“Take that bloody cheese off already,” my dad would bark at me. Oh how I should have listened.
It all started one spring weeknight in 2020. I had just caught a film with friends. I was in my metallic blue Mazda 2 parked in front of the Randwick Ritz cinema, about to pull out, when a red P-plated hatchback full of mulleted, rowdy youths pulled up beside me.
With their windows down, music blaring and vapes puffing, a teenager in the passenger seat produced what I would later learn was a cheese single – the plasticky American kind – and frisbeed it toward my car, landing on my hood. It appeared they were filming it as a TikTok prank, so I didn’t react. They sped off.
I didn’t want to peel the cheese off my car. Some part of me felt like it was letting the hoodlums win. Plus, this was just as Sydney was going into its first La Niña, and with all that torrential rain, I figured the cheese would wash off naturally. So I left it.
Over the next few days and weeks, friends would comment on the cheese. I told them the story and how it would be cowardly for me to remove it. Most nodded their heads and changed the subject. Others urged me to take it off. A fortnight later, the cheese remained intact.
A slice of cheese was thrown at Elias Visontay’s car, but he refused to remove it as an act of defiance. It then degraded. Photograph: Elias Visontay
My parents in particular told me I was a moron, and pleaded with me to remove it every time I’d visit. But parental nagging goes down differently in your mid-20s, without the threat of being grounded or banned from the TV. My dad would repeatedly tell me that I was “ruining” my car. I’d chuckle.
I mean this was a slice of cheese after all – beyond being an eyesore, what was the worst that could happen as I waited for it to wash off?
As the weeks turned into months, the cheese kept its shape and sheen. By now, I was kind of curious to see how long it could last.
New Year’s came and went, with the cheese’s shiny…
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