Bill Leak: Dobbers are prawn heads stuffed in the hub caps of life
* THE WRY SIDE
* January 22, 2007
THERE'S a fine line between whistleblowing and dobbing. One is an act of bravery, the other an act of cowardice, and the two should never be confused. While visiting a couple of pommy acquaintances recently I was horrified to see the younger of their two sons informing on his brother to his dad. I was even more appalled when, far from admonishing him for being a dobber, his father listened to every treacherous word, then went straight ahead and began an intensive interrogation of the dobbee.
"Angus told me you packed prawn heads into the hub cap of the neighbour's car. Is this true?"
My heart went out to the elder, obviously guilty son as he struggled for an answer.
I didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that of course it was true. Furthermore, from what I'd already heard of the neighbour and his devil-may-care attitude to running over bicycles, having prawn heads stuffed in one of his hub caps meant getting off very lightly indeed. As a kid, I would have gone for removing his wiper blades and slashing the tyres, but the prawn-heads trick is always an amusing option.
After a desultory, entirely one-sided session of the family court, the elder brother was found guilty and sentenced to being grounded (whatever that means) for a week.
It struck me as extraordinarily unfair. My sense of justice told me that if anyone should have been punished, it ought to have been young Angus. What was his motive for dobbing in his brother in the first place? Was he trying to curry favour with his father by being a goody-two-shoes? Or did he seriously think that stuffing prawns in the hub cap of the car of a neighbour who had wilfully run over his brother's bicycle was an inappropriate thing to do? Surely not.
After the unpleasantness the boys went to their respective rooms and I was left to plead for a review of the condemned boy's case.
I started as tactfully as I could, prattling on about how I'd always been dismissive of self-proclaimed experts who claim that exposure to movies and computer games is eroding the morality of the young.
"Just the whinings of jelly-backed little men," was the phrase I used, along with,
"Yes, I will have another little top-up, thank you kindly."
I then conceded that I was now starting to change my mind, precisely the sort of tripe I knew this couple would warm to.
"I mean I've just seen it with my own two eyes. That young Angus was squealing on his own brother like an IRA supergrass. It must be a worry for you to have a youngster so completely off the rails."
The silence that followed this was so ferocious, I felt compelled to continue with a solid argument to back my case.
"Of course whistleblowing is one thing, while dobbing is another," I said. "Your whistleblower feels compelled to speak the truth to stem the flow of insidious corruption, whereas your dobber seeks only to ingratiate himself with the boss. A dobber would tell tales on his own brother.
"Take my mate Art, for example. When he was a kid of 14 and his brother Des was 13, the two of them had one hell of a row while their parents were out. The altercation began in the kitchen where, as you know, murderous implements are in plentiful supply.
"By the time the parents came home, along with all the broken glass and whitegoods, there was blood and hair and teeth from one end of the house to the other. And did either of them dob? No way. They claimed the mess was the result of a cooking mishap and promised to replace every broken item. Which they did, via thievery and shoplifting, but the point holds."
Horace Rumpole couldn't have done a better job. I had these two questioning the basis of their own morality at a thousand miles an hour.
"Anyway, what's this neighbour of yours like?" I added.
"He's an absolute bastard," the judge conceded. "Drove up our driveway pissed the other night and ran over Matthew's bike. Didn't even apologise."
"And did Matthew confront him?"
"Yes. And he told Matthew to bugger off."
It was time to ram the message home on Matthew's behalf.
"And there you go. Matthew is simply upholding the finest of what John Howard calls Australian values, the fair go and all that. Angus, on the other hand, has not yet learned to assimilate. He certainly hasn't understood the concept of mateship which, perhaps, goes back to our convict heritage, a form of natural selection. Dobbing on the boat would earn you a long swim. If the poms wanted to get rid of all the intransigents, well, the last laugh is on them."
Matthew's sentence was quashed. God only knows what happened to Angus. Whatever punishment he received, it couldn't possibly have been severe enough.
The boy's a dobber.