Teenage kicks

I’ve never tolerated bullies well. Not even when I was a young child. One of my earliest memories is when I was six years old, at playtime seeing a kid getting a hard time and intervening just because I knew what was happening was wrong. I was gutsy and had little or no fear of kids my age or older. This was very much the case from year to year of my childhood and then into teenage years. When I was 16 I volunteered at a youth club which integrated handicapped/special needs children with able bodied children. When I was there I met a few people that I bonded with /socialised with outside of the club. One girl that was volunteering there seemed to be alright and it wasn’t long before she and my regular friends more or less became a regular unit. There where four of us, myself, Mary, Jeanne and lets call the last one Rachel. Now Rachel was the daughter of a police superintendent, he was a quite giant and a gent. Her mother on the other hand was a stay at home wife who lived in a shop window of a house. A snob if ever. I think she tolerated me because my Dad was in such a good job but nearly froze in horror when I told her where I lived as it was considered Slightly rough. One day all of us where sitting having a cup of tea in Rachel’s when her nutty mother came storming into the room and asked us not to touch the wallpaper with our elbows and promptly left, we where never allowed sit on the sofa of the front room as that was reserved for some quite ugly stuffed animals.. She was also a religious nut and policed Rachel about going to Mass, and looked down at the rest of us and our parents for letting us be nothing more than heathens. She even told me that she prayed for the redemption of my soul on a regular basis because I was a bit of a Goth . We endured her snide comments for about 2 years , if you want to get a mental picture of this woman, think of any woman with horned glasses that Gary Larson draws and you get the idea.

Now Jeanne on the other hand came from quite a liberal household, her father was both a sage and a hippie, a naturist and nonconformist. Her mother was quite often found baking phallic cakes or singing Irish rebel songs. Never where two families so different. Needless to say we spent a lot of time in Jeanne’s . Her parents went away often and Jeanne with her two brothers would throw parties with parental consent. They where tremendous fun and I would tell my parents that I was just going for a sleep over, watching videos and shooting the shit with Jeanne & Co because of the high frequency . On one such night of merriement we knocked at Rachel’s house to be greeted by her mother , she told Jeanne that Rachel would not be going because she could not trust Jeanne, on the basis that her brother was older and had a lot of friends who would take advantage of her daughter. I tried to reason with the woman for Rachel’s sake and argued with her respectfully and diplomatically but nothing was filtering through. Jeanne on the other hand, for the sake of Rachel, held her tongue (a huge fete considering how she always shot straight from the hip) and we headed off back to Jeanne’s for japes and shenanigans . Later on , both of us quite drunk got talking about Rachel’s mother, the walking bitch that she was and the injustice of it all. And as any drunken teenager would hatched a revenge plan. We headed back down to Rachel’s house about 4am in the morning. We had planned to do something with her mothers pristine manicured lawn and flowerbeds for revenge, But when we got there I came up with a brainwave. The refuse collection was due that morning and outside the garden lay about 6 large stuffed garbage sacks from Rachel’s to be collected. I told Jeanne that we should pile up the bags resting on the front door, so that when her mother opened the door they would fall in on top of her. Jeanne thought this a super idea but here was the clincher ; after we pile them up we perforate the bottom of the bag just enough that when she goes to put the bags back outside, halfway down the garden the arse would give way to trail the rubbish out. How we didn’t wake up the neighbours with our cackles Ill never know.

Rachel called the next day and told us about her mothers ordeal that morning. Apparently she was like an antichrist stinking of rubbish, the garden still had potatoe peel in the grass and her mother believed they where being victimised because of Rachel’s father being a policeman. Looking back I feel genuinely sorry for the woman for doing that to her and I’m sure she had the best interests of her daughter at heart. She’s mellowed throughout the years. Rachel came out the worst of it because as a result of her mothers behaviour and in a constant cry for her attention turned out to be a pathological liar right up until her mid twenties. Jeanne on the other hand is visiting me on Friday night, she and I have been friends for 20 years and its been a little over a year since I last saw her. No doubt she and I will reminisce about the incident and plenty more questionable incidents that we got up to ‘way back in the day’.