th 2001. Of course I was officially born on January 27th, but walls don’t know much about calendars and clocks, unless they have one hanging on them – which this one didn’t – So when I said, “tell me about that day” January 26th 2001 was the day they told me about.

Apparently it was hot, as it usually is that time of year. The breakfast crowd was a little slow being a public holiday and all. Usually from about 4.30am the drive through is buzzing with a steady flow of early morning tradesman wanting their breakfast value meals with a large flat white, extra bacon and an extra hash brown thanks love. But there weren’t many today. The soft serve machine was broken too, but that wouldn’t be a problem until later.

Now there are four walls in a toilet, at least, with a few little dividing cubicle walls and that extra cut out bit near the door where the hand dryer is. I only spoke with a couple of these walls. One wall, the back wall of the toilet, started in my ladies loo at the far end of the building, carried on through the bloke’s toilet and then through the disabled toilet, through the kitchens, finishing at the drive-through booth where fat Suzie had the morning shift. The other wall went down the edge of the building, starting in my toilets carrying on through the main restaurant booth area to the front of the shop. The outside of the wall was the ass end of the building where staff would sit on upturned milk crates and smoke cigarettes and pot and listen to punk music loudly. So these two walls, when they told me this story, had a pretty broad view of what happened in this particular 24 hour MacDonald’s restaurant that day. The day that turned into night, that turned in to the early hours of the morning when I was born in a MacDonalds toilet.

So as I already mentioned it was a public holiday, Australia day. The day all Aussies wear green and gold or Australian flag t-shirts and play cricket and watch cricket and watch tennis and drink beer outside and swim at the beach and watch fireworks and have coat of arms BBQ (Roo and Emu – delish!) and do all sorts of other Australian things like whinge about stuff and listen to the triple J hottest 100 and argue about silly things with family members. Like Bob Hawke’s white Australia jacket and whether Bert Newton should give up the carpet.

So it was a quiet morning as I said, fat Suzie manned the drive through and counter because it was so quiet, Mohammad was cooking out the back and Tracey the assistant manager was in the office on the phone to her boyfriend whining about having to work and telling him how much she couldn’t wait to see him later, giggle “George! No, I’m at work, ok, the pink ones, with the lace panels, yep – giggle”. Nothing much happened. Fat Suzie ate some chips, picked a zit and read most of the latest version of Dolly magazine. She loved the dolly doctor section because the girls that wrote in to that were clearly way more dumb and troubled than she was. Made her feel good. Mohammad didn’t talk much, he kept to himself, worked hard, secretly hated fat Suzie because she was fat and she smelled bad and her nail polish was too bright and ugly, but he never let her know.

Someone drove through and ordered 10 bacon and egg McMuffin meals at 09.47am and fat Suzie almost told them where to go – but she sullenly directed them to the waiting bay and they waited and waited and eventually Tracey noticed there was some sort of commotion, put her shoes back on, did up her pants, stumbled out of the office and yelled at Suzie and Mohammed for not letting her know they needed help.

Fred – the customer with the 10 meals - was actually the new guy at the local fire station and was looking forward to yet another stressful day of drunken fools and hot weather and fire and had been sent down to get the morning crew breakfast.

By the time Fred got his meals the radio was already playing Chemical Brothers – It Began in Afrika and Tracey and Suzie – who were to finish very soon and start their A-Day debauchery flew along with the beat of the song – drank up that party vibe and started to boogy. Mohammad wasn’t really into this kind of music, he also had volunteered to work the double shift, he had two young kids and a wife to support and needed to get out of this fast food hell hole as soon as possible so he often worked double shifts – especially on public holidays so he could go to night school and improve his English so that he could use his law degree here in Australia.

Nobody bothered to check the toilets before they left, or at any point during their shift – even though Tracey had clearly written on the log book – 5am – toilet check all ok, 6am – toilet check, replace one roll all ok, 7am – all ok – 8am all ok – 9am – all ok ( in a different pen) 10am – hand towels refilled – all ok. Of course, the traffic had been very slow that morning, the toilets were all ok, there was no need to fill or replace anything but Tracey was a diligent assistant manager, she went to great lengths to make it look like she was doing her job.

The New Bit

Lunch shift Start 10.30am

Mia didn’t want to work today. She DIDN’T. WANT. TO WORK. TODAY! Unfortunately she’d been seen out at the Cott Sunday Session by Tracey the week before when she had called in *sick* and therefore got stuck with the crap shift this week. Tracey also threatened to tell the bouncers that Mia was only 16 if she ever saw her there again. Cow! Her friends were having a BBQ with a keg and a paddling pool today and she was not happy to be missing it. At least she would be finished by 6pm and still get to see the Australia Day fireworks. She had a bottle of raspberry flavoured vodka in her bag too and was planning to start getting smashed at about 4.30pm so she wasn’t too far behind her mates.

Mia took control of the drive through and wallowed in her own self pity. She had purchased the cutest little white dress to wear today that had the Australian flag across the front of it that showed off not only the amazing tan she had spent the summer cultivating but also her pert little boobs that she was very proud of. By the time she got to the party it would nearly be dark, the dress wouldn’t pack it’s full punch with out all the sunshine. The radio in the kitchen had just started playing George – Run and it suited her mood perfectly. She didn’t know what the song was about but it still struck a chord with her current predicament. Life was so unfair.


And that was George, the band of brother and sister duo Katie and Ty Noonan as we all know with Run. They actually got their love of music from their mother who is a successful opera singer – I believe Katie is looking at starting a duet album with her mother next year – watch that space! Next up at number 91 with have a track form relative newcomers, Canadian rockers – Sum 41. The title track from their first full length album – here it is number 91 – Sum 41 and Fat Lip!

Mia sang along with the chorus, kicked her melancholy into the grease traps and swore that she was never gonna let society control her and as soon as she had enough money to but a car, a cute car that had air-con, she would quit this stupid job and go live her life, follow her dreams, who gives a shit about anyone. Yeah.