Things I Learnt From A Young Age #1

Things that I learnt from a young age are:
[…] That, what would begin as a game, certain ingredients would, in effect, result in the toxification of young people, and that it is actually possible to snort liquids through the nasal passage, notably Tabasco sauce and vodka, which you would think would induce a fast-acting effect upon the brain, but really the sensation is much like a simulation of vomit in the nose, and subsequently induces actual vomiting thereafter.

That on the way to class your school friend whom you've known and trusted since primary school and trust with all your heart (at the time) will offer you a small tin, the contents of which is a powder that he would snort in the business studies classroom before class had started and you would say no to that but accept pill he calls a Gary, which is named after Gary Ablett, but you don't know who that is, and we are later told he was a football player who played for Liverpool from 1983 – 1992, and still didn't understand (Ablett rhymes with tablet).

That, on the subject of toxicfication, at the age of fourteen you sneaked into a park near the Seaforth Docks, which had a peculiar smell of cabbage, and you smoked pot with with your brother and his friend and had to run away from a policeman who was only attracted to the effeminate giggles deriving from the dark bushes because the high which was induced is quite difficult to subdue once active.

That, during P.E., you opted out of any sporting activity on account of the exact same inflamed knee condition of your friend whom you've known since primary school, and the teacher, with disbelief, has no choice but to send a group of us to the other side of the school building were we smoked – or attempted to smoke as I coughed each time I inhaled and became very paranoid about my asthma and I panicked thinking I was going to die, so I gasped in lots and lots of air until I collapsed with the over-intake of oxygen and the group of boys laughed at me when I hit my head, which hurt for the rest of the day, and I subsequently told a girl in my next class, which was Spanish, that I was in a fight with a boy, but the attraction soon goes away once another boy asks who you had a fight with.

That during exam leave we decided to go to someone's house and get drunk for the first time in our lives, and I inhaled a solvent from a glass which was just deodorant and was like inhaling perfume, making me choke and spit. With the excess deodorant I sprayed it onto my friend's arm and set it on fire, I'm still not sure why I did that. The smell of cooked skin and hair roamed the house for several hours, it made us sick at first, then we got used to it. After three or four more hours of drinking I awoke half-naked in the front garden with a bloody nose as some kids were coming home from school.

That you chose, without any moral standings whatsoever, to draw penis shapes on the plastic bus stop window in black marker, you then drew some girls name on a park bench, you then wrote your name over the plastic outer-casing of a Jurassic Park poster outside a cinema, which you got in trouble for, but you didn't understand this was because you'd written your name on the poster.

That, although I was terrified of girls at that age, I liked to be around them when a group of us hung around this social club at night and then went inside to be a even more social, but as I said I was terrified and I felt more comfortable to hang around the streets at night when the girls had gone, and then the boys had gone too, and I'd have to go home because I'd get in trouble with the police who roamed the area like rats looking for kids doing nothing.

That when we'd skip school because we were bored and sometimes just go into town and walk around or buy a magazine and a coke and sit on the field near the school and read about what was happening in the music scene in the late 90's and early 2000's, discovered a tiny grave of a hamster with a cross made from sticks, although we only guessed it was for a hamster because I was too frightened when you tried to dig it up.

That even as a kid, women were mystifying creatures. And men were my dad with different voices.

That the mere mention of sex in school was only terrifying to those who had done it.

That being 'mathematically challenged' at a young age meant you were permanently made to believe you were a lesser species than the maths teacher, who degraded you to the lowest set, but at the same time rose in sets in English, improving grammar and stylistics, which improved grades, but also rose the ability for sarcasm and hatred of the mere fact of both words and people.

That love was a dangerous thing to be a part of, when one girl fell in love with me and I fell in love with her but she vanished from my life simply because I forgot about her. (This would recur more often in later years).

That drugs, alcohol and school mixed together was an hilarious combination marred only by the mere fact that doing these things resulted in premature depression leading to me to the ridiculous decision at one point in my life to take an art course in Lancashire, where I lived for three years, doing much the same thing.