Life in the Bumpy Lane

This memoir plots the waning influence of a strict religious upbringing on a life littered with major changes in direction. The story follows one person’s growth from naïve and amoral childhood through a devout Catholic teenage through a series of false starts to eventual survival, self-employed, in economic hard times.
Geoff is a war baby whose mother died in childbirth, and that tragedy badly damaged his father’s career in the police force. Dad married again and after an early stay with grandparents, Geoff was raised in a devout Catholic family, getting an education in inner suburban Melbourne convents and Christian Brothers’ schools. Intending the priesthood he entered a seminary. However in the first year of that spiritual and meditative life, he realised how he had been sexually abused as an altar boy almost a decade earlier. Mistaking his normal sexuality for deviance, he decided to change careers but the timing was a problem. Dad was again in trouble with his police superiors, and his stepmother urged him to defer departure for another three years, to avoid his father blaming himself.
After qualifying part-time in electronics and later in business administration, his work has been mainly with small and new business ventures. That focus often led to sales and marketing development which in turn involved dealing with more than his share of colourful people and unconventional situations.
In retirement over the last decade, Geoff and his wife still plot their own life course. He includes a case of recent friction with a local social club, where help was just not appreciated.
This life story is different because:
•Unsettled upbringing and schooling left him with no peer group, delayed qualifications and limited interpersonal skills, especially with girls
•Perseverance, high energy and a strong positive attitude leave him prone to judgments of flogging a dead horse
•Comfort with risk, change and lifelong learning often impress others as insensitivity and poor team spirit - to his continual dismay
•Woeful timing has dogged several big decisions in his life: like studying electronics just as transistors arrived, moving interstate late in that tertiary course, changing houses too often and at great expense, and starting his own business as a recession kicked in.
He has enjoyed projects where there is no “one best way”, where success is not guaranteed and flexibility is needed. Such situations are error-prone; the team leader on the spot has to avoid fatal errors, act quickly to grasp opportunities and correct undesirable trends. Geoff has managed often with enough rope to hang himself; he likes to learn from mistakes and frequently draws attention in the text to his personal “learning experiences”.