Aren't kids cruel ?

For absolutely no other reason than I read one line in someone elses blog this morning, I've been thinking and a-pondering on how cruel kids are to each other, and whether it just all a part of growing up or something more sinister.

Its 34 years since I left school, flinging books off the back of the bus while the conductor was distracted collecting fares (that dates me, a platform on the back of the bus and a conductor) but at our all boys grammer school we had our fair share of victims to pick on and cruel nicknames to use for the five years that we were there - its called bullying these days but back then it was called "building characters".

So while I cant be sure that "Pretty Woman" David England is not a homosexual by now I am sure that he will probably be grateful that being nicknamed after the Roy Orbison song was preferable to being noted also as the heaviest boy in class. He was though also the recipient of the name "Marine Boy" when he became the last one in our year to learn how to swim, the weekly swimming lessons in our ancient school pool must have been hell for him and as far as I can recall he never did learn to traverse the pool without keeping one foot on the bottom, the deep end was a mystery to him.

Tony Bateson ignored any reference to "Master Bates-son" and that joke wore thin by year three, he was without doubt a wanker though.

Pete "Muddy Waters" Waters was unique in that his nickname was awarded to him by a French master who was trying to appear cool and trendy to us 11 year olds. Unfortunately in 1968 none of us had ever heard of the blues legend Muddy Waters and while the name stuck, the joke fell flat, as did the French masters attempt to ingratiate himself to us with tales of Johnny Halliday - we'd never heard of him either, but the name stuck with Johnny Johnson for a while.

But of course under the surface things were always slightly more sinister.

The school caretaker was a disabled man who I'm guessing with hindsight probably had a mild cerebral palsy and walked with quite a severe limp - from time immemorial he had been known as "Shane" after the Alan Ladd cowboy hero and he'd clip your earhole if he heard you calling him it but in the year below us was a boy who wore leg calipers and despite warnings from the Head as to what would happen to any boy caught bullying him, the kid was always known as "Little Shane". he was a nasty bad tempered bast'ard though and kick from his calipered leg hurt like buggery, if anyone deserved bullying it was him.

Ian Lee in our year had one leg shorter than the other and wore a built up shoe. He never had a nickname though and no-one ever mentioned his strange shoe, he would beat the shit out of you if he ever heard you mention it, he was our class bully and would often hit you in the face for no other reason than he felt like doing it, nasty piece of work he became a psychiatric nurse when he left school.

And of course racism reared its ugly head. Its hard to believe but in 1968 when I joined that school there were 840 white boys attending, and it had been a similar story in my primary school, I'd seen black and asian people but never been to school with them.

A year into grammer school and in the year below us one of the new boys was a Seik and of course wore the turban. It was lucky for him that he had moved from a primary school with many of his white friends and that the school had had the common sense to place those friends in the same form room as him, they formed a protective barrier around him but he was still subjected to what would be regarded now as a most terrible and prolonged racial abuse and name calling, hard to believe it now but it was regarded as "normal" to offer such abuse and apart from keeping him in his familiar group of friends the school did little else to protect him.

We have certainly come a long way since then, not far enough to be true, but there is plenty to be grateful for that children have to be taught racism in the home by misguided parents who wish to perpetuate the hatred, and do not learn it as a matter of rote at school.