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| Cheadle Kingsway School before its makeover |
Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!
I made the naïve mistake of telling
Veronica from my previous school that I couldn’t tie my shoe laces. A few days
later June a friendly girl who was fond of boys and obsessed with the Osmonds,
asked me to tie her laces for her because she hated the touch of canvas. I knew
Veronica had told her about my difficulty and June was trying to show me
up. I fully expected to make a fool of
myself but calmly tied her shoelaces. I had not realised I had mastered this
and had been wearing slip on shoes for a couple of years; June must have
thought that Veronica was making up one of her lies.
There was a class distinction in the
styles of bulling. Working class girls
preferred physical violence and respected you if you won a fight; whereas
middle class girls preferred psychological abuse. However there was not a class
distinction in name calling. In the first three years of school I was a
constant target for fighting. A red
haired Australian girl named Stella, picked on me thinking I was an easy target
and wouldn’t fight back. She called me a fat woggy cretin and had been goading
me all lunchtime! I lost my cool and flattened her so her sister Colleen came
along to defend her and after one punch to her face she was crying because she
had been to the dentist earlier in the day.
When I moved
into a different class to Veronica she soon drooped my like a hot potato and
began deliberately throwing insults so it would be my idea to fallout with her.
In front of what looked like the whole school, she called me a useless, mongy,
specky-four–eyed spastic, who was fat and ugly and had no friends. She
challenged me to meet up with my ‘friends’ at lunchtime so that the whole
school could see that no-one liked me, and she would bring her many friends
along to show how popular she was.
I was hoping this was one of her
fantasies and did not take up her challenge and had forgotten about her
outburst, she brought a whole crowd of girls who looked like blue bottles
buzzing with anticipation at my humiliation, because they had took her side.
The whole event backfired on her, when the roar of ‘SCRAP! SCRAP! SCRAP!’
resounded across the playground. I could tell she didn’t want to fight with me
because I had list my temper with her previously and she was coward. But before
we knew it we were pushed together. A red mist came over me because of all the
years of humiliating me and the way she had treated me in the past. I really
laid into her, digging my nails into her badly scratching her arms and face.
She ran away in tears and everyone cheered at my victory. She later tried to
turn my assault on her to her advantage by trying to imply that I was inhuman
for making such a vicious attack.
Another girl Dora who couldn’t stand
the sight of me, grabbed hold of my hair because I was accused of losing June’s
skiing socks that had mysteriously disappeared from the wardrobe of the Her
Farter(sic) hotel bedroom, during a school skiing trip that I had spent most of
my time falling on my backside. I refused to give June the £1 she was asking to
replace them to raise money to fund a going to an Osmond concert. I suspected
she had taken the socks herself and was trying it on especially as the socks
were old and darned and not even worth 25p. Dora he best friend a short stocky girl
with very fine mousy blond pageboy haircut grabbed my hair which was wiry and
curly so it sprang back when it is pulled, poor Dora on the other hand hair was
not as resilient so when I retaliated by grabbing her hair a huge clump fell
out creating a toupee on the floor, leaving a bald patch, so she ran off crying.
Although I was only defending myself I felt really mean as I did not intend for
Dora to lose her hair. I quite liked Dora and did not know why she hated me so
much. The incident gave fuel to Veronica
to reinforce the rumour that I was a wild animal who didn’t know her own
strength. Mrs Barlow a trendy teacher who had had her hair streaked questioned
me as to why I got into so many scraps, I was defensive because I thought she
was blaming me and did not know where to start explaining why I was picked on
so much. Surprisingly I never got disciplined or suspended for fighting
although Mrs Law would have loved it.
The school bully Carrie was always
picking on me and making anti-Semitic remarks and she was friend of Veronica
looking for revenge. She was a better fighter than me because she was quicker
on her feet than me and very cunning. She had the tactics of a boxer giving out
hard slaps and punches dodging my uncoordinated attempts to hit her back, and
running away so I couldn’t hit her back. Everyone was terrified of her. I
realised that she was a very troubled and unhappy girl with low self-esteem I
hated to think what was going on in her head and what must have been happening
at home to make her so evil and vicious. She was very rude and aggressive
towards the teacher’s and made me look like an amateur at disrupting classes. A few years ago she actually contacted me on
Friends Reunited and apologised and said that she was an unwanted child as her
Mum gave birth to her late in life. This was why she was allowed to get away
with murder as her parents didn’t care and let her do what she liked. She was
happily married and living in Japan and would make sure she showed that she
loved her children.
Next Post is the Final Part of what it was like for me a Kingsway
