Having made my bed, so to say, by growing my hair long, wearing studied leather wrist-bands and refusing to listen to anything other than hard rock music, I find myself having to lie in it. Every girl at school hates me yet digging my heels in I choose not to cave in and get a haircut, but continue being myself earning more than enough good friends by doing so.
I make one good, like minded friend in particular with whom I sit with in every class gaining cheers from our Maths teacher if we at least bothered to write the title of today’s lesson.
I was never really a disruptive pupil at school yet trouble never had a hard time in locating me in more surreal ways than your average kid talking in class or chewing gum.
Of course, like all the other idiots, I started smoking almost right away and even got myself carried arms and legs by a teacher and Kris- my mountainous buddy in-crime, to see the school Doc after turning several shades of yuck while puffing on our early morning splif.
Caught showing a trainee teacher my new collection of dud weaponry including a hand-grenade with explosives removed almost led to a visit from a Bomb Disposal unit. My removing of the pin and showing a large hole in the bottom where the contents had been taken out would defuse the situation after causing a near heart attack to the Assistant Principle, but not halt the calling of my Mum. “Mrs Ritchie, your son brought a bomb to school”! The guy who gave me this stuff actually got in trouble for exactly the same thing when he was at Primary school.
Number one in my chart of school mishaps would have to be when I was sixteen and had just left the world of education. I still hung around there with friends still attending and a few expelled or excluded.
It was quite a nice day as my accomplice dropped a few pills not giving a hoot that it was still morning and indeed not the time or place to get out your tree -about fifty yards from the school gate-. A funny turn had him coughing blood, grinding teeth and complaining of a banging headache and in dramatic fashion he begged that I get help (sympathy) from a girl we knew who was currently taking part in a Maths lesson. A girl who just happened to be unbelievably gorgeous.
Bursting into her classroom I catch my breath while the teacher asks what I’m here for. He leaves the room for a moment but tells us to go nowhere. We leave immediately.
Bumping into some of her friends on our way to see our dying James, Danielle decides it’d be a much better idea for her to go and get high with them. I return to a friend looking even worse than before and decide to bring him into the school where we can get some real help.
His Mum is called and James is freaking out now. Doesn’t want to be left alone and demands that I stay in the room with him at all times. We’re questioned about where the pills came from but I genuinely don’t know. I assume all bets are on me and just as I start thinking things can’t get worse I’m hit with the question “Where’s Danielle”?
Ahh.
What to say? She’s getting stoned with her mates who are also meant to be here! No.
“You’ve ran into a school, taken a girl out of class without permission and now she’s disappeared. Now you return with no knowledge of her whereabouts and you’ve brought an excluded pupil that’s high on drugs”! Timing of this couldn’t have been any worse as only recently a crazed man had wandered into a school in Scotland and took the life’s of so many. This isn’t the same but the disappearance of Danielle is a serious cause for concern.
James Mum arrives and takes us both to hospital now that Danielle has finally turned up safe n’ stoned. Quite amazingly further action is not taken with James’s Mum vouching that I’m not to blame and she knows her son and me well enough to know it was his own doing. I’m no longer a student anyway and the missing girl incident is taken as a silly boy thinking he’s doing the right thing.
What a day. From possible drug pusher to kidnapper in the space of an hour! Now I know that Mama didn’t say there’d be days like these!
From the start our general disregard and lack of common sense would eventually lead us, all too quickly, into bother over the coming years, but first things first and it really was only a matter of time…
Without wax / 