Being Hamish

By Todd Hunter

Hamish Jones had a problem. His problem was that being Hamish just wasn't getting the job done. For somebody who was considered to be completely average, he was noticing a distinct inability to reach the expected average levels of girlfriends and acceptable weekly beatings from the local bullies. Clearly for him, something had to change.

He had tried many schemes and plans to improve his image around the schoolyard, but to date none of them had even seemed close to working. Even a brief period of just being true to himself had ended in especially spectacular failure.

What he needed was a new start to his life. Being together with the girl of his dreams was a solid enough goal to achieve, but that would only be the beginning. From there he could really turn things around and achieve the fame and fortune that his years of persistence meant he truly deserved.

But to do that he needed a plan and planning things out just wasn't his thing. Hamish knew all he needed was one great idea. One idea that was so brilliant that he was the first person to ever conceive of it and follow it through to the end.

When one day he finally found that idea, it was one that would take him and his friends on a grand adventure and lead them to face the truths about the world and the wider universe above. It also got him into a lot of trouble. But that was ok; Hamish was more than used to that as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Todd Hunter
• Release date: Jul 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301859320

Todd Hunter

Todd Hunter is a young author from Newcastle Australia. His novels represent a skewed but heart felt take on a number of every day issues, typically explored through extraordinary events that may make little sense at the time and even much less sense on closer examination.But as always, hopefully there are some laughs along the way.

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BEING HAMISH

By

Todd Hunter

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Todd Hunter on Smashwords

Being Hamish

Copyright © 2013 by Todd Hunter

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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This book is for Michelle, Anna and Penny.

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BEING HAMISH

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Chapter 1

Hamish was not Scottish. This made sense considering his parents were not Scottish either. He was actually almost a hundred per cent certain no member of his family had ever even been to that part of the world or could even reliably identify it on a map.

This didn’t really matter. Right at this moment, Hamish Jones wanted to be a Scott more than anything else in the world. He wasn’t though and it got even worse than that. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t conceive of any practical way in which he could become one before school started today.

But as impossible as his situation seemed to be, he had made up his mind that he wanted to be from the Highlands. And well? He smiled sheepishly to himself in the bathroom mirror. That was most certainly a good start.

It was more than a simple want though; Hamish needed to be from a certain Haggis eating nation. It wasn’t just the most important thing in his life at that point, it was his life. Or at least, it would have been if it was true. But it wasn’t, he was just Hamish and every single person in town already knew that too.

Slowly and with only a hint of insecurity he checked off what he did know was true about himself. He was aged fifteen and of average looks and rather average intelligence. His unremarkable features were covered by a thin hodgepodge of acne and a smattering of small brown freckles that complimented his light and somewhat oily hair. His relatively straight hair was styled averagely for a boy of his age and he rarely spent the time required to make it look decent of a morning. Above all else however and much more importantly, his nationality was most certainly not Scottish.

Not a great deck of cards, he accepted as he smiled and started to half-heartedly brush his hair again to continue closely following his daily routine. It did look better this time he thought, causing him to strike a rakish pose whilst flexing the tiny muscles in his arms. The weights he lifted didn’t seem to be producing results that were discernible to the naked eye, but he probably just needed to lift them more than once. Better bump that hair cut up to ‘above-average’ he winked to himself, thinking that today just might be his day.

As usual, as soon as he turned around his hair flopped back down to its inevitable default, straggly state. He sometimes hoped that the effect made him look somewhat rough and worldly but of course it did nothing of the sort.

Blissfully unaware of the effects of gravity on his appearance, he turned off the bathroom light and strutted back to his bedroom to finish dressing. As he did so, he loudly whistled the theme music to his current favourite movie, ‘Braveheart’. He hadn’t quite managed to sit all the whole way through it yet. But he loved the way William Wallace completed defeated the evil British and ended up with the girl of his dreams too.

His father was not home at the moment but this was not all that unexpected. Hamish idly tried to remember where his dad actually was at the moment, concluding that it could be any of three distinct locations in Australia. None of these places were nearby and more importantly, he wasn’t expected to be back for a seemingly always extending three or four more months. But that was ok, he thought, because those encyclopaedias wouldn’t sell themselves and besides, he reminded himself, times were tough.

He didn’t blame his father for being away so much. In a stubborn way it made him admire him even more. Sure, he could have chosen a different career and sure there were many easier and higher paid jobs that he could have had to keep him local and close by to his family. But his dad had chosen his path through life and decided to stick to it grimly through thick and thin. Hamish could understand that, it was something he knew kept his dad going despite how hard it must have been to spend so long away from his home.

For his own part, Hamish had big plans himself. They centred on two simple themes. The first was being extremely rich and famous. Whilst not a particularly original outcome for his life, he figured it would be a decent place to be down the road. The second and far more ambitious plan was being the loving husband of Fiona Murphy.

She was his existence; she was his everything and had been so since he first laid eyes on her that fateful day now almost exactly four years ago. It was more than a simple obsession; he had had plenty of those in his day. No, Hamish was convinced that she was his fate and destiny and he was completely driven to make sure it all came to end with them living out a magical existence together.

He often wondered in a quiet moment alone if this was how his father and mother had begun. He could certainly imagine that this was the case, their marriage seemed as perfect to him as any he could possibly conceive of, even if they spent so long apart. He had never heard the full story of their union, although he had often discretely asked about the details. He supposed that some things were just too personal to share, or perhaps … he blushed. No he wasn’t thinking about any potential other reasons why they were so reluctant to go into it.

One thing he did know for sure was that his personal happiness would not magically happen by itself. The first step for getting with Fiona was obvious; he needed to actually talk to her. Then…well he could cross that second bridge when he finally came to it.

It wasn’t that he was socially awkward. In fact he never really got shy talking to people or having to deal with others in a normal situation. He had plenty of people he considered friends, or at least casual acquaintances. In fact, some of the better relationships he enjoyed were even with females. However talking to Fiona was not a normal situation, it wasn’t even close to being one. It was a situation that required his absolutely best work and above all else an opening line that would set into motion the series of events that would eventually see them take their rightful place together. If he didn’t get that one line right, if he said the wrong words or was slightly off with his delivery? Well the consequences didn’t really bare thinking about.

The problem was she was incredible, a walking cliché of loveliness. She was tall for her age, almost the same height as Hamish but incredibly attractive with long and smooth brown hair, dark eyes and small but somehow still ample… well ampleness in all the right places. She probably wasn’t too much of a cliché now that Hamish pondered it, but that didn’t matter one little bit. Maybe those particular record books of the perfect female form just needed updating.

The rest of her was more conventionally described when thinking of an amazing girl of her age. She was the top girl in the grade and had all the best friends, coolest clothes and went to all the best parties. An event wasn’t even considered a party until she showed up and it appeared to meet her approval. There wasn’t a man alive who would not want her and Hamish knew from experience and overheard whispered conversations that they all did.

However despite everyone wanting her, realistically only one man could ever have her. Hamish knew he only had one small and incredibly tiny chance in a billion. But it was still once chance and that would be just enough for him, if he didn’t screw up and got his opening line exactly right. That pressure was why in four years of wanting her with a burning desire; he was yet to actually talk to her once.

Well, he had ‘spoken’ to her, on several occasions. But he was yet to ‘speak speak’ to her. The short and hasty ‘sorry’ or ‘excuse me’ that they blissfully shared in the school corridor from time to time just didn’t count. The time she had asked in French class to borrow his ruler, the same wonderful moment when all he could come up with was a strangled grunt whilst he awkwardly handed it over? That surely didn’t count either.

It couldn’t count because they were still not together. They were certainly not a couple so logically it certainly didn’t count. It simple couldn’t, the alternative was not worth contemplating for even an instant. The leap of logic required to validate these thoughts might have been a rather large one, but with steady practice it felt right enough to him.

The task was made all the more difficult by him being almost completely mediocre in just about every way that mattered. This was not such a bad thing in itself; it could have been much worse as he was sure several of the more unfortunate boys in his grade experienced. But when there are about thirty or so other average guys to contend with and a good deal more that were far above the mark, well it got to be a problem. This was doubly a problem because that was just in his age group. If she wanted to be with an older guy, which girls like her did tend to want to be, well there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about that. At least not that he knew of yet.

This huge problem really came down to the fact that there was only one Fiona. This was more or less ok, but there were probably about a billion of him and several other billions much more suitable again for a girl of her class. This is really why Hamish had decided he needed to be Scottish. That one distinguishing feature could bring him up above the crowd and certainly help narrow down the odds.

He had tried similar smaller schemes before, like pretending to lose his voice for a day or trying to grow a beard with no real success. But as he told himself constantly, just because those hundreds of attempts failed, it didn't mean that this attempt necessarily would. He would no longer be a nothing if he pulled this off, not someone who people met and immediately forgot about straight after. He would be that Scottish boy in the grade, the guy with the slightly funny accent that no one seemed to notice for the past four years or so.

It wasn't a great plan, probably not even a good one, but it was ‘his’ plan. He had made the required decisions and detailed preparations carefully and was now going to follow it all through to the end. Hamish was like that. He didn’t really want to die at all when he thought about it, but he certainly was not going to be one of those people who died not trying. If anything, given his lack of mathematical ability, he would probably eventually die from trying to desperately make himself older and making a crucial mistake on what were no doubt very complicated and delicate calculations.

Today was the day, but not just ‘the day’, it was ‘his day’. Today was an out of school uniform day where every kid could discard their normal prescribed clothes and wear what they wanted. This was the one perfect occasion that he had waited for to put his plan into action. So on this fateful and very special day; Hamish Jones was going to go to school wearing a kilt.

With a determined nod and a quick muster of his courage, Hamish surveyed the results of his effort to look as Scot as possible. He wore a plain white shirt which he had especially chosen so as not to distract from the rest of his clothes. His nicest black dress shoes peaked cautiously out from beneath the tartan material which cascaded around his ankles and out onto the floor.

In the movies, their kilts were generally much shorter but he thought that was probably just for their battles. Above all else, he certainly didn’t want to go to school looking stupid. Perhaps he could have bought one to fit a boy such as he was, but he had wanted a man’s kilt and so this is what he had purchased from the baffled costume store assistant. It was his plan and there would be no half measures deployed today.

Having said that, it was certainly hard to walk as he almost immediately discovered when he switched off his light and walked out of his bedroom. Riding his skateboard, as he often liked to do was clearly not going to be happening today. The first hints of self-doubt tried to creep into his mind but he sighed that away as he decided there would be no turning back now. Using a tried and tested technique, he shrugged his shoulders repeatedly to help reduce the tension and tried to calm himself down. Everything was going according to plan he finally convinced himself after several minutes of intense effort.

Suddenly the all too free and easy motion of his shoulders reminded him that he had forgotten his school bag in his room. So cursing silently he returned to retrieve it and then waddled back to his previous location. That mistake didn’t count he decided, as he hadn’t really started his day yet after all. His plan only started when he left the house; which meant so far everything was still going just fine.

Slowly he struggled downstairs to the remainder of their small and tidy house, concentrating furiously on not getting his feet caught into a red and green tangle. Naturally he discovered that he could move much faster if he used his left hand to hold his kilt up to around his knees. This allowed him to complete the trip out into the kitchen without further trips, bumps or bruises.

Breakfast wasn’t going to be a protracted affair this morning. He already had what he considered a large flock of butterflies having a great time in his stomach and showering them with a concoction of surgery cereal and milk wasn’t going to help settle them down a great deal.

It would have to be some rather plain toast he decided as he fished the toaster out from the packed cupboards. The disgruntled cockroach that emerged in an angry scuttle gave him a slight pause, but only for long enough to check that no others remained inside. He had once made the mistake of not checking twice when cooking his breakfast one morning and the end result wasn’t pretty at all.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to wait for the timer to run out and popped the toaster early to check on his food. As usual, it wasn’t cooked at all and was still considered to be just plain old bread. Of course now he had to deal with resetting the cooking mechanism which would now result in the toast being cooked too much if he let it run through a normal cycle. So he had to pop it three or four more times to check how it was coming along before he was fully satisfied with the level of cooking.

Somehow he still managed to burn it slightly, but a heavy slab of butter, a blob of peanut butter, a small amount of jam and a sprinkle of sugar helped cover up the black bits. Idly a thought appeared in the back of his head that he should have finished this breakfast before he completed his earlier preparations like brushing his teeth or putting on a spotless white shirt. The thought was dismissed quickly though, today wasn’t a day for worrying about such plan insignificant details.

The cleaning up after was performed quickly and efficiently. For as long as he could remember, Hamish had taken care of the cooking and cleaning and it was something he mostly enjoyed. Getting the toaster back into the cupboard was a challenge as always, but he pulled it off with a bit of force and an ominous breaking noise that made him wince. One day he’d probably have to fix up whatever had broken deep within the recesses of the kitchen cupboard, but not today. Even opening the linoleum covered door again at this stage would be a dangerous move given how precariously the contents must now be balanced against it. There wasn’t time to put it all back together again properly because he had places where he needed to be and destiny that he hopefully was about to meet.

Hamish was living alone with his mother at the moment, having no brothers or sisters or elderly grandparents to look after. For a change, he was currently glad of the fact, plan or no plan. He decided it was best not to go into the TV room and say goodbye to