Korg Goes Surfing

By Todd Maguire on August 20, 2014 in Other

“Look what I found, Mum.”

Gretel entered the kitchen holding a ragged piece of paper with some sort of travel itinerary scribbled onto it in biro. She placed the paper on the kitchen table and, along with her mum and older sister, took a good long look.

The information on the paper came as quite a surprise. It noted four return flights to Indonesia and lodgings at some resort, also for four people. The three looked at each other, the smiles on their faces broadening wider than the Luna Park clown.

“Your father truly is a champion!” Mum shrieked. “He sure is a sneaky devil sometimes. Here he is, working his fingers to the bone and now booking a surprise holiday for the lot of us. I really do love that man.”

Gretel and her sister were just as excited. As she tried to finish her breakfast, Gretel pieced together Dad’s reasoning for the proposed holiday.

“The timing coincides with their wedding anniversary, my sister is due to finish high school and my 16th birthday is coming up. We’ve all kicked a goal here,” she thought.

“Whatever we do, we can’t let Dad catch on that we know about this trip.” Mum instructed. “He has obviously kept it as a surprise to give us all a well-deserved treat.”

Gretel really wanted to tell her friends, but took her Mum’s advice and somehow they kept the secret between the three of them.

Their father and husband, Korg, was a man who loved to surf. What made him even happier was having two gorgeous daughters who also followed his passion. He was totally rapt with his family, but one thing Korg was also rapt with was the art of saving a dollar.

When his frugal mate Steve suggested Korg come along on a surf trip to Indonesia, Korg was all ears. When it came to stretching a dollar, Korg’s mate left everyone in his wake. Steve was once charged with breaking into a one hundred dollar note. Fortunately the judge let him off because it was his first offence.

“Mate, we can stay at this grouse resort and because it’s the quiet season this trip will only cost you $2500 including flights, Korg. Here are the dates I am thinking about, so write them down on this paper and have a good think about it,” Steve explained.

Korg took the details, placed them in his pocket and headed home. The figure of $2500 kept running through his head, and it sounded really good. His only concern was how to break the news to his family that he was going on a surf trip with the boys. Back at home, Korg placed the piece of paper on his workbench in the garage. Little did he know that leaving it lying around would prove to be a fatal mistake.

As the days went by the daughters were being especially nice to their father – making him cups of tea, telling him he was ripping in the surf and even washing his vintage 4WD one Saturday morning. But he never caught on.

It was only four weeks until the proposed date of travel. The stars were beginning to align. Korg had rostered holidays coming up, his wife secretly applied for leave from work and the two girls had school holidays on the cards. But they never let Korg know what they knew about their upcoming holiday.

It was around the dinner table one Wednesday when the cat was let out of the bag. The three females couldn’t hold back any longer.

“So Dad, how many boards should we bring on our trip?” Gretel asked as she waved the ratty piece of paper under his nose.

Korg choked.

“I wondered where that piece of paper got to.” He took a deep breath and addressed the waiting audience. “I plan on going on a trip with Steve and a few mates,” he blurted out. He was asking more than telling.

“Dad, aren’t we all going?” the girls chorused, a look of astonishment in their eyes. “This paper says it’s a trip for four, doesn’t it?”

With three sets of eyes burning a hole through Korg, there was nowhere for him to hide. No amount of fast-talking was going to back-pedal him out of this one. It was a genuine misunderstanding.

And so it went. The whole family flew out and stayed in the luxury resort in Indonesia. Korg didn’t care too much about his mates missing out on the trip with him; they would understand. But it took a fair while for Korg to bounce back when he did the maths and realised the budget $2500 trip had now blown out to over $10,000!