Chapter one
When it comes down to the natural pecking order of all living species, ducks must rank somewhere around the bottom of the league table; and sitting ducks..? Well they are looking at relegation to the lower divisions where worms and dead ducks wallow.
This was where I found myself, sitting on a freezing cold tiled floor, with watery eyes, a bloody nose and my wrists handcuffed and chained to a lead-pipe which ran along the wall. To my right and in the furthest corner of the large windowless room, a dozen or more Iraqi Sunni insurgents sat on quilted mattresses that the moths had declined to feast-on long before they got caked with filth, cradling their Kalashnikovs in their laps like precious infants,
and listening attentively to the hushed guttural mumbles of their chieftains.
Now if you consider this as having been a frighteningly perilous position to be in, then you will agree that the rest must’ve been mind-numbingly terrifying. Opposite my position and in the corner of the room nearest to me, sat a separate group of three men, with green bandanas tied around their heads, chanting and rocking back and forth as their leader recited passages to them from an ornately decorated leather-bound book.
I didn’t think that these three were reciting poetry, nor did I for one minute harbour the notion that the sword wielded by their leader, which glinted menacingly in the sickly metallic glare of the overhead fluorescent lights, meant that they would leap-up and play pirates and poets. These three latter-day musketeers were clearly El-Qaeda, and a tripod mounted video camera had been set-up to record for posterity, the removal of the stupid head of one
sitting duck... yours truly.
At that point I wasn’t overly concerned about spending my last day on earth with my head hung low in shame at soiling my underwear, because my head will soon be dangled before the camera by its thinning hair, as one of the El-Qaeda thugs fires a barrage of incomprehensible verbal garbage at an impervious world.
In the duration of my 4 decades of life on earth, shit would often hit that proverbial fan and fly everywhere, but in a room full of people, it would often defy all laws of physics and gravitate in my direction at a blinding speed.
They say that when you are close to death, your whole life flashes before your eyes...Well somewhere between my eyeballs and the tears that I refused to shed, an entire movie was about to run, and since I had as little control over my destiny as I had over my sitting position, I could at least choose to watch that movie in an orderly fashion, making sure not to edit-out any of the upbeat highlights; and for this, I had to go back to the beginning, back to my very own Genesis.
How the hell did I get into this mess..? This is a question I’ve had the displeasure of asking myself innumerably and in a variety of versions throughout my life, and whenever I found myself flailing neck-deep in the scheisse, merde, kaka... you know, the brown matter.
With meticulously laid plans I set-out with a certain direction in mind, but infuriatingly end-up exactly where I would never wish to be. Most men hold-up their heads as they march down life’s highways, stridently proclaiming themselves as masters of their own destiny... Not me!
I belong in that other group... We are the slavish pawns of fate who shuffle along life’s back-streets with chins buried deeply into our chests, hoping and praying that we get to where we’re going unimpeded, or better yet unnoticed. However, not being an elected spokesman for this group, I can only tell you that where I am concerned I hardly ever get there without veering off-course... and usually by a staggeringly wide margin.
Please forgive me if I appear to be a man of little piety and even less reverence, but I have for some time harboured a strong suspicion that God and Satan play a board-game in which I am the central pawn, and all of the other pieces are made-up of some of the most mischievous gremlins placed there by Beelzebub himself. The latter (being who he is) would even throw-in the occasional demon or two, should an extra measure of said brown-matter be required, whereas the former (being who he is) would sometimes show that he can still be merciful and deal-in one of his lesser angels to save me from total immersion.
Some game hey..? Well, if that makes me sound bitterly aggrieved, it’s because I have frequently had good reasons to be, and if after reading a few chapters you find yourself still tutting in disapproval, then I would suggest that you stand before the nearest mirror, place your tongue between lower and upper lips, and award yourself a resounding raspberry.
You see, if one accepts that the whole of creation is God’s work, then one can only stand in awe and wonder before the absolute perfection of nature. One would marvel at the absence of imbalance in eco-systems, and be amazed by the perfection of the symbiotic relationships between all living things and their environs, but when it comes down to the creation of people: God dons the hat a flamboyant chef with a warped sense of humour!
Every now and then God concocts someone like me; he then looks-in when he is bored and has an almighty belly laugh. So he used two equal measures of Woody Allen and Rick Moranis, stirred-in a liberal scoop of Mr Bean, placed the mixture inside a witless woman on slow-cook, and out I slithered nine months later to find my first misdirection on this earth, and hang my crocheted bonnet in a home that was neither happy with, nor interested in any form of parental responsibility or child-raising.
Mum and dad were Catholics by birth only, but grandma “Smokey” (the great matriarch and absolute ruler of my family) was devout and abortion was not an option. I undoubtedly owed my very existence and survival then and thereafter to “grandma Smokey” in more ways than one; as things turned-out.
Four months after my birth in May of 1970, my dear mother had a change of mind, heart, and faith, and absconded with a door-to-door salesman who doubled-up as a wandering preacher from some obscure church, and who peddled Herbal Remedies and home-made soaps with “soul-cleansing” properties to his customers, parishioners, and all who had fifty pence to squander on piffle.
Dad candidly informed me in one of those man-to-man talks that he revelled-in when I was at the somewhat immature age of three... ‘Yer mam..? As soon as she took a second look at your ugly mug, she couldn’t wait to take-off..!’
May God have mercy on his inebriate soul; my dad was a man of very few words, albeit well-chosen and mostly to the point.
Grandma Smokey highly disapproved of my “beer-guzzling” dad and pot-smoking “floozy” mother. She took me in and raised me from the day mother left. She later told me that dad was on a plumbing job somewhere in our neighbourhood, when the soap-selling preacher and his van pulled over at our house, mother swiftly packed all of her belongings, not forgetting (Nixon) the goldfish, into the van and they headed south never to be seen or heard from again. Apparently she was very fond of Nixon, and used to spend hours chatting
to it through thick plumes of Cannabis smoke.
Dad was obviously extremely hurt by the event and whined bitterly to me, convinced that it was my fault... ‘She took every fucking thing that’s worth taking...’he angrily griped and jabbed a finger into my shoulder for emphasis ‘... including my Pale Ale from the yard-shed, and left me all the crap that she didn’t want including you... Can you imagine..? The heartless thieving bitch took three full crates of my beer.’
Oh my, she took his beer..! I was left in no doubt that mother had fully intended to burn all her bridges by that singularly sacrilegious act.
Apparently a neighbour watched her move out, heard me crying in my cot and ran over to where my father was working to warn him. Dad rushed back to the house, and half an hour later I ended up becoming a permanent resident at grandma’s home.
The years of my living with grandma “Smokey” were relatively speaking the safest stretch of time in my life, because no matter how low I hunkered down, trouble always seemed to seek me out and find me. That was when Smoky proved to be one of the ablest guardian angels that God had ever dealt into my life.
She stood a fraction over 5ft tall, but enjoyed the girth of a 200 year-old oak tree and
sported an equally tough layer of bark.
When“Smokey Sue” thundered along bustling town-centre streets, people cut a wide swathe for her lest they be brushed aside by one of her mighty arms. I am not quite certain whether she had gained that nickname due to her notoriously hot temper or because of her pipe-smoking habit, although she never seemed to mind it in anyway, not even when I started calling her “Smokey” ever since I’d learned how to say it.
I inherited my stunted height and less-than good looks from Smokey, but not her formidable heft. I was the smallest kid in every toddler playgroup, kindergarten, and every school I ever attended. And in later life, I was even smaller than most of the secondary school kids I taught English to.
Regrettably this meant that from a very early age, I occupied the unhappy position of being the school-yard’s punch-bag that everyone showed-off their boxing skills on, although luckily “Smokey” was often on-hand to protect me from the further indignity of out-of-school
bullying.
I had no one to turn to but Smokey, as being a very small and an exceptionally ugly kid attracted few or no friends. What about my dad you may wonder..? Well, the closest he ever got to showing me any support was to clip me around the back of the head, between long swigs of beer and longer belches, to dispense his sound advice.
‘Being a weedy little runt, means that you gotta stand-up for yourself and fight your own corner...’ his pontificating was usually interrupted by a rousing accolade of burps.
He called me “little runt” only when I was in his good books. He otherwise displayed a reasonable range of vocabulary in a verbal game that he enjoyed playing, as he expansively lavished upon me a variety of “Little... whatever”. That was the only time in a lifetime of ineloquence, when dad ever felt the urge to show some erudition and go to the trouble of consulting a dictionary for other suitable adjectives.
It was he who had chosen the infamously heroic name that I was christened with, but thenceforth he only ever called me by my christened name when he meant to mock me.
Dad was an avid fan of the Beatles, and so he decided to call his first-born son, not John and neither Paul nor George, but Ringo. You can imagine how other kids would react to an ugly “little runt” like me rejoicing in such a gibe-worthy name like Ringo. I can only praise the Lord for his infinite mercy that “Rambo”had not been conceived yet.
I often took dad’s unsound advice and stood-up to others, and by the time I was ten, my nose had been broken on no-less than six occasions. So the nose of an inept pugilist that I have today was XXL by birth, and was thereafter remodelled by fists. I don’t really think that kids purposely took aim at my nose, but since it occupied the largest expanse of my face, any facial blow would need no navigational aid to find its way to its most prominent feature!
When I was ten, I made my most memorable schooldays stand. After being pushed, shoved and tripped by Meatball Henshaw (the schoolyard bully) and three of his cohorts, and with some of the girls watching and giggling, I decided to take no more... I spat in Meatball’s face, called him Snotball and offered to take him and his trio on... one at time..!
An eerie silence descended upon the whole schoolyard as all the kids gathered around us and watched with awe befitting a Roman gladiatorial arena. There were so many spectators, I could’ve sworn that kids from other schools had somehow heard of the event and flocked to the scene, and all that was missing was a fanfare of trumpets.
It was a day that became deeply etched into the folklore of that school...
Meatball and his gang could not decline a challenge that was overheard by many, so they stood in a line while I put my fists up in readiness.
In my first ever moment of triumph, I noted that all four of them looked a little uncertain and somewhat apprehensive!
‘Had the little shit been taking karate lessons..?’
I could almost hear them thinking, and I knew for certain that I had gained the psychological high-ground.
Taking his place in the proper order was Meatball himself who advanced towards me with some reticence, and I was ready for him. Fat and clumsy looking as he was, I can forever swear that I never saw him move, I only felt his fist as it connected with my nose... where else..? I was only small and light-weight, but also thin and wiry and it took me but a second or two to bounce-up off the ground, back onto my feet, and be ready for round two.
Decker, the second one in line seemed to have gained confidence from Meatball’s success and so he went for the same move... He too found the mark, lived-up to his name and I was down on the deck... again.
Now I felt dazed and disoriented, my nose felt like a raw lump of steak after receiving some serious attention from a tenderiser and it was bleeding heavily, my eyes were watering from the nasal blows and my vision was blurred, but I was driven by adrenalin and the clapping and chanting of the gathered kids...
“Go... Go... Ringo. Go... Go... Ringo...”
My father’s words of advice on such matters rattled around my head...
‘Runt, when the chips are down, tuck your head low, but don’t lose it, use it...’ he’d told me meaningfully slapping his forehead.
In seconds I leapt-up with the agility of a gibbon and the snarl of a panther and went at the
next one in line, and it was Lanky the tallest of the quartet.
I went for him at a run and with my head down... It was now my turn to score a bull’s-eye. I head-butted him in the groin so hard that I felt his pants zipper leave its impression on my forehead, and brought him down with a high-pitched yowl.
As he writhed on the ground double-up in agony, the entire playground fell into a hushed silence. I ran around with the intention of delivering a sound kick to his backside, and as I took aim, through still blurred vision I noted that his pain distorted face looked nothing like Lanky’s, and that his glasses were resting askew upon it..!
Glasses..? Glasses..? Lanky never wore glasses..!
My vision began to clear... I felt my stomach lurch, my bowels began to loosen and I nearly swooned when I realised that I was looking at the face of Mr Emerson the school’s Deputy-Head.
The crowd’s silence was gradually broken; first by hushed murmurs and chuckles which grew and grew to howling guffaws as I felt myself being lifted off my feet and out of my state of shock...
It was Mrs Penarsky the Phys-Ed teacher who now towered above me, and then escorted me back into the school building with a very firm grip on my left ear.
Mrs Penarsky proved the value of constant physical training, for by the mere use of forefinger and thumb, she managed to practically lift somebody -even as diminutive as me- by one ear, up the school steps, through the main entrance, along an endless corridor and then finally throw the nasty little package several yards into the boy’s washroom.
Although winded, I was grateful for the hard touch-down and not even minded that I’d landed in one of the numerous urine puddles on the floor. At least my left ear was still connected to my head... tentatively, but still connected nevertheless.
I was sternly informed that my schoolyard heroics had earned me a three-day suspension, Meatball and his killer-crew got worse... they got detention plus suspension.
The headmaster personally called grandma Smokey to come and collect me, whilst the school nurse tried to do what she could for my newly remodelled nose. The nurse was of no real help because she could neither keep her hands steady, nor stop herself from laughing.
Smokey came to fetch me from school and I made the mistake of complaining about what Mrs Penarsky had done to my left ear...
‘Oh, you poor boy, did she now..?’ she asked in a tone of voice that I didn’t really like, there was not a single decibel of sympathy in it.
Smoky then dragged me all the way home by that same beshitted ear. Soreness and tenderness aside, I kept hearing strange crackling and whistling noises that no one else could hear for many days afterwards...
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When it comes down to the natural pecking order of all living species, ducks must rank somewhere around the bottom of the league table; and sitting ducks..? Well they are looking at relegation to the lower divisions where worms and dead ducks wallow.
This was where I found myself, sitting on a freezing cold tiled floor, with watery eyes, a bloody nose and my wrists handcuffed and chained to a lead-pipe which ran along the wall. To my right and in the furthest corner of the large windowless room, a dozen or more Iraqi Sunni insurgents sat on quilted mattresses that the moths had declined to feast-on long before they got caked with filth, cradling their Kalashnikovs in their laps like precious infants,
and listening attentively to the hushed guttural mumbles of their chieftains.
Now if you consider this as having been a frighteningly perilous position to be in, then you will agree that the rest must’ve been mind-numbingly terrifying. Opposite my position and in the corner of the room nearest to me, sat a separate group of three men, with green bandanas tied around their heads, chanting and rocking back and forth as their leader recited passages to them from an ornately decorated leather-bound book.
I didn’t think that these three were reciting poetry, nor did I for one minute harbour the notion that the sword wielded by their leader, which glinted menacingly in the sickly metallic glare of the overhead fluorescent lights, meant that they would leap-up and play pirates and poets. These three latter-day musketeers were clearly El-Qaeda, and a tripod mounted video camera had been set-up to record for posterity, the removal of the stupid head of one
sitting duck... yours truly.
At that point I wasn’t overly concerned about spending my last day on earth with my head hung low in shame at soiling my underwear, because my head will soon be dangled before the camera by its thinning hair, as one of the El-Qaeda thugs fires a barrage of incomprehensible verbal garbage at an impervious world.
In the duration of my 4 decades of life on earth, shit would often hit that proverbial fan and fly everywhere, but in a room full of people, it would often defy all laws of physics and gravitate in my direction at a blinding speed.
They say that when you are close to death, your whole life flashes before your eyes...Well somewhere between my eyeballs and the tears that I refused to shed, an entire movie was about to run, and since I had as little control over my destiny as I had over my sitting position, I could at least choose to watch that movie in an orderly fashion, making sure not to edit-out any of the upbeat highlights; and for this, I had to go back to the beginning, back to my very own Genesis.
How the hell did I get into this mess..? This is a question I’ve had the displeasure of asking myself innumerably and in a variety of versions throughout my life, and whenever I found myself flailing neck-deep in the scheisse, merde, kaka... you know, the brown matter.
With meticulously laid plans I set-out with a certain direction in mind, but infuriatingly end-up exactly where I would never wish to be. Most men hold-up their heads as they march down life’s highways, stridently proclaiming themselves as masters of their own destiny... Not me!
I belong in that other group... We are the slavish pawns of fate who shuffle along life’s back-streets with chins buried deeply into our chests, hoping and praying that we get to where we’re going unimpeded, or better yet unnoticed. However, not being an elected spokesman for this group, I can only tell you that where I am concerned I hardly ever get there without veering off-course... and usually by a staggeringly wide margin.
Please forgive me if I appear to be a man of little piety and even less reverence, but I have for some time harboured a strong suspicion that God and Satan play a board-game in which I am the central pawn, and all of the other pieces are made-up of some of the most mischievous gremlins placed there by Beelzebub himself. The latter (being who he is) would even throw-in the occasional demon or two, should an extra measure of said brown-matter be required, whereas the former (being who he is) would sometimes show that he can still be merciful and deal-in one of his lesser angels to save me from total immersion.
Some game hey..? Well, if that makes me sound bitterly aggrieved, it’s because I have frequently had good reasons to be, and if after reading a few chapters you find yourself still tutting in disapproval, then I would suggest that you stand before the nearest mirror, place your tongue between lower and upper lips, and award yourself a resounding raspberry.
You see, if one accepts that the whole of creation is God’s work, then one can only stand in awe and wonder before the absolute perfection of nature. One would marvel at the absence of imbalance in eco-systems, and be amazed by the perfection of the symbiotic relationships between all living things and their environs, but when it comes down to the creation of people: God dons the hat a flamboyant chef with a warped sense of humour!
Every now and then God concocts someone like me; he then looks-in when he is bored and has an almighty belly laugh. So he used two equal measures of Woody Allen and Rick Moranis, stirred-in a liberal scoop of Mr Bean, placed the mixture inside a witless woman on slow-cook, and out I slithered nine months later to find my first misdirection on this earth, and hang my crocheted bonnet in a home that was neither happy with, nor interested in any form of parental responsibility or child-raising.
Mum and dad were Catholics by birth only, but grandma “Smokey” (the great matriarch and absolute ruler of my family) was devout and abortion was not an option. I undoubtedly owed my very existence and survival then and thereafter to “grandma Smokey” in more ways than one; as things turned-out.
Four months after my birth in May of 1970, my dear mother had a change of mind, heart, and faith, and absconded with a door-to-door salesman who doubled-up as a wandering preacher from some obscure church, and who peddled Herbal Remedies and home-made soaps with “soul-cleansing” properties to his customers, parishioners, and all who had fifty pence to squander on piffle.
Dad candidly informed me in one of those man-to-man talks that he revelled-in when I was at the somewhat immature age of three... ‘Yer mam..? As soon as she took a second look at your ugly mug, she couldn’t wait to take-off..!’
May God have mercy on his inebriate soul; my dad was a man of very few words, albeit well-chosen and mostly to the point.
Grandma Smokey highly disapproved of my “beer-guzzling” dad and pot-smoking “floozy” mother. She took me in and raised me from the day mother left. She later told me that dad was on a plumbing job somewhere in our neighbourhood, when the soap-selling preacher and his van pulled over at our house, mother swiftly packed all of her belongings, not forgetting (Nixon) the goldfish, into the van and they headed south never to be seen or heard from again. Apparently she was very fond of Nixon, and used to spend hours chatting
to it through thick plumes of Cannabis smoke.
Dad was obviously extremely hurt by the event and whined bitterly to me, convinced that it was my fault... ‘She took every fucking thing that’s worth taking...’he angrily griped and jabbed a finger into my shoulder for emphasis ‘... including my Pale Ale from the yard-shed, and left me all the crap that she didn’t want including you... Can you imagine..? The heartless thieving bitch took three full crates of my beer.’
Oh my, she took his beer..! I was left in no doubt that mother had fully intended to burn all her bridges by that singularly sacrilegious act.
Apparently a neighbour watched her move out, heard me crying in my cot and ran over to where my father was working to warn him. Dad rushed back to the house, and half an hour later I ended up becoming a permanent resident at grandma’s home.
The years of my living with grandma “Smokey” were relatively speaking the safest stretch of time in my life, because no matter how low I hunkered down, trouble always seemed to seek me out and find me. That was when Smoky proved to be one of the ablest guardian angels that God had ever dealt into my life.
She stood a fraction over 5ft tall, but enjoyed the girth of a 200 year-old oak tree and
sported an equally tough layer of bark.
When“Smokey Sue” thundered along bustling town-centre streets, people cut a wide swathe for her lest they be brushed aside by one of her mighty arms. I am not quite certain whether she had gained that nickname due to her notoriously hot temper or because of her pipe-smoking habit, although she never seemed to mind it in anyway, not even when I started calling her “Smokey” ever since I’d learned how to say it.
I inherited my stunted height and less-than good looks from Smokey, but not her formidable heft. I was the smallest kid in every toddler playgroup, kindergarten, and every school I ever attended. And in later life, I was even smaller than most of the secondary school kids I taught English to.
Regrettably this meant that from a very early age, I occupied the unhappy position of being the school-yard’s punch-bag that everyone showed-off their boxing skills on, although luckily “Smokey” was often on-hand to protect me from the further indignity of out-of-school
bullying.
I had no one to turn to but Smokey, as being a very small and an exceptionally ugly kid attracted few or no friends. What about my dad you may wonder..? Well, the closest he ever got to showing me any support was to clip me around the back of the head, between long swigs of beer and longer belches, to dispense his sound advice.
‘Being a weedy little runt, means that you gotta stand-up for yourself and fight your own corner...’ his pontificating was usually interrupted by a rousing accolade of burps.
He called me “little runt” only when I was in his good books. He otherwise displayed a reasonable range of vocabulary in a verbal game that he enjoyed playing, as he expansively lavished upon me a variety of “Little... whatever”. That was the only time in a lifetime of ineloquence, when dad ever felt the urge to show some erudition and go to the trouble of consulting a dictionary for other suitable adjectives.
It was he who had chosen the infamously heroic name that I was christened with, but thenceforth he only ever called me by my christened name when he meant to mock me.
Dad was an avid fan of the Beatles, and so he decided to call his first-born son, not John and neither Paul nor George, but Ringo. You can imagine how other kids would react to an ugly “little runt” like me rejoicing in such a gibe-worthy name like Ringo. I can only praise the Lord for his infinite mercy that “Rambo”had not been conceived yet.
I often took dad’s unsound advice and stood-up to others, and by the time I was ten, my nose had been broken on no-less than six occasions. So the nose of an inept pugilist that I have today was XXL by birth, and was thereafter remodelled by fists. I don’t really think that kids purposely took aim at my nose, but since it occupied the largest expanse of my face, any facial blow would need no navigational aid to find its way to its most prominent feature!
When I was ten, I made my most memorable schooldays stand. After being pushed, shoved and tripped by Meatball Henshaw (the schoolyard bully) and three of his cohorts, and with some of the girls watching and giggling, I decided to take no more... I spat in Meatball’s face, called him Snotball and offered to take him and his trio on... one at time..!
An eerie silence descended upon the whole schoolyard as all the kids gathered around us and watched with awe befitting a Roman gladiatorial arena. There were so many spectators, I could’ve sworn that kids from other schools had somehow heard of the event and flocked to the scene, and all that was missing was a fanfare of trumpets.
It was a day that became deeply etched into the folklore of that school...
Meatball and his gang could not decline a challenge that was overheard by many, so they stood in a line while I put my fists up in readiness.
In my first ever moment of triumph, I noted that all four of them looked a little uncertain and somewhat apprehensive!
‘Had the little shit been taking karate lessons..?’
I could almost hear them thinking, and I knew for certain that I had gained the psychological high-ground.
Taking his place in the proper order was Meatball himself who advanced towards me with some reticence, and I was ready for him. Fat and clumsy looking as he was, I can forever swear that I never saw him move, I only felt his fist as it connected with my nose... where else..? I was only small and light-weight, but also thin and wiry and it took me but a second or two to bounce-up off the ground, back onto my feet, and be ready for round two.
Decker, the second one in line seemed to have gained confidence from Meatball’s success and so he went for the same move... He too found the mark, lived-up to his name and I was down on the deck... again.
Now I felt dazed and disoriented, my nose felt like a raw lump of steak after receiving some serious attention from a tenderiser and it was bleeding heavily, my eyes were watering from the nasal blows and my vision was blurred, but I was driven by adrenalin and the clapping and chanting of the gathered kids...
“Go... Go... Ringo. Go... Go... Ringo...”
My father’s words of advice on such matters rattled around my head...
‘Runt, when the chips are down, tuck your head low, but don’t lose it, use it...’ he’d told me meaningfully slapping his forehead.
In seconds I leapt-up with the agility of a gibbon and the snarl of a panther and went at the
next one in line, and it was Lanky the tallest of the quartet.
I went for him at a run and with my head down... It was now my turn to score a bull’s-eye. I head-butted him in the groin so hard that I felt his pants zipper leave its impression on my forehead, and brought him down with a high-pitched yowl.
As he writhed on the ground double-up in agony, the entire playground fell into a hushed silence. I ran around with the intention of delivering a sound kick to his backside, and as I took aim, through still blurred vision I noted that his pain distorted face looked nothing like Lanky’s, and that his glasses were resting askew upon it..!
Glasses..? Glasses..? Lanky never wore glasses..!
My vision began to clear... I felt my stomach lurch, my bowels began to loosen and I nearly swooned when I realised that I was looking at the face of Mr Emerson the school’s Deputy-Head.
The crowd’s silence was gradually broken; first by hushed murmurs and chuckles which grew and grew to howling guffaws as I felt myself being lifted off my feet and out of my state of shock...
It was Mrs Penarsky the Phys-Ed teacher who now towered above me, and then escorted me back into the school building with a very firm grip on my left ear.
Mrs Penarsky proved the value of constant physical training, for by the mere use of forefinger and thumb, she managed to practically lift somebody -even as diminutive as me- by one ear, up the school steps, through the main entrance, along an endless corridor and then finally throw the nasty little package several yards into the boy’s washroom.
Although winded, I was grateful for the hard touch-down and not even minded that I’d landed in one of the numerous urine puddles on the floor. At least my left ear was still connected to my head... tentatively, but still connected nevertheless.
I was sternly informed that my schoolyard heroics had earned me a three-day suspension, Meatball and his killer-crew got worse... they got detention plus suspension.
The headmaster personally called grandma Smokey to come and collect me, whilst the school nurse tried to do what she could for my newly remodelled nose. The nurse was of no real help because she could neither keep her hands steady, nor stop herself from laughing.
Smokey came to fetch me from school and I made the mistake of complaining about what Mrs Penarsky had done to my left ear...
‘Oh, you poor boy, did she now..?’ she asked in a tone of voice that I didn’t really like, there was not a single decibel of sympathy in it.
Smoky then dragged me all the way home by that same beshitted ear. Soreness and tenderness aside, I kept hearing strange crackling and whistling noises that no one else could hear for many days afterwards...
Please follow these links for orders and free samples :
For Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Ugly-Ducklings-Mike-Al-Amiry-ebook/dp/B00H2GVVP8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394186637&sr=1-1
For all ebook formats and reading devices:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384158