Brett Preiss > Quotes

“Mum was a shoeaholic, and Dad was an alcoholic. He said it was cheaper.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“They say the odds of us being conceived come out to one in four hundred trillion; the fact that we’re alive, healthy and able to work from nine to five is literally a miracle. I once heard a Buddhist metaphor that described the amazing probability of this ‘miracle’: Imagine a lifebuoy thrown into an ocean, and a single turtle living somewhere in all the oceans, swimming around underwater. The chances of my being conceived were the same as the odds of Mr Turtle sticking his head out of the water straight into the middle of that life donut – or the same as the chances of my dad having an orgasm sober.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“on 20 April – funnily enough, the same day as Hitler’s birthday – they pulled me out of my mother’s vagina with forceps because she couldn’t be bothered to push, cut the only authentic connection I ever had to her, and slapped my ass until I screamed. They wrapped me up in a cheap tea towel and whisked me away to the baby room so my drunk father could try to wave at me. And just in case that wasn’t enough trauma, the next morning the very same doctor placed himself between my legs and removed my foreskin. Ouch! Why were they clamping my penis and hacking into it with a blade? Apparently this was just so I could ‘look like Daddy’. The worst thing is, I didn’t get a say in it at all. Mongrels. It wasn’t long before my boozed-up daddy, with the neighbour’s tipsy seventeen-year-old daughter under his arm, was at the hospital, standing beside me and my pretty mother. Despite being drained from giving birth and having her lady bits hanging in tatters beneath her, I have no doubt that Mum looked stunning. She always made a point of wearing lippy. Dad bent over and covered me with his beer breath, declaring, ‘We’re going to call him Bradley.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“Almost every Catholic boy had a go at being an altar boy at some point during their life sentence at school. Some boys were really committed to it and did it for years. I gave it a go when I was around nine years old, mainly because I liked the idea of dressing up in something unusual and performing in front of an audience.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“It immediately became clear to me that ‘modern’ to Sister Stephen meant any time after the Middle Ages and that she obviously didn’t own a radio or television.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“As in most mining towns, the people of Broken Hill were not expecting the minerals to last forever, so they built the dwellings accordingly. As a result, our house required ongoing maintenance. Every day when explosives were fired underground at 7 am and 3 pm to prepare the mines for the next shift, the ground rumbled, the house shook and it became a sport spotting the new bits of damage – mostly chunks of cement falling off the outside walls, which didn’t make the house look very pretty. The blasts were like small earth tremors, so Mum never bought ornaments for the mantelpiece or shelves; they would only end up as jigsaw puzzles on the ground around 7 am or 3 pm.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“I thought Sandy and I had a lot in common when it came to neglect. We just smiled and put up with all the crap. We couldn’t run away, for we had nowhere to go, and neither of us had any idea whether the grass was greener on the other side. Better the devil you know. We both soldiered on.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“Dad’s family, being committed Catholics, were expecting Mum to say something so profound that even the Pope would have sat up and listened. Instead, she grabbed the microphone and said without any hesitation, ‘I want to become Catholic so when I die, I can be buried with the rest of the family in the Catholic section of the cemetery. Thank you.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“By the time Father Rufus was finished with her, she looked like a crying clown.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“I must have blacked out from the pain”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“longing to suck that bottle of warm, delicious milk. I hadn’t been weaned off it for very long. I couldn’t resist. I pulled the bottle gently out of my brother’s mouth and hands, popped it hastily into my own mouth, lay back on the sofa and enjoyed the trickle of something warm down my throat - something I still enjoy today. Warm milk is heaven for a toddler, a pleasure beyond measure. That was until my younger brother’s legs began shaking, his fists clenched and his breath started puffing away. This was not a good sign. I turned my head to look at him, the bottle still locked in my mouth, when all of a sudden his face turned red and distorted, like he was about to poop. Instead, he let out a high-pitched scream that didn’t quite shatter the front window – though it must have come close – but shattered my eardrums and froze my whole body. Unfortunately for me, it also ignited my mum and dad, who both dropped whatever they had been doing in the kitchen and came running immediately into the living room. ‘What the hell is going on?’ shouted Dad. ‘Brett’s taken Trevor’s bottle,’ shrieked Mum as she ripped it out of my mouth – with my only tooth still stuck in the teat. She shoved it straight back into my brother’s mouth to disable the alarm. ‘He needs a bloody good hiding.’ ‘Little bastard. Get up and come here now!’ bellowed Dad. He yanked me off the sofa and held me dangling in the air by one arm as if he were holding up the biggest fish he ever caught, but with much less pride. My world was spinning and so was I as Dad whacked my petite bottom. I must have blacked out from the pain as I don’t remember anything after that. What I do remember, however, is resenting my little brother for making me lose both my tooth and my taste for dairy products. I also learnt one of life’s important lessons: be very careful what you put in your mouth.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“It was quite common for households in towns like mine to have BB rifles, commonly called slug guns. These were air rifles that shot very tiny soft lead pellets called slugs. They weren’t that lethal unless you shot at very close range, but they could blind you if you got shot in the eye. Most teenagers had them to control pests like rats, or to stun rabbits. However, most kids used them to shoot empty beer cans lined up on the back fence, practising their aim for the day they were old enough to purchase a serious firearm. Fortunately, a law banning guns was introduced in Australia in 1996 after thirty-five innocent people were shot with a semi-automatic weapon in a mass shooting in Tasmania. The crazy shooter must have had a slug gun when he was a teenager. But this was pre-1996. And my brothers, of course, loved shooting. My cousin Billy, who was sixteen years old at the time – twice my age – came to visit one Christmas holiday from Adelaide. He loved coming to the outback and getting feral with the rest of us. He also enjoyed hitting those empty beer cans with the slug gun. Billy wasn’t the best shooter. His hand-eye coordination was poor, and I was always convinced he needed to wear glasses. Most of the slugs he shot either hit the fence or went off into the universe somewhere. The small size of the beer cans frustrated him, so he was on the lookout for a bigger target. Sure enough, my brothers quickly pushed me forward and shouted, ‘Here, shoot Betty!’ Billy laughed, but loved the idea. ‘Brett, stand back a bit and spread your legs. I’ll shoot between them just for fun.’ Basically, he saw me as an easy target, and I wasn’t going to argue with a teenager who had a weapon in his hand. I naively thought it could be a fun game with my siblings and cousin; perhaps we could take turns. So, like a magician’s assistant, I complied and spread my skinny young legs as far apart as an eight-year-old could, fully confident he would hit the dust between them . . . Nope. He didn’t. He shot my leg, and it wasn’t fun. Birds burst out of all the surrounding trees – not from the sound of the gunshot, but from my piercing shriek of pain. While I rolled around on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching my bleeding shin, my brothers were screaming with laughter. I even heard one of them shout, ‘Shoot him while he’s down!’ Who needs enemies when you have that kind of brotherly love? No one rushed to help; they simply moved to the back fence to line up the cans for another round. I crawled inside the house with blood dripping down my leg, seeking Mum, the nurse, to patch me up. To this day, I have a scar on my leg as a souvenir from that incident . . . and I still think Billy needed glasses. I also still get very anxious when anyone asks me to spread my legs.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“We always wondered if the fish saw our huge faces against the glass and thought we were sea monsters.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“parents thinking?”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“it takes nine hours to Melbourne and thirteen to Sydney. If you drive to my hometown from Sydney, you’ll find stretches of road that are so long and straight you could place a brick on the accelerator and take a twenty-minute nap without veering off the road or missing anything in the dry, lifeless landscape of red sand, with its scattered blue saltbush and thirsty mulga and Mallee trees as far as the eye can see. The only thing that might wake you from your snooze would be hitting a red kangaroo. After happily hopping across the land with no particular plan in mind, startled kangaroos usually stop and stand frozen in the middle of the road, curious about the strange machine rocketing towards them. What a way to go. Here’s a tip: attach a ‘roo bar’ – not a place where kangaroos will dance for money, but a very solid metal grill – to the front of your car; that way, the impact will do more damage to the kangaroo than it does to your vehicle.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“If you’re really thirsty for serious coffee culture and football, it takes nine hours to Melbourne and thirteen to Sydney. If you drive to my hometown from Sydney, you’ll find stretches of road that are so long and straight you could place a brick on the accelerator and take a twenty-minute nap without veering off the road or missing anything in the dry, lifeless landscape of red sand, with its scattered blue saltbush and thirsty mulga and Mallee trees as far as the eye can see. The only thing that might wake you from your snooze would be hitting a red kangaroo. After happily hopping across the land with no particular plan in mind, startled kangaroos usually stop and stand frozen in the middle of the road, curious about the strange machine rocketing towards them. What a way to go. Here’s a tip: attach a ‘roo bar’ – not a place where kangaroos will dance for money, but a very solid metal grill – to the front of your car; that way, the impact”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir

“Getting a nickname is a very common thing in Australia, and when your friends honour you with one, you don’t have a choice; you have to accept it. I knew a guy at school who was super thin, so he scored the nickname ‘Skin’, for ‘skinny’. My mother’s name is Shirley, but Dad only called her ‘Girl’ and hardly ever said her real name. Either it was because she always looked so young and pretty, or he was playing it safe to avoid slipping up and calling her by a different woman’s name when he was drunk.”
― Brett Preiss, The (un)Lucky Sperm: Tales of My Bizarre Childhood - A Funny Memoir