Hiya! Still waffling about my school days.
Have a read, if you like. I don't really care to be honest; if you're seeing
this I've already got the view statistic, so you've exhausted your usefulness
to me. Mwahahahahaha.
Ahem...
Last week, I spoke of my induction trip to my future Comprehensive
School, from my final year of Primary. I focused on the embarrassment
of being locked in a confined space with a bunch of people with only me
knowing that I had burglarised said enclosed space a few scant weeks
earlier. There was another aspect to that trip though, that I never
talked of. The sadness factor.
I started at Chapel Street Primary in the second year of Juniors (Year
4 to you modern types) after my mother left my father and blah blah
blah; read about it here if you like; and when I did there was a lad in
4th year (Year 6, and that's the last time I'm doing the conversion for
you) who was, to put it bluntly, fat. Does that seem unduly harsh?
Well, that's because it is. It's true though, and though it brings me
no pleasure to say it, we made much mockery of him.
The mockery was meant, however, in good humour. We liked him; in large
part because he was pretty much the only one of the untouchable 4th
years who would give us the time of day. Admittedly, the time of day he
gave us was usually filled with us attacking him and attempting to
wrestle him to the ground. Because he was large. Do you see? Of course
you do.
I've often wondered, looking back on this big boned fellow who made
such an impact on my life as a youngster but whose name I can no longer
recall; let us call him Buckshot George, for 'tis a good name; whether
it's more likely that he enjoyed our company, and the constant
wrestling matches at every break and lunchtime, or that he just took it
because he felt he had no choice and was crying on the inside. Who
knows?
Of course it's also possible that he knew we weren't being deliberately
malicious, and chose to accept our 'friendly' mockery because the
people in his own year were not quite so well meaning in their
treatment of him. I certainly think that had he had many friends his
own age, he'd probably not have been so willing to spend all his time
with us.
Anyway, regardless of whether he genuinely liked us or he hated the
very bones of us, the fact was that when we came back for 3rd year and
he was gone; whisked off to the dreaded Big School, we were gutted. Now
what would we do with our breaktimes? So when the time came for us to
go on this trip to aforementioned Big School, I got all excited. I
would see Buckshot George. Yippee!
You know where this is going right? We got there, we did our tour, I
served my sentence in the interrogation chamber/made some cupcakes in
the Home Ec. labs, and when it came time for lunch in the big fancy
cafeteria I saw him sitting at one of the tables and made sure to catch
his eye as we went past and... he looked at me like I was, well, it
wasn't distaste or disdain in his eyes, it was incomprehension and
confusion. Basically, he didn't have a fucking clue who I was.
That, my friends, will rip your guts out.
Of course, we all know that that's what happens when you go from
Primary to Secondary education. It's the line from Stand By Me, about
(and I'm paraphrasing) your best friends become just faces in the
halls. Sad but inevitable.
I don't know if you can tell, but I'm
quite reluctant to move on to my secondary years on this blog. It's
because I genuinely don't want to leave the Appleton Crescent/ Chapel
Street Primary/ Brancepeth Boys years behind. They don't sound like
much when I describe them on here, but they really were the best years
of my life, and remembering them for these posts has brought many a
smile to my face.
So in that vein, next week I'll tell you a tale of another friend of mine from Primary.
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