Philip said 'mah'

To say ‘mah’, the lungs must be mostly empty. Then, while gently inhaling, the mouth is opened as if to say 'muh’ (like in 'mumble’ or 'muck’), and the throat forced mostly closed. The 'mah’ is thus of a higher-pitch, but with a croaking sound created by the gentle inhalation through the closed throat. It should sound more like a comical, questioning foghorn than anything else.

Philip said 'mah’. He’d add it at the end of sentences that he thought were either funny or, as was more often the case, deliberately ridiculous or trite. Think about telling a story to a small group of people that you’d anticipated would make them laugh, and then about what you’d do if everybody just looked at you. These days I would say an exaggerated 'lol’ or make up some lie to enhance the punch line, but kids in the nineties didn’t have 'lol’ or punch lines or anything interesting to say (not even lies). I guess I don’t know what most of us did, but Philip used 'mah’ as a period mark, as a punch line, and as an exclamation, and Philip said ‘mah’ because, simply, ‘mah’ was what Philip said.

Philip was my brother. He would’ve been around four years old, as the most vivid memory I have of him saying 'mah’ was in the back seat of my father’s Peugeot, which makes this time around when my parents were divorced. The Peugeot was an early-90s 504; dark bronze with scratchy seats, tyres that had to be imported from France (of course), and pug-ugly looks. I recall it having an amazing air-conditioner, but I probably could’ve lived without that. I was always a car nut growing up and would pore over old Wheels magazines and dream of one day owning my own car. I even kept a record on our creaking old computer of what cars I wanted, and included the price, whether or not I could afford it, and of any modifications I’d make. So, to my seven-year-old mind, the Peugeot was absolutely terrible and I had no idea why my father bought it, though I suspect, now that I’m writing this, that he and my mother jointly owned one of their cars, and thought it easier to sell it privately and buy another one than to decide who would buy it off the other. The real reason is lost to the ages.

The first time Philip said ‘mah’ he was sitting in the back of that Peugeot. I don’t think I was in the back seat too, because I seem to recall him being seated in the left-hand seat on the rear bench, with me standing beside the open car door. The car was parked in the driveway of the place we lived in at the time, which was the first house I moved into with my father after my parents divorced. This is all coming back to me. We lived in Essendon, which is one of the nicer suburbs in Western Melbourne, in what I consider to be the nicest house I’ve ever lived. My father owned it and, aside from sharing a room with Philip, I thought the place was awesome. It was friendly and had a decent backyard and a spa and I have few bad memories there. Few.

It was in this house that my father first learned to start cooking. Previously the only thing he cooked were sausage rolls and the occasional spaghetti bolognese, with my mother doing most of the cooking when they were together. I was a terrible eater from as early as I can remember, and there were many nights spent sitting at the dinner table in the dark long after everybody else had left the table with a full meal in front of me that I didn’t want to eat, but had to eat before I could leave the table. I’ve never been a picky eater, but I just didn’t want food (or at least the quantity of food I was being given). 

Anyway, this all got much worse post-divorce. My mother softened completely on the food-front, and my father became increasingly strict. He insisted on cooking vegetables (always boiled, because it was the 90s and we knew of no other way to prepare vegetables) because they were healthy, and I vividly remember brussels sprouts and huge, whole potatoes being a feature of most meals. The potatoes I could coat with heaps of butter and slowly choke down, but the brussels sprouts always made me retch. I’d eat them and start retching and my father would stand over me saying “you vomit it, you eat it again”. I vomited in my mouth sometimes, but I guess it isn’t really vomit unless it’s out of the mouth. No Your Honour, I was never made to eat my vomit.

I’m not trying to paint my father as some kind of demon here. He wanted his kid to eat his food because it was healthy and you’re supposed to eat, and I guess I appreciate that on some levels. The best mealtimes were when he was feeling lazy, and would cook one of my favourite meals ever; skinless frankfurter sausages cooked in tinned spaghetti, on dirty white toast. It made me ever so happy, and I loved it. It was on one of those nights that Philip, while wolfing down his own meal, knocked his half-full glass of milk into my plate. My father grabbed my plate and gently tipped the milk, which was slowly mixing with the tinned spaghetti sauce, into the sink, then apologetically plonked the plate back in front of me to continue eating. Philip had finished his meal by this time, and I was left alone to pick at the soggy remains of my food.

Mah? More like eat shit, motherfucker.