Where there's a will, there's a way

High School

I’d won a scholarship on my own merits, and so the powers that be presented me with a bicycle. Cool bananas, I couldn’t f**king believe it, and it meant total freedom for me. No need for buses anymore or asking for a ride. Now I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted to.

Getting to school proved to be a real ballbuster. It meant cycling through a coloured neighbourhood, families of mixed race, while being pelted by stones and bottles along the way. This was pretty much the norm and I’d never forget it. A lot of people were going to pay for this, but then some bastard kid at school stole my bicycle, so that was that.

Once I’d decided who my new friends were gonna be, it didn’t take long for us to settle in and make our mark in high school. I was only thirteen years old, hadn’t reached five feet yet, and weighed in at around fifty kg.

Bishop, a sixth former, got smashed in the mouth by an apple meant for me. I managed to duck just in time. He didn’t, but then he never even saw it coming either, and he wasn’t amused. “That f**king hurt.” So now, he wanted to hurt someone back.

We were all much younger and smaller than he was, and we were at school, but not any old school, so there’d be no fighting on these hallowed grounds. He had to bite his tongue, try to keep his cool, he couldn’t just go off at the deep end, no matter how much he may have wanted to. Which was all a bit unfortunate, ‘cause now he had a huge problem on his hands.

Something he quite obviously hadn’t given any thought to. He had to catch the same bus as us, to and from school, every day, which I quite disrespectfully pointed out to him. So, yes, he could go ahead and f**k Colin up, beat him to a pulp if that’d make him feel better (the fiendish thrower of apples), but how would he get home from, or to school, after that? There was an unwritten rule that we lived by, one that insisted we return any compliments. One against many, weren’t good odds, no matter how f**king big or tough you think you are. This wasn’t the movies, and the fact that he was dealing with a bunch of loosely wired young thugs didn’t help him either.

He’d be facing a seriously long walk, unless his mommy was going to drive him to, and from school every day for the rest of the year. And how was he going to explain that one? What would he tell his mom, or his mates. Would he tell them that he was scared a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? I / we got much worse as we got older.

There were always bigger, tougher guys at school to be wary of, especially Tinor, but they generally left me alone or even went out of their way to avoid me. You couldn’t reason with me; I was past that. How do you argue with, or even fight someone, who doesn’t care whether he wins or loses? Makes it even worse when he's much smaller than you are.

Our teachers, the same as at any other school, were a mixed bag of all sorts, and they probably felt the same about us. We liked some of them but not all of them. Some of them gave us the impression that they knew what they were doing and were serious about doing it. They won our respect or at least we paid attention to what they were saying or trying to teach us.

Others were useless and, in return, we were brutally merciless. We had little or no respect for them at all. The teachers in question were happy to return the compliment. Some of them probably had wet dreams about strangling at least one, if not all of us.

There were quite a few of us high school kids that just faded away as we grew older. No thanks to booze and drugs. Some of us, like me, who’d been top of the class, ended up bored and going nowhere by the time we reached Standard eight (fourth form).

Recreational drugs like LSD and weed were everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s. Drinking and smoking weed was also a regular pastime for too many of us. I'd smoke a joint, every morning, on my way to school. I’d sneak another one or two in during the day and then wash them down with cough medicine or booze. During lunch break, often spent at a mate’s house across the road from school, I’d smoke more weed, maybe pop a couple of pills, so the last two lessons at school would fly by, and then I'd jump on the bus and go visit mom.

By the end of fourth form, I was wasted, almost every day, and I’d do anything to get high. As well as weed, booze, cough medicine and pills, I smoked a little opium, or on rare occasions, dropped some acid. Sometimes, I’d stoop to incredible lows, like sucking on a fuel-soaked rag or trying to knock myself out with chloroform. I was even smoking f**king horse tranquilisers, crushed into powder, and mixed with weed. Only in my mid-teens, and I was already a hard-core doper, but l drew the line at needles.