Competitors

‘Share and share alike’ was one of the things taught to us when we were young. I found it difficult at times but in the presence of older people it was best to comply. There were a few times when uncensored, I’d surprise myself by sharing something, prompted by a spontaneous surge of generosity from within. I’d feel quite saintly for a while and believe I should have been treated more kindly by folk, had they but known.

I can’t remember when it started but it probably began with a simply unhygienic sharing at school. My mate had an apple. I did not. So placing my arm around his shoulder as I’d seen other boys do, I said to him, “Give us a bite then, Jim?” And without any further persuasion, I enjoyed my first bite. Later, on observing other boys, I added, “Save us t’core too, will ya?” Over a period of time, the bite or the offer of the core would be shared as naturally as others had shared theirs. (I never extended my request to share oranges though. It was far too cold where I lived to be eating those anywhere but in the warmth of home. I also confess to an inbuilt aversion to tasting the juices of an orange watered down with the dribblings of a runny nose.)

Time and experience have brough competition to bear. There were other mates without an apple, so I set about acquiring skills to cope with the situation. It wasn’t long before I would hone in on an apple breathed on and being polished by a schoolmate as naturally as a female Codling moth’s antenna could pin point the male she sought. My oral seductions for a bite and the core had to be pruned and tamed; and they were.

After a bout of measles I was forced to wear spectacles, and the bottom dropped out of my persuasive approach, finely honed. Overnight I became a has-been mate, with four eyes. Then the school bully took to calling me ‘Skenner’, everyone laughed and I was relegated to a small group of forlorn no-hopers. My self-esteem plummeted. I was the last to be picked for soccer played with an empty tin – exciting within the four walls of the school yard where it was banned. I stood on the furthest boundary for cricket (played with a ball made from rags), if I was picked at all. No wonder I lost something of the bubbling infectious enjoyment of just being with my mates, especially when I we tried to see who could pee the highest up the wall in the boys’ loo (I could only reach the half-way mark). As a competitor I’d become a non-entity. A dreadful label for anyone.

I decided I’d become a monk. I’d be safe behind the cloistered walls of a monastery. I could have, if I’d lived in the Middle Ages… Many of my ideas and inspirations sprang from, “I could have, if…..” The monk idea didn’t last. I looked up the word in an encyclopaedia and pictures of them put me right off. They all looked so woe-begone, and it was obvious they could only reach the half-way mark too.

Anyway, it didn’t take me too long to accept being called four eyes, or Skenner. There seemed to be nothing I could do about it, so I’d grin and make some humorous comment…and in the process I gained a couple of great new mates. No point being woe-begone if I wasn’t even a monk, I thought.

Dennis Crompton © 1997