Happiness is a warm gun

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a pacifist, truly I am. Don't go for violence, brutality and all the rest of it. Prefer making love to war. Prefer compromise to conflict. But that doesn't mean that there aren't issues that get my blood boiling. Lying is one of them, as I perpetually remind my kids when they wanna pass one off on me. Doesn't work, can smell a lie a mile off. Another is injustice. That's been one of my gripes since Shane Lodge pushed me off my chair, called me a spastic and the teacher calmly commented how I had brought it all upon myself.

But nothing, nothing can get my goad going more than bureaucracy. Red tape, officialdom, administration, bureaucracy. Call it what you will, I sometimes feel like getting a warm gun (the literal kind, not John Lennon's kind) and blowing all the bureaucrats of this world to kingdom come. It's one of the few reasons that I occasionally consider moving back to Australia - that, and of course, my mum and friends. The bureaucracy in these here parts is just a killer.

I remember when I first moved here, people often asked me whether Croatia was a cultural shock for me. The fact that there was no decent chocolate or cheese meant nothing to me. The fact that I had to wait an hour at the bank to pick up my pay did. As well as the fact that I had to stand in line at the post office for half an hour just to send a God damn postcard to Australia. Or that you had to spend a whole day at the doctor's just to get a check up. But the absolute worst form of bureaucracy that I have come across since I moved here occured last week. Now, you know me, I'm not very adept at cutting a long story short but I'll try to keep this one as concise as I possibly can...

My eldest son has ADHD, an abbreviation of attention deficit hyperactive disorder. It basically means that he has a bit more energy and aggression than your average kid. When he was at preschool, we somehow managed to "control" his ADHD. School was another story. A nightmare to put it bluntly. Unlike his preschool teacher, his school teacher couldn't control his bouts of aggression, his inability to concentrate on his schoolwork, his need to be in momentum perpetuum. There are 30 kids in the class, she couldn't focus her energy and attention on one kid even she wanted to. The situation slowly spiralled out of control to the point that at the end of the last academic year, the school and certain parents threatened to chuck him out if his behaviour didn't improve. Hubby and I have always done our absolute best to improve his behaviour - from psychotherapy to art therapy to organic food. Unfortunately, nothing "alternative" has really worked thus far.

So we had to take the drastic step of putting him on medication. Some may say that this was the easy way out. Let me tell you, it wasn't. Cried me a river that first day I gave him medication and have had anxiety attacks every day since. And I feel like the crappiest parent on the face of the earth for having to do it. But despite all this, the changes have been nothing short of remarkable. Where he used to go to makeup classes because he couldn't finish his schoolwork on time, he now goes to math classes for gifted pupils. Where he used to scale ladders, run circles around the yard and climb trees, he now does phys ed in a calm, "civilised" manner. Where he could barely read a page of his books, he is now in the midst of reading Harry Potter.

To further improve matters, he received an assistant teacher, so that whenever, despite the meds, he couldn't control his behaviour she somehow brought him back from the brink. When he starts cutting his books to shreds (as he was prone to do), she encourages him to do something else. When he starts getting up from his seat to go for a walk around the class (as he was also prone to do), she encourages him to sit down. However, last week, some lass with an IQ of 25 from the finance department of the school found a way to bungle up paying the young lady for services rendered and as such, she quit. Thankfully, Ivan called her and the school up and somehow convinced all parties concerned that it was in their best interst that she stay. But had he not done this, my son, because of a stupid bureaucratic bungle, would almost be back where he had started from. Best of all, no one besides he and I would give a shit. They'd sign his papers to put him in the funny farm with not an ounce of remorse.

Sad to say, it's not the only bureaucratic screw up that I've heard about in recent times. There's my old boss who divorced her husband for beating her to a pulp and whose court case saw the light of day nine years after it was filed. There are the murderers and rapists who get off scot free because someone in the justice department botched up. There are the mobsters who go on a shooting spree while the police and all the rest of the bureaucrats turn a blind eye. And my favourite bureaucratic bungle is good ol' George jnr. who became president of the US of A 'cause someone in the tally room made the biggest miscalculation, knowingly or unknowingly, of all time.

Yeah, bureaucrats. Now, where's that warm gun I was talking about...?