Big Kids.

They were always a pain, the big kids, forever acting as if they'd
been granted some special licence to impose their reign of terror on
anyone too small or feeble to fight back. That's how it seemed to me,
anyway, back in that windswept playground. They twisted your arms up
behind your back until your eyeballs popped out, pinched your precious
dinner money to blow on Woodbines and stamped on your crisps. If you
were lucky, they refrained from stamping on anything else.

Eventually, if painfully slowly, I grew big and vicious enough to be
accepted into their ever-shifting ranks and enjoyed lording it over my
natural inferiors with a vengeance - but that's another story.

So, why do they do it? Because they can, that's the simple answer - big
kids are simply part of the natural order of things: repulsive but
necessary, like decay or cod liver oil. They're nature's way of proving
to pimply little geeks like me that life's a bugger.

This blatant thuggery is, of course, secretly sanctioned by the staff.
Now, don't think that this is a surly diatribe aimed at a much-maligned
and overworked profession: I was an elbow-patched teacher long enough
to know what I'm talking about here. Generally speaking, the mental and
physical beatings handed out by the big kids were looked upon as
character building. True, we didn't actually need to forge a fresh
generation of jungle-hackers and missionaries willing to brave the
terrors of British West Hartlepool; not by the fifties. That mattered
not.

No, little kids were expected to take their medicine, suffer in
silence, and not bother the teachers with their whinging while the
latter were busy swigging tea and sorting out their pools coupons.
Indeed, prefects were posted at the doors specifically to prevent
blubbing first-years with broken specs and glowing bruises from rushing
in and complaining.

Of course, I'm not talking about the better sort of grammar school
here; the "crikey, you chaps!" sort of ancient establishment, so
beloved of other=worldly school story writers, that basks lazily under
eternal sunshine in pleasantly cultivated acres. No such luck; mine was
a jumped-up, brand spanking new excrescence cowering under a leaden fug
of lung-numbing Black Country pollution. I've never found even a
half-credible reason to revisit the place.

There was a secondary advantage to this violence, too: seldom mentioned
but real enough. While the budding thugs were perfecting their black
arts behind the bike sheds, they weren't threatening the staff or
tamping large, obstructive vegetables up the exhausts of their
Cortinas. (Or anywhere else.) And that reminds me.. only once did I see
a big kid come spectacularly unstuck, and it turned out to be well
worth waiting for.

For some unknown reason, this moron had decided to sabotage Sid's
motor. Now, Sid was a state-registered headcase to begin with, and the
last member of that miserable, inept staff that I'd have tangled with:
he taught chemistry (after a fashion) and delighted in slapping kids so
hard that they were catapulted off their lab stools in all sorts of
amazing trajectories. He could throw a mean board rubber, too, and the
fact that he so frequently sent bubbling retorts and blazing Bunsen
burners flying only seemed to spur him on.

Anyway, the word had gone round that Sid's lovingly-polished MG would
be worth watching at home time, so there was quite a good crowd hanging
expectantly round the gates. Sure enough, he'd hardly started up when
there was a terrific muffled wallop, a satisfying mushroom cloud and a
pattering noise as the exhaust came off like shrapnel. Revenge was
swift and merciless - probably because the incident put paid to Sid's
off-duty antics with Mrs Tonks (the bottle-blonde lab assistant) while
repairs were effected. We little kids enjoyed almost a fortnight of
blissful peace before things slowly reverted to their natural
equilibrium.

By the age of thirteen or so I'd become resigned to my schoolday fate -
but then, as the hormones kicked in, my mind began to wander towards
more adult interests. And, to be fair, it was in this clandestine
pursuit that a big kid actually came in useful. The one and only
time.

I'll call him Mike, but only because I can't recall what his name was
now. I remember his greasy DA haircut and his Himalayan display of
acne, though. Anyway, the word had spread round 3A like wildfire that
Mike, for a price, would display his photo. No ordinary photo, this; a
rude photo. A really rude photo..

We all believed this, because Mike had a girlfriend and therefore real
status: he'd been spotted in the "Table Mountain", the local espresso
bar (no doubt named in honour of South Africa's notable contribution to
the world of coffee) cuddling up to some plain pudding from the high
school. I found out later, while bunking off from games, that Mike's
few friends referred to his conquest as "Zola", and was impressed by
this unexpected reference to one of the giants of French literature -
until the penny dropped. "Gorgon-zola" - quite witty for a big kid,
eh?

Anyway, sad to relate, this big-time romance didn't last. Apparently,
Mike decided to get some reward for his outlay on coffee when he walked
her home the following Friday and made a lightning grab for whatever it
was Zola kept under her blouse. Her response was to scream for her dad
and land Mike a hefty kick on the shin that made him limp for a
fortnight. In both departments..

It's difficult to describe the thrill of excitement that ran round 3A
that afternoon. It sounds crazy now; but there was no Channel Four
then, no top-shelf mags - not even page three. The only chance a
slavering innocent like me got to view nudity of any description was in
the so-called naturist publications.

Boy, were they funny - we passed them round under our blazers as if
they were rock-solid porno mags, while all they actually contained was
a selection of grinning morons freezing to death round some outdoor
swimming pool: always, of course, with legs strategically draped to
obscure the interesting bits. If these flabby nudists were active at
all, they'd be covering certain areas with tennis rackets or beach
balls.

Sometimes - very occasionally, mind - there would be some full-frontal
shot. In these cases, the lower abdominal area would have been
carefully airbrushed to appease the censor. I always wondered who got
this most enviable of jobs. I mean, can you imagine the
conversation?

"Hello dear! Do anything interesting at work today?"

"Same old boring stuff. Just touched up a couple of dozen nubile
teenagers."

"What, again? Never mind, here's your cocoa."

So, having drooled over these bowdlerised versions of the female
anatomy, I was ready for the Real Thing. Definitely. I plucked up the
courage to wander over to Mike at lunchtime and ask him how much he
wanted for a peek. Threepence sounded a bit steep, and I had to decide
quickly: do I walk home, or do I pay up? Yep, the Wolverhampton
Corporation trolleybus was destined to go home without me that
afternoon.

It was pay in advance, of course, and only after my threepenny bit had
vanished for ever did this well-thumbed black and white print appear.
Mike and his cronies chortled as I turned the photo round, upside-down
and back again. Only then could I make out the bed, some truly awful
wallpaper and expanses of pallid white skin topped off with a cheesy,
embarrassed grin. (Rather like my own at that point.) But, what on
earth was that dark, furry shape? I'd never seen anything like it, and
I could only rationalise it one way.

That's a very peculiar place to keep a mole, I told myself, just before
the photo was snatched from my sweaty grasp: I wonder if the RSPCA
knows about this?

Of course, I strolled back to my jealous mates to explain that I'd seen
it all before, loads of times. Until, that is, some clever so-and-so
asked the obvious question: Why are you walking home, then?

Years later, when I was a big kid myself, I was sitting in the "Table
Mountain" on my first ever date, sharing a couple of espressos with..
oh, never mind. She just fastened her coat up, explaining that she
didn't want everyone to see her mole. God knows, I tried.. I tried so
hard to contain myself, but I couldn't help exploding into hysterical
laughter and blowing coffee froth all over her.

She refused to see me again, on the grounds that I was seriously weird.
It only goes to show what good judges of character women are.