Draft:ITISM

ITISM was invented in C Block, Bay 13 at St Leos way back in season 1993. These were critical times for us being early stages of year 11 and preparing for our HSC exams the following season. Our lives would never be the same again.

IT was co-founded by Andrew "Marrick" Murray, Adrian "Jughead" Good and Marcel "Typical Bludger" Kennedy (with special mention to bench players John "Chicka" Kennedy and Simon "Zaheer Abbas" Abbott). The class was Modern History (aka Body Dig) and the teacher was Frank Marrick.

The general concept is that everything has already happened, and that we are one, and everyone.

For example if the sea eagles were playing that weekend against say the Broncos, then the saying would be "It's already happened, we won 50 block".

Another example for instance the roll call for class where the teacher Frank Marrick would say any name (say Amy Hoben) and the 3 of us would respond with "yyyyyeeeeaaaaah?" meaning we are responding on anyone's behalf. It's worth noting that sometimes one of us would just go "yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" for the entire roll call usually just out of earshot of Frank Marrick (and usually avoiding being sent off).

The day ITISM was invented was the day Marrick dropped his strings and fell asleep during a WWI documentary on general Haig whilst on his 85th coffee of the day. This is the most significant date in the archives and ancient scrolls of ITISM that birthed the lunacy that would become folklore over seasons 93/94 and many years beyond.

When Marrick fell asleep it was said that a Stringman (who was dead) had dropped his strings momentarily. Hence one of the earliest theories is that when you die, you become a Stringman and you then spend eternity pulling strings for another person who is still alive.

Of critial importance to ITISM was the FX85 calculator. To a "Cabbage Man" or "Big Gun" such as us three, the FX85 was as important to our arsenal as a cross is to a catholic person. During the summer the use of the "shift dot" random number generator was used to play Calculator cricket. These same two buttons were used to play Calculator footy or World 7's beehives. The rules for cricket was that any random number of 0.1 through to 0.4 or 0.6 was worth between 1 and 6 runs. 0.0 meant you were dismissed. Full scorecards would be drawn up, based on famous players, or even kids at school that never played sport or even items you would find in a spice rack. Example a batting line-up like Boon, Marsh, Marrick, Honeyman, Hoben, Nutmeg etc would be considered normal. In the rugby league version you could either play it as a 7's World beehive or as an actual full NRL season. The shift dot outcome 0.4 was worth a try and you then had 3 attempts to get a 0.2 to get the 2 point conversion. The 7's tournament format were shorter games and teams ranged from all NRL teams but expanded to items in a spice rack or exotic locations around the world. Even a fart term could be a team. A final between Soap Ring and Nukualofa would not be considered unusual.

In ITISM the calculator was considered so special that you would usually take as long as possible to get it out of your bag in readiness for a Modern History lesson. It was precious, like any sudden movements would destroy this artifact. The use of calculators in modern History did not sit well with our teacher Marrick, and he was regularly heard screaming 'PUT THE COMPUTERS AWAY" in most classes.

All scorecards were considered as evidence of games yet to be played in the future, and are thus stored in the archives of Kennards storage facilities to preserve their history and meaning.

In the great battle of 1994 where the 3 Cabbage Men plus Chicka competed in the rugby league battle of the FX85 calculators. Murray was a strong favourite to at least progress to the grand final, but was beaten in one of the biggest upsets of all time by Chickas calculator. Marcel also did not progress but his low percentile bands this was not considered as much of a shock. When Good defeated Chicka in the final he celebrated by doing a lap of honour around the Donnolly oval showing his FX85 to the thousands of fans who packed the hill. This special memory still brings tears to my ring.