Bullied by the world
I went to primary school in a village in Kent. (Couple of miles in from the north Thames Estuary coast, in Swale). In my class (of 1980/81) there a gang of four who were Quite Smart; me, Martin, John and David. We used to hang out together, as kids of this ilk will do; bike rides, building forts down on the Rec, you know the sort of thing.

There was also a little gang of other kids; led by Lee who was also Quite Smart, who was followed by Paul, Mark, and possibly a couple of others who I have forgotten. Lee was very jealous of the other smart kids, and hugely competitive - we were just doing our best & trying to get along with everyone else. Lee would get Paul & Mark to wind us up, and one day - and I forget why - I agreed to a fight with Mark, after school. Mark was an archetypal heavyweight thicknecked knuckle-dragging shitwit, I was a scrawny kid. Hmmm.

So, we get out of school at 3:15 or whenever it was and I try to do a runner, but I get caught by Mark who gets me on the floor and keeps at it; I don't remember if he kicked me when I was down but suffice to say, I Lost. He may have had his cronies with, I don't know.

I lived in fear of these shitwits throughout my latter junior school years, and to a lesser degree (I went to a different school to them at eleven years of age) thereafter too. I never was a fighter of any sort.

Fast forward ten years, and I've driven back home for Christmas or somesuch from university in my shitbox motor - it may have been a Sierra or a Renault 21 but it was cheap. I'm just about to pull out of the estate my dad used to live on (we've since abandoned the village entirely), when I see two figures trudging across the T-junction right in front of me. They are moving from left to right; leading the way is a girl, teens/early 20s, dirty blonde hair that needs a wash pulled back into a council facelift, wearing a dark blue kagoul, badly fitting jeans (saggy arse syndrome) and grubby white trainers, pushing a knackered looking Maclaren buggy with a little'un in it. Her head is bowed, there is an air of resignation about her. Behind her trails the boyfriend/husband, dressed identically; blue kagoule, saggy arse jeans, grubby white trainers, again lank greasy hair, only his is flapping about. It's quite obvious that these two are going nowhere ever, they'll never escape the village and will live and die on benefits.

The man described above was Mark.

From a childhood of bullying the smaller kids to an adult life of being shat on by the rest of the world.

Curiously, I didn't feel *all* ha-ha-ha about it; while no doubt he got what he gave in a roundabout way, I feel sorry for his kid; poor little sod's doomed from day one, and with his/her dad's genes knocking about, it doesn't bode well for his future either.

Despite a childhood of fear of bullying, that makes me sad.
( Fathter Puddytat Kill Kill dat widdle boid is mine on, Mon 25 Feb 2008, 13:50, 2 replies)

..
Quite Smart as in Quite Posh?
(The loquacious linguist, Mon 25 Feb 2008, 22:11, closed)

Nah
Quite Smart as in good at english, maths, have an imagination, that sort of thing. This was a state run primary school, nothing out of the ordinary.
( Fathter Puddytat Kill Kill dat widdle boid is mine on, Tue 26 Feb 2008, 9:20, closed)