Stupidity

STUPIDITY

When I was a kid and lived in a village in Warwickshire I knew a boy my own age called Ian. I knew him from age 7 until 11, when we went to different secondary schools after we'd taken the 11+ in 1985. When he found out that he'd failed the exam he shouted to me on the way to school and leapt and cheered like a jester. Wish I'd failed, I might have been that happy then. He also squealed in a strange, distorted way. I was surprised, I'd never seen anyone enjoy failure before. It should've opened a few doors really.
He used to come round to my house to play in the garden. He wasn't allowed to play in his own garden. Forbidding hedges grew around it and the gate that led to it down the side of his house never opened and there was always shadow and darkness behind it. I never went to his house. No one I was friends with ever did, although a weird boy called Chris who later became some kind of gay go-go dancer once told me that he and Ian's older sister, Suzanne, had spent an afternoon in Ian's house when no adults were in. They'd discovered Ian's father's collection of pornography. Chris told me about it at school in some kind of art lesson. He said that there were women on the floor with their legs open and men pissing on them. I hope he was misunderstanding it.
Ian's parents were an odd couple. His dad looked like Martin Jarvis, the actor who was famous for reading 'William' stories on stuff like Jackanory and Radio 4. He stared and walked back into his house whenever I saw him. I only ever saw the back of his tiny mother's head. I think she had dyed dark brown hair, obviously dyed, like cheap fabric. I've got some kind of memory of their garage not being a garage but some kind of room, but that might be false. I found out years later that he liked shagging his next door neighbours' wives. That was his dad, not Ian. I never found out who or what Ian liked shagging.
Ian liked to come round to mine a lot. We had a grassy garden that I thought was big at the time but was only average really, I suppose, like any 3 bedroomed semi's in a satellite village of a small market town. We had a cube shaped climbing frame that had monkey bars, rings and a trapeze attached to it. Normally it got used as goal posts, one problem being that there was a concrete path running along underneath the monkey bars where the goal line should have been. Goalies had to be brave. 'Three and in' didn't have the incentive it really should have had. You did get to wear one of my pairs of goalie gloves though, Peter Shilton endorsed things made of yellow netting with bits of green pseudo leather stuck to the palms and fingers. They made no difference to goal keeping, but made crossing the monkey bars less painful. My dad removed the path in the end, I think it was him, it could have been my mum, and turfed the goal line. Before this happened, Ian came round one spring evening after his tea with some other people. He put the gloves on and climbed the ladder on the climbing frame. There were ladders on both sides of the climbing frame, forming the posts of the goal. Ian climbed the left hand ladder. The 'posts' were at an angle of 75 degrees or so, the goal wasn't a perfect square, it was a shape I don't know the name of or especially want to know the name of. Ian climbed up the ladder and placed his hands on the first monkey bar. He swung down and put his left hand on the next bar ready to swing again. "It don't 'urt your 'ands with these on, he said, referring to the goalie gloves. As the word 'on' died on his lips his grip slipped and he fell to the ground. He was a slight boy who ate Kit-Kats for breakfast and as he hit the ground he crumpled, screamed and started to cry loudly. Everybody else looked stupid and at me. They went home and left him to pick himself up. The evening ended there.
Another time, in winter, Ian and I were sitting on the climbing frame and he was telling me about 'The Elephant Man', which he'd just seen on video. I didn't understand what he was on about. Nor did he. My dad was gardening and listening. Then Ian said to me that he wondered if he could jump off. We were sitting on the monkey bar crossbar, about 6 feet from the ground. He kept asking me whether I thought he could jump or not. I kept telling him I didn't know. I really didn't know and I didn't really want him to jump, it just seemed wrong. He decided he would.
Nervously, he lifted his arms up from where he'd been supporting himself and crouched unsteadily on the monkey bars. He was awkward and weak, his arms at ten past seven. He swayed strangely as he raised himself up beyond a crouch into a leg trembling half stand. His arms waved manically and he leapt.
I remember his face, his head as he jumped. It trembled, wobbled, eyes fearful and a twisted front tooth protruded more noticeably than it usually did. His mouth opened wide and he emanated a long, alternately high pitched and low pitched gurgling scream. It was a noise of pain, fear and humiliation. The kind of noise you imagine electrodes on testicles induces. It lasted a long time. He was in mid-air and his arms waved. Then he hit the ground and started crying puerile tears. He didn't look like he'd hurt himself, but he got up and ran home. He probably blamed me. Ian always blamed other people. We were once playing cricket at school with a tennis ball and he was batting. He struck the ball and hit me in the testicles. When I got up a nasty kid called Lee was leading a vast chorus of laughter. I was enraged and went to attack Ian. Later, with fearful eyes, he said it wasn't his fault. I don't think I've ever forgiven him.
The last time I saw Ian was a photograph someone had found on the internet. He looked like he'd just been weeping and his head was the same width as his neck.

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