Now i am aware that all children experience the ‘gawky’ years in which they ascend from the Rucksack Wearing Hunchback Little Hobbits stumbling and tripping over themselves down corridors like its an assault course into the Tall, Pretentious, Know It Alls, stumbling and tripping over themselves down corridors like its an assault course. Don’t get me wrong, i fully understand all this, however, the situation was not improved for me by any means by being an exceptionally clumsy and tactless child. (this has not changed – except now i am an exceptionally clumsy and tactless teen). Let me try and explain myself through example..
poor bugger...
My earliest embarassing moment from memory has to be in year 7, my first year of high school, in times before the social boundaries were set and the girls had discovered fake tan. I still remember in those first few weeks, strolling into school thinking i was some ginger prodigy with a huge black rucksack and a flourescant yellow folder, destined to be the underdog who went right to the top of the social scale, like in all the American films i’d seen. On one particular afternoon as i was walking home from school, lugging about three different bags around with me…it had been a PE day…bent over like a crippled old woman due to the weight of today’s bulky rucksack when i saw a group of sixth formers across the road, they were smoking so automatically they were cool. As i stumbled along the pavement like some lanky over-worked buckaroo i knew the elements were already against me. I decided to press on regardless and whack out a Sophie Swagger Special across the street, and in my simple year 7 brain i believed this would impress said boys. All did not go to plan. Getting the swagger on, i started working the road…trying to act natural as the bags started dragging and sliding from my shoulder…just as a car swung round the corner out of nowehere and i realised i may, in fact, absolutely had to pick up the pace in order to avoid imminent death.
Unfortunately for 13 year old me, my mother had insisted on purchasing school trousers that flared hugley at the bottom…and i am not exagerrating when i say they were John Travolta style. She decided these were obviously appropriate for an appearance conscious teenager. Needless to say, as i started running across the road, my similarly embarassing black school pumps (though all school pumps were ugly, offensive shoes that no-one in history has ever liked or would buy out of enjoyment) inevitably caught onto the bottom of my trousers, leading me to fall face first, arms flailing like a falling tree onto the gravel of shame. As i face planted the road, my three bags shot from each hand, leaking the contents of my school and PE bag all over the street, revealing socks and pants to the world. Needless to say the sixth formers collapsed in laughter, and the driver, helping matters immensely, started honking and shouting at me to get out of the road as i lay spread eagled in my pit of self shame. I had to crawl around on all fours gathering my clothes, books and pens from various parts of the roads as i was heckled, honked and humilated. Then i had to walk past the sixth formers, face my shame head on, and go home with two grazed knees and a ripped pair of John Travoltas. Not a great start.
‘sofficial.
'sofficial 