Not My First, Not My Last...
No exotic locations, offspring or endangered species in this, and long before my first love or my first trip. There have been plenty of moments that I hold dear before and since, but this one is one of my favourites still.

Primary school – I hung about with two lads, Barry and Paul – Barry was the hard one, Paul was the softarse and I was somewhere inbetween. Barry used to give us dead arms and that kind of thing, and Paul used to make a meal of how much it hurt, I realised to satisfy Barry that he needn’t do it again soon. I acquired quite a few bruises on account of my more stoic attitude to that stuff.

One day Barry’s interpersonal style got too much for Paul and myself and we told him to get stuffed. Shortly after we were sitting there on the grass verge surrounding the playground taking the piss out of the girls and I punched him in the arm, whereupon he went into the ‘Ow ow that really hurt’ routine again.

‘Did it really hurt that much?’ I asked,
‘Well… {bashfully} no, not really’
‘You don’t have to do that with me mate’

In reaction to this, Paul smiled at me - there was gratitude and joy in that smile that I had never seen before when people were looking directly at me. It was a beautiful moment, which I appreciated immensely despite being just 9 years old, and still remember fondly now.

Barry jumped us both mere seconds later and the moment was gone. Can’t be too hard on Barry though - he was good fun to hang about with after all, if a little painful sometimes :)

No apologies for length - if you haven't got the attention span to handle more than a couple of sentences then I pity you.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Tue 15 Mar 2005, 11:10, Reply)