When I was at school, believe it or not, I was generally a pretty good kid, I
didn’t get into trouble that often but looking back, when I did get into trouble
it was always for slightly weird things.
In fact, my first major misdemeanour that I can remember
(apart from a self defence attack with a pencil) is when I was falsely accused
of swearing at a dinner lady. Firstly, I’d like you to bear in mind that this
was when I was about 8 years old and I thought “bloody”, “boobies” and
“nunchucks” were swear words. I believe to this day that the dinner lady who
accused me had a personal vendetta against me, she never liked me. She was a
large ginger lady, she looked like a cross between Jabba The Hutt and Ronald McDonald.
One dinner time after I’d queued up for ages she claimed that I’d not washed my
hands. This was clearly false as ever since I was little I’ve always washed my
hands in a slightly OCD fashion and I hate having dirty hands. In fact to this day I always wash my hands after I’ve touched my socks. Apparently
when challenged about my supposed dirty hands I told her to “fuck off”. Nobody
believed me when I said I didn’t though and I had to sit in the headmasters
office all day. Then at home time I was actually escorted from the premises by
the headmaster who explained to my mum how much of a bad little man I’d been by
swearing at Jabba “The lying bitch” McDonald.
Anyway, I didn’t actually do anything then so onto something I remember that I actually did. This was in my first year of secondary school and
resulted in me getting suspended for a day. Anyone who knows me personally
knows that I’m quite a slim chap and at school I was very skinny. Obviously due
to this I avoided fights and confrontation, however when I was in year 7 I had
a moment where I snapped. There was this lad, he was about the same size as me
but really cocky. One day I was tucking into a nice bag of sweets and he just
snatched them from me. Most days I would have probably just snatched them back
but on this particular day I somehow got possessed by the spirit of Bruce Lee
and I delivered a perfect roundhouse kick to his head. He fell to the floor,
his mates looking on in shock, I picked my sweets up and then a teacher came
over and dragged me away. When asked about it I claimed that I attempted to kick the
sweets from his hand and missed, accidentally hitting his head. Funnily enough,
nobody actually believed this and I was suspended for the day. On the plus
side I think it made me look a little bit mental and nobody stole my sweets
again.
Another slightly bizarre thing I got in trouble for was when
I pointed out that one of our teachers had a head like a Kiwi fruit. He got
really, really angry about this and got really, really red. When he was red, he
looked less like a Kiwi fruit and more like a fuzzy raspberry. He obviously had
some kind of complex though as I thought he completely overreacted.
Something else I did a lot at school was sell stuff. I had a
bit of a reputation as an entrepreneur. At one point I had a mate whose next
door neighbour worked at a very well-known brand sweet factory and he used to
give us seconds and stuff that was close to its sell-by date. We used to sell this
in school, undercutting the canteen but making a nice little profit for
ourselves. Obviously the other kids loved it as they were getting cheap sweets and
we had a nice little empire going. However, as soon as the teachers found out it was
like we were some kind of terrorist sweet drug dealers selling popping candy crack. At one point we even hid a large Head bag
of sweets at the bottom of the school field as if it actually was a big bag of crack. We
got questioned about our sweet empire and were actually accused of making some
mystery person ill when they supposedly claimed some of the sweets they ate
were past their sell by date. Obviously this was complete rubbish as we’re
talking sweets that could never ever go off, they had that much crap in that
they’d probably survive a nuclear attack and in the post-apocalyptic world
there’d be cockroaches munching on fizzy apple flavour chews. We were told off
and instructed that we shouldn’t sell anything in school ever again.
However, the weirdest thing I recall getting into trouble for is
the infamous “He’s Coming” campaign. This was something that myself and my mate
JM came up with. This was one of the most fantastic advertising campaigns ever.
If it was on TV for something I think we’d be gazzillionaires. It basically
consisted of a series of posters around school that had a random image (cheese,
sausages, Peter Beardsley, Morph, a sheep, etc etc), then another series that
had a montage of random things. At the bottom of these it just said “He’s
Coming”. The posters changed regularly and they got more and more bizarre with strange,
mixed up images but the “He’s Coming” tagline was maintained. This created a
real buzz around school with people wondering what the hell it was and we
eventually produced a poster saying that “He’s Coming” with a location (outside the library) and a date.
The only problem was that we’d done all this
but hadn’t actually got a product. It’d escalated massively, much more than we
imagined, so I turned up outside the library on the said date and I was
horrified to see that probably half the school was there. Obviously I’d nothing
to sell them so I improvised and shouted “He’s Here” a lot and tried to blag it
but it was rather difficult so I kind of dug myself into a bit of a hole and ended up just shouting any old crap. I sounded like some kind of mad
evangelical preacher. Thankfully the librarian had phoned the headmaster about
a “disturbance” and he came down and turned everyone away, at which point I ran
off so, hopefully, he didn’t know I was responsible.
However it appears
that it made quite an impact on a few of the younger kids. The following day I
was called into the Headmasters office, I sat down and he said. “Now, I’ve had
a mother of a year 8 come and speak to me. She says that you were trying to
recruit her son into a cult.” Clearly I looked a bit shocked. He followed that
bombshell up with the fact that there were another three parents who’d
complained that someone was starting a cult.
Thankfully I had my wits about me and I claimed
that I was a bit eager and I put the posters up in advance. I claimed that I
was attempting to get a celebrity such as the Chesterfield (now Bolton)
footballer Kevin Davies or Paul Gascoigne to pay a visit to the school. I
claimed Kevin had agreed but never got back to me (they’d never check that
shit!). Somehow they appeared to actually believe me, I’m not sure
why they’d not wondered why I was attempting to get a celebrity to visit. The
story worked though and I wasn’t branded as some kind of mad leader. I was simply told that if I wanted to do something like that I should go through official channels. Most of the kids in school just thought it was all a big hoax so it all turned out OK. Looking
back maybe I should have gone along with it and become some kind of maniac who
was going to recruit a bunch of impressionable young people into my cult and
make them believe that the world was run by rabbits who brainwashed us with
signals from microwaves. Then, in years to come I’d have a big beard, we’d all
live in a big compound and they’d have to give me all their money and
sleep with me in exchange for the secrets of rabbit survival and to worship me and my sparkly robes and wonderful beard.
So, that in a nutshell, is some of the slightly weird things
I got in trouble for.
