Stories Of Life .......

Bullying or Peer Pressure?.

How was she able to do it ?, she was never any good back in her School days those day's could bring their own nightmares to her mind. Even now as an adult, an older one as now she had to admit she was getting too long in the tooth as they call it. She looked at her life she was the typical old lady with only a cat for her company, if she had been an actor she would have a pigeon hole just for this type of role. She was suited for her life as it was now back to being a very young child, who wasn't allowed to have any ambitions so she didn't have any. She went through  her childhood not knowing anything different only as an adult did she see how her controlled life had been and in fact it was a happy childhood just lived out under circumstances beyond her control. She liked that phrase of words because everything she did, what she ate, what she wore all of it had been how she had not wanted it to be, but because the person making her do, do a lot of things was her Mother then she had let her life be as it had been. Because surely the role of a Mother, Mum, Mammy call her by any name but she has a child to love the child. To nurture that child with love no matter what, to help the child grow into it's life's own role and be there while the child tried out a few tentative steps to find which way he or she was going to bloom into adulthood. That is a Mother's way to let it have a freedom of choice, but she didn't have any of that she wondered that now she was older. Was that why she could not always go back in her memories and pull out a happy happening of her younger life it wasn't because she was too old not to be able to remember like you see some of them, reliving their childhood like becoming a child again. Those she felt sorry for but they were happy in their own way they were living and thinking, they were the age back then that was a happy time in a childhood. Maybe it was the older life they were living that frightened them that the brain just gave up and took them back to calmness away from a very lonely hardship life that living to a great old age made their minds go back in time. She didn't envy them, theirs was an inocent way of living a rebirth of sorts. But she wouldn't wish to suffer that same fate, because not one part of her childhood could she want to relive it time after time forever. It had always been her way if she tried to remember a memory she couldn't it wasn't an old age thing with her there just wasn't a happy memory. Which in itself was a contridiction to when before she had said she had, had a happy childhood it just felt happy if that made any sense. There were snippets of things that happened that were brought to her attention but they were memories involving her Dad who she loved with every part of her being. Even she was almost his age when he had passed away so young, but even at the age of sixty three he seemed a very old man and she put that down to living with her Mother. Who seemed to control not just her life but the family life as a whole only her older brother was exempted from that, he was the golden child. Not to say her Dad did not have any authority in their life he did and he had once punished her on her bare bottom with the strap or the chain part of the dog lead, she had been caught stealing some biscuits from the local shop.  The shop's were just at the top of the road and around the corner. But he did this to her as she had stolen before and again been found out but this time instead of the shop keeper taking her home, he made her wait in a room and he locked her in the room at the back of the shop He fetched her Dad to the shop, to this day she had remembered the sound of the voices outside of the door the shop keeper speaking, her Dad's very angry voice. When the door was opened she could remember pushing her body further and further away from her Dad's angry face she saw that he was livid at her. All the way home she was saying how sorry she was all he did  was walk quickly at the side of her in silence they made the short journey home, the key in the lock and she was inside the house visibly shaking and upset. He pulled out the wooden dining chair and told her to lean across it she did as he told her the chair cushioned top was only narrow and she was thin, he use to call her Sparrow Legs or Twiggy. "Take down your knickers !" His words tore into her as she lay across the hard surface, she stood up and did as she was told and then went back into position. He pulled a drawer open and took out what he wanted, she could still recall this was the only time her Mother had tried to protect her daughter when she saw him with the small chain dog lead with a leather handle for holding onto the lead. The lead belonged to 'Mitch' their staffy so it was a strong lead, the first hit on her bottom had her shriek out in pain as it tore into her skin and again it came down heavy she screamed and fell of the chair. "GET BACK !" so again she lay down across the chairs cushion and she gripped the chair legs holding on tight. She couldn't now remember how many times he beat her bottom but it felt about ten times or even less when he stopped her Mother took her upstairs to soothe her bottom that was on fire she had her stand on the bed while she put some cream on her injured bottom, she held up her upper clothes in her ams and she saw in the mirror all the large purple bruises forming on her skin and where the lead had cut into her skin it bled. She jumped and flinched about when the ointment touched her bottom only her Mother's hand hitting her bottom did she stop moving about on the top of the bed she balanced herself out till her Mother was finished. It was not just the only time he ever punished her like that so heavily but it was the only time she ever stole again. That memory she could really physically remember and still feel to today, the first time the shop keeper took her home and rang the bell the body shaking she felt the warm trickle down her leg when her Dad had opened the door. This thought, made her go back quickly to the present day and she felt the urge the need to go to her bathroom to spend a penny. She could remember only bits of her being a child the little things even back to being in the nursery, that it was called back then today it would be the Foundation class none of them could read or knew how to spell their names so their coat hooks all had a picture above the hook. Her picture was of an opened up unberella it was like a dark pink or red  colour it's shape or it's spokes were a different darker colour, she could remember that day she was aged about five years old. She had met her friend then aged five years old they both had a brother each, hers was younger mine own brother was older than me. So we became as 'Sisters' we were together in every class in the Junior School right into High School untill her friend went into a class below hers, but still as friends they stayed together for the next fifty five years since they first met and all she knew was the umbrella picture was where she put her coat on that hook. But it was in High School that she met the main subject of her story.
She and a few other girls went about together they were in the same class at the all girl's School, they made a little gang together and today their names were etched on her heart they were her first real friends and she was in a place where her Mother lost the control of her every breathing moment. That stopped at the enty gates, but that was until she met met her 'Bully' in the shape of a girl who picked on herself and another member of their little gang. She too was like herself very quiet very timid in every matter and an easy target for what maybe called today as Peer Pressure but to me back then she was my 'Bully' for all the four years spent in High School. Where she had been locked in a cupboard in the classroom only released when the Teacher heard her banging about inside and her very low cries of anguish and the cupboard door opened and she rolled out of the cupboard to the feet of the Teacher much to the amusemt of the whole class erupted into laughter "She must have locked herself in there Miss" a voice was heard as the Teacher helped her to stand up then she was placed in a seat near the Teacher's desk away from her own normal seat with shouts of "Teacher's Pet" ringing in my ears I got on with my lesson. There were many more incidents of such nature from this same person over those years from having glue rubbed in my eyes from the person behind me unseen by me but while we were in the middle of a lesson she had the best of me. To the time this 'Mouse' like person, this 'Worm' turned on her 'Tormenter' but it did involve her teasing me for the last tme. Again I was the brunt of her bullying in a metal work lesson, we had melted the copper item ready to shake out the different colours from out of a pepper pot looking tube, it was then she started shaking the coloured metal filings into my air down the back of my school uniform down in my underwear they fell. The other girl's giggling at me was too much for me to take and i picked up the nearest object to my hand and chased her around the room holding a sharpened pencil like a spear, I didn't stab her but  I wanted to I didn't catch her at all. But if I had done this story may have had another part to it another ending. Because it did end then her Peer pressure on me, she never attempted another thing in school again.
Some years later fast forward to being an adult I came across her walking on the same side of the street so our paths crossed again. She knew me before I recognised her as my 'Bully'. She called out my name, it stopped me in my tracks when she said who she was !!. She mentioned in a flippant way the way she had treated me as in school. I was back there in seconds and also in the same moment of meeting her as an adult I replied in the same flippant manner "We were only kid's then" was all I could utter and we went our seperate ways I wonder what her thoughts were as she walked away from me ?. Did she even realise the harm she had done to me in a physical and emotional way in High School a place of safely from the World outside the gates. Did she feel guilty  of the harm i had fell for in the four years i knew her ?. I only know what that day i felt even to today i have the same feelings towards her 'I HATED HER !'. By a coincidental happening a job years later took me to be sitting in a Residential home lounge I saw her again, a few times, her own Mother was living there. We just said our Hello and nodded to each other I've never seen her since but I live in another city to where  I lived as a child and now in an age I should forgive I will never do that that the 'Hate' feelings run deep. I'm sorry to say, she ruined my life back then to the person i am today. Because I am still a nervous child in an old womans body. Though I don't show it not in most situations I come across.
Georgie Morris