Sando Character Analysis

More than once since then I’ve wondered whether the life-threatening high jinks that Loonie and I and Sando and Eva got up to in the years of my adolescence were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath.

There was something about Sando that wasn’t settled. He wasn’t fixed like my father, and intrigued as I was I found this aspect of him confusing to the point of anxiety. It was as though he wasn’t quite as old as he looked, as if he hadn’t yet finished with himself.

Was I serious? Could I do something gnarly, or was I just ordinary? I’ll bet my life that despite his scorn Loonie was doing likewise. We didn’t know it yet, but we’d already imagined ourselves into a different life, another society, a state for which no raw boy has either words or experience to describe. Our minds had already gone out to meet it and we’d left the ordinary in our wake.

I have no doubt that in a later era he’d have been seen as reckless and foolhardy, yet when you consider the period and the sorts of activities that schools and governments sanctioned, Sando’s excursions seem like small beer. We could have been staying back at school as army cadets, learning to fire mortars and machine-guns, to lay booby traps and to kill strangers in hand-to-hand combat like other boys we knew, in preparation for a manhood that could barely credit the end of the war in Vietnam. Sando appealed to one set of boyish fantasies and the state exploited others. Eva was right – we were Sando’s wide-eyed disciples – but in the sixties and seventies when we were kids there were plenty of other cults to join, cults abounding.

I am chicken, I said.

Oh, fuck, said Sando. Everyone’s a chicken. That’s why we do this silly shit.

You reckon?

Yeah, to face it down, mate. To feel it, eat it. And shit it out with a big hallelujah.

He laughed. And I laughed because he did, to hide my fear.

I shat meself, I said. I took the worst floggin. I freaked.

But he did the deed, said Sando. Made himself a little bit of history.

It took me a moment to absorb what he’d said. For if Sando was the first to have ridden Old Smoky, then I was surely the youngest. I could see Loonie thinking it through right there in front of me. He flapped the soggy hems of his jeans. The gesture was nonchalant, but I knew him better than that.

Your time’ll come, said Sando.

Loonie and Sando planned new assaults on the Nautilus using shorter boards – two only – shaped for the purpose. We never broached the subject of whether I’d accompany them. God knows, I should have been relieved, but I was inconsolable. I knew any reasonable person would have done what I did out there that day. Which was exactly the problem: I was, after all, ordinary.

And he’s takin you to Java, I said

Who told you that?

Eva, I said with a hot flash of satisfaction.

He grunted and rolled himself a fag and I realized we were no longer friends. At the intersection, where the pub loomed over the servo across the road, we each veered in our own direction without even saying goodbye. Neither of us could have known that we’d never meet again.

Man, what a disappointment he turned out to be.

I spose.

Mate, I thought he was the real deal, y’know? The man not-ordinary.

Maybe ordinary’s not so bad, I offered.

More than once since then I’ve wondered whether the life-threatening high jinks that Loonie and I and Sando and Eva got up to in the years of my adolescence were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath.

There was something about Sando that wasn’t settled. He wasn’t fixed like my father, and intrigued as I was I found this aspect of him confusing to the point of anxiety. It was as though he wasn’t quite as old as he looked, as if he hadn’t yet finished with himself.

Was I serious? Could I do something gnarly, or was I just ordinary? I’ll bet my life that despite his scorn Loonie was doing likewise. We didn’t know it yet, but we’d already imagined ourselves into a different life, another society, a state for which no raw boy has either words or experience to describe. Our minds had already gone out to meet it and we’d left the ordinary in our wake.

I have no doubt that in a later era he’d have been seen as reckless and foolhardy, yet when you consider the period and the sorts of activities that schools and governments sanctioned, Sando’s excursions seem like small beer. We could have been staying back at school as army cadets, learning to fire mortars and machine-guns, to lay booby traps and to kill strangers in hand-to-hand combat like other boys we knew, in preparation for a manhood that could barely credit the end of the war in Vietnam. Sando appealed to one set of boyish fantasies and the state exploited others. Eva was right – we were Sando’s wide-eyed disciples – but in the sixties and seventies when we were kids there were plenty of other cults to join, cults abounding.

I am chicken, I said.

Oh, fuck, said Sando. Everyone’s a chicken. That’s why we do this silly shit.

You reckon?

Yeah, to face it down, mate. To feel it, eat it. And shit it out with a big hallelujah.

He laughed. And I laughed because he did, to hide my fear.

I shat meself, I said. I took the worst floggin. I freaked.

But he did the deed, said Sando. Made himself a little bit of history.

It took me a moment to absorb what he’d said. For if Sando was the first to have ridden Old Smoky, then I was surely the youngest. I could see Loonie thinking it through right there in front of me. He flapped the soggy hems of his jeans. The gesture was nonchalant, but I knew him better than that.

Your time’ll come, said Sando.

Loonie and Sando planned new assaults on the Nautilus using shorter boards – two only – shaped for the purpose. We never broached the subject of whether I’d accompany them. God knows, I should have been relieved, but I was inconsolable. I knew any reasonable person would have done what I did out there that day. Which was exactly the problem: I was, after all, ordinary.

And he’s takin you to Java, I said

Who told you that?

Eva, I said with a hot flash of satisfaction.

He grunted and rolled himself a fag and I realized we were no longer friends. At the intersection, where the pub loomed over the servo across the road, we each veered in our own direction without even saying goodbye. Neither of us could have known that we’d never meet again.

Man, what a disappointment he turned out to be.

I spose.

Mate, I thought he was the real deal, y’know? The man not-ordinary.

Maybe ordinary’s not so bad, I offered.