In my early teen years I was, apparently, showing signs of...shall we say… unrest…. My mother, bless her heart, thought the best thing she could do for me was to find me a good school where I could get a sound education and make some nice friends.

She decided the nice catholic ladies convent down the road would be the best place for me, based largely, I believe, on the fact that it had lovely gardens. She was right, it did; but being a little short sighted, she missed the plumes of cigarette smoke rising up out of the rhododendron bushes.

The school turned out to be a little more St Trinians than Enid Blyton, but I certainly got an education. I also made a lot of friends (although I don’t know if I would describe any of them as “nice”) and one of them provided this story.

In our final year at school we had all found ourselves a more or less stable boyfriend (some less rather than more) and, as girls sometimes do, we exchanged rather more details about our sexual antics than the men involved would probably have been comfortable with. Yes, I know, it’s supposed to be boys who brag about all the notches on their bedposts, but truthfully, any man who thinks his girlfriend’s girlfriends don’t know how big his mickey is and whether he knows what to do with it has a lot to learn.

However, I digress (yet again)… on with the story. One of my friends (in honour of St Trinians we’ll call her Arabella) decided that it would be a romantic idea to keep track of how often she and her beloved were…um…bumping uglies, so she started putting a jelly bean into a jar on her dressing table after each bumping of said uglies.

Ahh, young love, ain’t it sweet (did you see what I did there? Did you? With the jelly beans and the sweet comment?? Am punner extraordinaire!)

More digressions! On with the story!

Arabella and her beloved spent quite a bit of time over the following months filling up the jelly bean jar, and after a while, as often happens with the young and energetic, they started experimenting a little bit (only a little bit people, c’mon! It’s not as if they started getting all German with each other, they were teenagers for christsake!!).

So anyway, each lunchtime at school we would all sit entranced as Arabella reported back on the outcomes of their various experiments (food – can get a little icky; on the lounge room floor when your parents are still up – can cause a problem when your beloved reaches into the toiletries bag for lubricant and, in the dark, ends up applying a handful of toothpaste to his man bits; in the shower - difficult to explain when the shower door gets broken; on the Skybus – leads to arrest and parents being informed by disapproving police officers, the subsequent grounding and banishment of the beloved from the parental home slows flow of jelly beans into the jar and is not recommended).

Such is the strength of young love, however, that it overcomes these trials and continues on regardless.

Not long after the Skybus incident (the jelly bean jar was about ¾ full) Arabella and the beloved decided to see what fun could be had with stockings and bedposts.

Thinking they had the house to themselves for the afternoon they spent some considerable time working with various arrangements. Unfortunately they lost track of time and, just as Arabella had her left arm and right leg firmly tied to the bedposts, they suddenly heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

The beloved, being a quick thinking bloke, threw the doona over Arabella, a pillow behind her head to cover the left hand and dived, stark naked, under the bed.

In walked Arabella’s mother.

She sat herself down at Arabella’s dressing table and started a long speech about what a Bad Man the beloved was and how she was so relieved that Arabella had agreed to never see him again, and wasn’t that new boy with the haircut who had been calling lately lovely and how much more comfortable Arabella would feel with a nicely built boy like him….

Arabella spluttered for a bit and then suggested that her mother go downstairs and prepare celebratory mother-daughter snack for them.

No need, replied mother, and opened up the jelly bean jar.

Arabella, still lashed firmly to the bed and worried by the lack of circulation in her left hand, completely lost track of the jelly beans disappearing into her mother’s mouth as she tried to turn the subject away from the beloved’s many faults and concentrate on using Jedi mind tricks to prevent him bounding out from under the bed, bollock naked, to defend himself.

After about 20 minutes, Arabella’s mother pronounced that it had been a lovely little chat, expressed her concern at Arabella’s pale face and suggested that perhaps she should get some sleep.

Then she floated out of the room and settled onto the couch at the bottom of the stairs to read a nice long book.

As soon as she left the room the beloved started a whispered shouting match (you know what I mean) about how unfair it all was and the Skybus had been her idea and if she hadn't mooned the police car none of this would have happened and now he had dust bunnies stuck to his willy and why didn’t she clean up under her bed more often. An angry but fairly silent argument finally led to him cutting her free, donning his pants and settling down inside her wardrobe, while she went back to bed and tried to restore the circulation in her hand and foot.

She spent a few hours exchanging hissed insults with the wardrobe until her mother was finally asleep and the used-to-be-beloved could sneak out.

It was a long time ago and my memory may be at fault, but I’m fairly sure that he never came back.

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