This episode is quite closely related to yesterday’s and demonstrates rather graphically why parents should perhaps listen a little more closely and be a bit more careful when handing out advice.
Teasing and then bullying based on something completely beyond my control, being ginger, started pretty well the day that grammar school began. I’d never suffered this in primary school mostly because I had a very loyal and quite tough best friend who simply threatened a bashing to any kid who started on me because of my hair or the fact that I started wearing glasses when I was 7. Sadly he went to a local secondary modern school at 11 and I lost that protection.
Very soon after things started getting nasty at my new school I complained to Mum that the other boys were all being mean and making fun of me. My then ‘Uncle’ was having tea with us when I raised the matter and they both agreed that I had to stand up for myself and learn to fight my own battles. Well I took this lesson to heart and the very next day when a group of boys started on me during break I just completely lost it and threw myself at the ringleader taking him completely off guard. Even under 4 stone of furious redhead has a certain mass and as luck would have it I knocked him straight into a chain link fence. Everything clicked together in my mind and I hooked my little fingers in the fence while pushing my thumbs onto his windpipe and I was not stopping even when he managed to get a knee into my crotch.
Someone must have realised that this could end very badly and I found myself being dragged off him, not by his cowardly supporters but by boys who, if not friends, were at least neutral. When I tried to get free for another go someone knocked me to the ground and a voice threatened to get a Master if I didn’t calm down and in a moment of complete injustice I got hit several times in an effort to subdue me. When the implications of a Master getting involved finally got through to me my response was “I don’t fucking well care!” with any luck I’d be at least suspended from school, if there was any justice in the world I’d get expelled from that shit-hole. That didn’t happen and the kids who thought they were helping me kept hold until the bully and his gang had got away.
Nothing came of the incident and the appearance of two very battered first formers in the next lesson was written off as “boys will be boys”. I had to make it through the rest of the day with no glasses and in a rare moment of defiance refused point blank to clean myself up, I wanted my Mum and my ‘Uncle’ to see what standing up for myself had achieved.
It was no great surprise that I got into a load of trouble when I got home. My uniform was ruined, my glasses had been smashed and somewhere along the line I’d picked up a black eye and several cuts. I tried to point out that I was only following their advice but it seemed that fighting my own battles wasn’t supposed to include actually fighting, I was supposed to talk to my enemies. Yeah, that worked so well in the following long years.
Love
Gosh! ‘Have a go Malcolm!’
When I responded to physical violence against me at junior school it resulted in one of my blazer pockets being ripped half off.
The fact that the other boy had started the fisticuffs cut no ice at home where my mother made a bis of a fuss about damage to my uniform and about having to to sew it back on, so my father took me into the front room and spanked me.
Yep that pretty much sums up what hapened to me including my breast pocket with the school badge getting ripped half off. I got the pain, conventionally bare arsed as ever, and was frightened that I was actually capable of nearly killing someone. Basically I lost on all counts and he pretty well won.
God I so loved the 7 years in that hell!
School can be a horrible place, for kids the first taste of hell on earth. I’m so glad my kids schools are active in stopping bullying, whatever they know of that’ll say. But of course it takes a certain level for school staff to notice what’s going on… and kids aren’t stupid. They know how to disguise their actions.
Love
Daniel
Yes it can, Daniel and It’s good to know that your boys are in a school that at least tries to combat bullying. The problem, as you rightly say, is that these little bastards know how to cover themselves and it’s always the victim that ends up in trouble.
Love
Malcolm
Mac, it is a measure of the life you had at the time, that in the heat of the moment you were prepared to not release your hold. I hope that rage has released its hold on you. That is a hard heavy burden to carry.
Sorry you had to relive that time of your life and all it means.
Best wishes and warm hugs,
Scottie
Scottie
I guess you could call it a sort of dull angry ache now. I doubt that I’ll ever entirely reconcile these things but actually putting them in writing does help
Love
Mac