An extract from a piece I'm writing about my secondary school days.
Of the first
two years I don’t remember anything particularly good or bad happening, but
this changed in third year. There was a boy who I shall refer to as AG. One lunch
break a few of us were mucking about in the classroom. Someone came up with the
idea of putting an empty ink bottle on the teacher’s desk and lifting the lid
up quickly, so the bottle flew up in the air. It was all fairly gentle stuff with
the rest of us taking turns to catch the bottle. But then AG came into the
room.
After watching us for a minute or two he then said he wanted to have a go
but decided to use a full bottle of ink. Needless to say, when he launched this
into the air the rest of us got out of the way sharpish. The bottle landed
on the floor, broke open and ink went everywhere. We told AG what we thought of him and that he should go and get a bucket and mop to clean up the mess.
To his credit he agreed to do this.
With the
drama over, or so I hoped, I headed out into the yard to “go down the hill”.
This was a rather quaint expression we were told to use when we wanted to go to
the loo. The toilets were indeed down at the rear side, if you will, of the
school so you did in fact go down to the buildings where they were located.
After
relieving myself I headed back in the direction of the classroom. But who
should I see coming towards me with a bucket full of inky water but AG. When he
saw me his eyes lit up and he proceeded to chase me and try and soak me with
this dirty water. Fortunately one of the chemistry teachers came out from the science block and shouted at AG to stop what he was
doing.
But by this
time I realised he had managed to hit the back of my jacket with some water, so
I made my way to the classroom and stood with my back to the radiator to try
and dry off a bit. The next thing I knew AG was back in the room looking a bit
sheepish but worse was to come.
Being on the ground floor it was possible to look
into the classroom from outside and one of AG’s friends appeared at the window and started
making rude gestures at him. AG then picked up another ink bottle (this one fortunately
empty) and told me to move as he was going to throw it at the window. I told
him not to be so bloody stupid as I was not in the mood for any more of his
antics. But this did not stop him, and he threw the bottle at the window.
It was one
of those situations where things almost went into slow motion as I saw the
bottle coming through the air towards me. I dived for cover. The bottle hit the
window. It bounced off the window. It hit the radiator and smashed into pieces.
Glass shrapnel flew everywhere including towards my head.
I’m guessing
there must have been a moment of stunned silence from the other boys in the
room as they could not believe what they had just witnessed. We knew AG was a
bit unhinged, but this took the proverbial biscuit.
My immediate
reaction was to put my hand to my head and to my alarm I found I was bleeding.
The PE teacher did First Aid, so I made my way to his room below the
gym and waited for him to come and patch me up. I recall him examining my head
and asking who had done this to me. When I told him it was AG he shook his head
but was not completely surprised to find out who the culprit was.
I then went
back to the classroom, by which time the first lesson after lunch had started, so
had to hurriedly get my books and go off to my next class.
Years later
my mother told me that she and my father decided to keep me off school for a
short while as presumably there were not happy at the school’s reaction to what
had happened. I can’t say I remember what the aftermath was. This was an unusually
eventful lunch break, but I suppose I would have adopted a stoic attitude and
accepted that this sort of thing just happened. There wasn’t much I could do about
it.
