School Daze...

I'm going to ask you to cast your minds back to the year 1984. A year that amongst other things saw the summer Olympics take place in the USA and you weren't cool unless you had a Frankie says relax t-shirt or a VW badge around your neck on an impossibly thick gold chain.

I was cool for a day in 1984 and I'll remember the looks on everyone's faces until the day I die.

The thing was I never had a Frankie t-shirt until my big brother had grown sick of his one and gave it to me (three years too late) so the only way I could have ever have become cool was to get the best VW badge possible. My mission was set.

The day I crossed the line from honesty to criminality was much like any other but the rush of living life on the edge was beyond my wildest dreams. At ten o'clock at night out my bedroom window I slunk trying desperately not to arouse the suspicions of my mum (who although being deaf in one ear could hear a gnat's fart in the next town) who was watching TV in the room next to mine.

As I climbed down the drainpipe with a screwdriver in my pocket I felt like I was about to commit the crime of the century even though I was only going to try to steal a VW badge.

I walked for at least 5 hours trying to find a VW that still had a badge on it, due to all the kids in my school having nicked them all.

I couldn't find one, so I started to make my way toward home taking a shortcut through the local industrial estate when I saw the holy grail not ten feet away from where I stood, parked at the side of the road was a delivery truck for a Dutch haulage company and there right at the front of it was a VW badge that must have been a foot and a half in size, my mouth ran dry and my pulse quickened at the thought of the biggest VW badge I had ever seen in my life.

I walked toward the truck with all the guile of a thirteen year old on a crime spree, trying to be nonchalant about it but looking like as suspicious as was humanly possible, I took the screwdriver from my pocket and slid it between the badge and the grille of the truck taking great care not to damage it (not the truck, fuck the truck I wanted the badge) and when it finally came loose I pried it from the grille like I was prying a jewel from a dead Pharaoh's hand.

The next day I walked to school having serious trouble trying to stay upright because of the weight what with it around my neck on a chain that my brother used to secure his pushbike.

In assembly that morning while all the kids were trying to out do each other I knew my moment had arrived, so I wandered over to the crowd of popular kids and said "Alright folks what's happening?"
"Fuck off Ross." Said John McDonald, one of the most feared kids in my class at school.
"Nah." I said with false bravado "Why don't you fuck off, piss head."
"Feeling brave are we?" He replied.
"Not particularly, but I thought you all might want to see my new VW badge that I got last night." I said to him, thinking that my new badge would somehow protect me from a savage beating from a thirteen year old who had stabbed his own father and was a sure fire prison inmate as soon as he left school. If not sooner.

"Let’s see it then tosser." Said Ian Hartley, another tough kid.
Having accumulated a crowd of thirty kids around me by this time I saw my moment of fame approaching rapidly, "CHECK OUT THIS BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKA!" I yelled and pulled the zipper down on my jacket revealing what to the normal adult eye was a quite blatantly stolen VW truck badge but to thirteen year old kids was a symbol of coolness that was unbeatable.

The next day I was given a lesson that I'll always remember... If you are going to steal then do not wander around at any social interaction with the pilfered goods wrapped around your neck.

I was sitting in my English class staring blankly into space when the dreaded Mr Mackenzie, Assistant Headmaster and known about the school as FILMSTAR, due to the fact he wore sunglasses everyday and was never seen without a clipboard in his hand.

He walked straight toward me with a look of Disdain on his bland and humourless excuse for a face and said (in a proud and happy voice) "Ross Douglas, come with me this instant the police are here to see you."

I nearly shit my pants, all the time looking like someone who does not care that the police have just arrived at school for them.

Mr Mackenzie escorted me to the headmaster's office prattling some shit about "Letting the school down" and "Setting an example" I felt like telling him I had set an example to all the other kids in school (i.e don't get caught) but kept quiet and readied myself for the forthcoming attraction of criminal investigation, my plan was simple DENY, DENY, DENY.

The headmaster was a kindly old guy who had went to school with my mother and liked to hear how she was keeping. This had in the past saved me from many forced visits to his office on the instructions of other teachers, going into his outer office and telling his secretary I was sent by Mr/Mrs/Miss whoever for whatever reason and going into his office and telling him my mum was asking how he and his wife were keeping, then returning to class and telling the teachers that I had seen him like they had told me and that if they didn't believe me then call his secretary.

But that day was not an alleged social visit, it was a police visit and one that if I wasn't careful my parents would be summoned and then I'd really be paddling down shit creek in an upturned boat, I knocked on the door of his office and was instructed to enter.

Right there in front of me was the police in all their uniformed glory waiting anxiously for what I thought was the bust to end all busts (I have always had delusions of grandeur). My headmaster explained that they were here to question me about the theft of a Volkswagen badge from a Dutch truck, and that someone in school had reported to a teacher that I was seen with it, he also went on to give me a glowing report to the policemen that I was a model pupil and that I had never been to his office for anything other than a visit to say hello (as far as he knew all my visits to him were social) I felt ashamed.

The policeman said something along the lines of "Having taken into account your exemplary record of behaviour we have decided to take no further action on this matter, but if we meet again under similar circumstances I shall be forced into taking steps."

The relief that washed over me and I told all present that I would be a good student and would never again walk that path, Which lasted about a day when I was sent to the headmaster's office for beating up a sixth former. I got away with that one by pulling my tried and tested "My mother is asking how you are..." Routine.