GEEKS LIKE US

I was a glasses-wearing long-haired geek at High School.

Back in 1971 when I first landed in the 'first year', things will have seemed rosy and bright like a sunlit democracy. But I was wrong.

High School was a desert island peppered with fighting tribes. Straying from your own tribe could prove dangerous. I learnt not to stray.

My tribe were the geeks. We weren't called that back then. We were seen as swats because we were in the highest stream. Nowadays British kids would call us try-hards.

Not everyone in my stream were Geeks. There were sporty types, captains of the school's teams, rock climbers [we lived not too far from the Lakes] and very prim and proper kids too. The girls in there were just as different. It was a catholic school so religion played a part as well.

Geeks like me tended to be into fantasy, sci fi, rock, Bowie and cover art. We were basically young hippies in school uniforms and in the fifth year we came into our own as uniforms were ditched.

The school also housed some very very tough kids too. These guys wrestled with lions before breakfast and thought David Bowie was a girl. Some girls were toughies too but it's the lads I remember because alas I stumbled into their sights now and then. Like every school we had bullies.

Hard was how these guys were described and how they saw themselves. Confusingly they would ask geeks 'Do you think your'e hard or what?'. I had never been hard. Quite the opposite, I was a softy and I knew it. A glasses-wearing long-haired wuss as the hard nuts would have said. They would abbreviate it to 'you speccy four-eyed c....!' just to make my day.

Brushing with the hard nuts was an unpleasant experience and for a time it blighted my school life in the third year. I joined the lunch time art club to get out of their way in the playground and corridors. It was my misfortune that they heard of my interest in martial arts. Yes I was a Bruce Lee fanatic but I wasn't a fighter. It was an ideas thing for me, the East, Bushido and all that. 

Luckily even hard nuts get bored and I re-entered the population freely and began to enjoy school again having learnt where and where to not go on campus.

I stuck with the geeks and in the fifth year we had our own part of the common room. We played ping-pong and even played our electric guitars there, discussing whether Neil Peart or Cozy Powell was the best rock drummer around!

I met a girl in the fifth year as well: JJ. What she saw in me I don't know as we were like chalk and cheese. But I must admit I thought she was gorgeous!

That final year at High School meandered on without event. I went out with JJ. I met up with the hairy geeks. We listened to Rush and Budgie. Exams loomed as they always do at the end. Life was teenage sweet.

But it was not to be. By the end of the fifth year life would never be the same for me or any of my family as our dear Mum died suddenly at the young age of 56. She never got to see so so many things.

Now, staring at 60, older than my Mum ever was, this glasses-wearing balding geek can look back with a rueful eye and make sense of the senseless things and smile at stuff that couldn't be smiled at back then.

Time for a coffee readers.