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The boy sitting next to me is named Barry Florence.
We sit on wooden chairs at desks built for two. Young Florence sits to my left. One day he turns to me and asks to see what I have in my pockets. A little taken aback and not quite sure how to react I decide my mother would want me to cooperate with him and so I turn out my pockets. I don't think I would ever have had anything in my pockets but he was looking for sweets or money and I was his target.
This became a routine. He would ask me every morning as soon as the teachers attention was elsewhere. A point came when I decided enough was enough and so when he asked me for, I don't know, maybe the fourth or fifth time and maybe, I don't know, he had helped himself to something, whatever it was that I showed him, I just said "No".
His words to me in reply are etched in my memory: "I'll see you after school"
I want to make it clear to any one reading this who maybe does not want to accept what I am saying that this boy's behaviour was wrong and needed professional attention and that his remark to me was not meant in the literal sense.
As a five year old I puzzled over his meaning. But quickly dismissed the puzzle and got on with the day as children should be doing when in school.
Unbeknown to me Florence was busy doing other things that day.
How can I be so sure? Only because of what happened later.
By the end of the day I had forgotten all about him and his veiled threat. But he had not. As I left the school exit, on my own as usual, and began to cross the road I was attacked by an angry mob of evil christian, catholic, thugs. I managed to cross the road and back myself up against a low garden wall and they formed pushed in close lashing out with their evil minds.
At one point one of the girls said "Get his eyes" and then someone's claw scratched my face within a centimetre of my eye, I was going to type 'an inch' but I wanted to disown the english standard and use a more foreign one, that's why I back tracked and used the term centimetre.
I was hysterical and angry and annoyed that no adult had noticed or been nearby to notice and that the 'crossing lady' maybe twenty metres away had not noticed either, maybe she had her back to me.
They had done their evil work and Barry Florence had 'seen me after school'.
I want to say now, as a grown man just a couple of years away from being sixty and so some almost fifty five years after this brief but nasty event that this is something that is characteristic of the catholic system and to a lesser intensity to the christian system. I do not propose to justify or argue that assertion just here and now because it belongs to a different place and space but I just want to note it in passing as an important and not by any means a casual assessment.
Another thing I want to make clear is that this was a small town not a city and not an inner city ghetto or estate. Nor were there any children from ethnic or other cultures or countries. This was a small catholic school in a small town on the small but noisy, troublesome and intrusive island just off the North coast of France and known by various names and acronyms, the UK being one.
Nor was there any drug culture and hardly and alcohol one either.
I point all this out so that you can be aware that this kind of nastiness occurs in some evil minded five year olds without there being any kind of the usual things to blame it on.
Now I don't know, and frankly, I couldn't care much anyway, if he was subjected to some kind of abuse in his home life. I do know that I spent the whole time while I as there in that kind of prison that people call school on my guard and making sure I kept out of his way and his cronie's way.
I remember too, a few years later, we were both thirteen years old and I had got into the habit of avoiding any kind of group activity and choosing solitary activities instead and was so engaged, soaking a hardboard sheet and the whicker work I had done to it, in a sink of water (to soften it) and the headmaster appeared with Barry Florence. The boy sat down, I think maybe he had some small sprain but nothing noticeable and the idea, I think, must have been to use cold water as a kind of first aid measure. Anyway he started to cry.
I looked away. And just continued to occupy myself with what I was doing and pretended not to notice.
A year or so previously Barry Florence had for some reason hung around at a road junction that I had to pass in order to get home. Whether he was there by coincidence or not I have no idea but he tried his best to get close to me and to engage me in talk. I, on the other hand, just wanted to get past him without causing him to become annoyed with me so I didn't stop but kept walking as we spoke a few words and I was just relieved when I had gotten past him. We must both have been about twelve years old then.
That one incident when I was five years old changed my whole outlook upon school and in particular to making any kind of potentially social contact with him and his group.
I know some of you will be thinking, oh it is about time I grew up and forgave and forgot such a trivial incident. My own brother when I told him about this just instantly said: "That happened to everyone".
In that case all I say is that each person who thinks it is okay to dismiss such things as childish pranks and the like is someone, to my mind, that needs to feel that kind of feeling that I had for the years from when that happened to, even now, more than fifty years on. What kind of feeling is that? Well if I just stick to the time five to thirteen when I was in that school - and I think all catholic schools are evil places that's why they like to go in for lots of facade things like uniforms and ritualistic behaviours - then certainly I kept my encounters with him and any of his group to the bare minimum. Imagine that, eight years just keeping out of the way many of the other boys and some girls too, of not having a part in any peer group. Actually, don't, don't try to imagine it because I have just, in trying to convey it, been doing that and I can tell you it is not a place you want to share.
Instead, I will focus on what can be done, what should be done, to avoid and remedy this kind of behaviour and more especially this kind of thinking and that kind of mindset that people, five year old people, exhibit and clearly demonstrate when they speak and behave in such a way?
My first and quick reaction is to make a law whereby any child so affected is allowed to obtain a fully loaded machine gun and take it into school and empty it into each of those nasty catholic animals.
So you will at last agree with me that it is better if I don't linger with my first thoughts and feelings but move on to more positive ones?
You know, as soon as I got home I told my mother what happened and I showed her the cut near my eye - there was blood there - where the claw of one of these catholic animals almost, as intended, cut my eye but, thank god, she missed.
There IS a real part of me that reacts with excitement instead of fear when some kind of armagedon appears to begin. I know, from talking and listening to people that my reaction, excitement not fear, is related to this and another similar kind of experience.
But that is too much of a fine observation to go into detail here and it is probably better to stick to practical answers and for a start I think it is essential that adults are always observing what children are doing and not just assume that everything is fine.
If any adult or even an older, say teenager, had seen what had happened, heard what was said, and noticed the terrible emotional state I was in and did not intervene, did not step in to stop it and did not call to account those evil participants, those evil catholic five year olds, then, in short, armagedon is fine by me. Bear in mind they could not have had the remotest justification for doing what they did. It was done out of hate and not for anything I had said or done. Unless of course my "No" to Barry Florence is, in your mind, reason enough.
I know and I have encountered enough criminal british police officers who think in a similarly evil way that saying "No" to someone is more than enough to justify their punishment of that person. I know this from experience because I didn't even say "No" to the police when they falsely arrested me, denied me my basic rights and inflicted illegal punishments - I had not even said "No" to those british police *****holes and all I had said was "This is an assault. Either release me or arrest me" as they grabbed hold of me. That's a whole 'nother story though but I include it to illustrate that this mentality that I am describing in this personal memory does not, repeat does not, need any kind of plausible reason or excuse to produce it. The kinds of people who have this kind of mentality as these british five year old catholics had do not question or engage with any kind of conscience before giving into what even animals don't usually do: wanton savage attacks as a group upon a lone, innocent and often quiet individual.
If adults don't want to oversee and look after the nicer children then I am all for letting all the rapists, murderers, and night-time burglars be not only released from prison but being given medals of honour because that is the mentality that prevails in such circumstances.
I guess you can tell it makes me angry recalling this even today. I surprise myself at how much the anger is the aspect that is being expressed here. I wish I could summon up something like forgiveness or tolerance or understanding because I am more that kind of person or at least more the kind that walks away rather than lashes out for the sake of it.
My own observations are that the nasty animal kind of human - in the UK anyway - predominates. Ugly, loud, aggressive and bullying children are just as predominant as they were when I was a child. And the sensitive, fine featured, thoughtful, considerate boys and girls are in the minority. I would organise a cull every five years, personally, or at least that is what I would like to do IF I could also summon up the certainty of being right like bible people are.
Okay it is definitely time to give up trying to find answers as mine are currently well over the top. Let me move on and tell you that I have never been back to that school - I could easily have visited many times over the years. When I left and I was age thirteen when I left, I was relieved and never looked back. But I want to tell you this too. When I left I didn't give any of the children a second thought any more than those who left the concentration camps had a sentimental regret. Except for a boy called David I had always like and been friends with and an Italian boy whose name I won't mention because I don't want to cause him or his family any kind of embarrassment. You will have similarly noted that I have mentioned Barry Florence's name repeatedly. Does that mean I am happy to cause him or his family embarrassment? Decide for yourself.
Even now, more than half a century later, I would not want to meet any of those other people again, not even briefly.
I was always described as a most helpful member of the class in my school reports and I was always willing and eager to help and not because I wanted recognition or reward but to be useful and to be helpful. Very largely, looking back over my life, I have to say that this kind of attitude has never gained me any friends or appreciation but instead it has acted as a incitement to others to commit small or large acts aimed against me and with the intention of causing me injury.
You will of course think that I must be wrong and that I have twisted the reality somewhat and that people are not the way I have described and that they do not behave in such away and I can understand your reaction but it is not the ways things really are I am sorry to insist.
This is in fact one of the key cultural things that I like to observe and later on I hope to find time to elaborate on this because I have some priceless gems of wisdom to share with you concerning what I have noticed with other europeans in comparision with the british.
People notice and repeat the food thing between the brits and the french but this is just one part and it is not all that clear either. I mean the brits over the past few decades have learned a lot about food and related matters and in some ways it now beats the french at their own very, rightfully, famous game. But when you look at how the british treat their children and how not just the french but nearly all the other europeans do, then you can begin to grasp why children behave and think in fundamentally different ways in the UK. I would say I hold a unique and very valuable and important contribution as far as this goes. But this too is too much of a diversion to go into more here.
Getting back to my story I guess some of you will be thinking what a wimp, what a weakling, can't this little guy stand up for himself, has he got no guts just to allow himself to be bullied like that? Well, just to balance that view I would like to tell you that I did get tired of being pushed around and bullied by this a****ole and his evil little gang members and a point came where I almost literally said to myself: "The next person who pushes me around is going to get it back". So when that time came, it was a normally quiet and inoffensive boy who pushed me but in my five year old mind I had made a decision and he was the "next person" I had already decided to respond to in a defiant way. I turned to face him and raised the palms of both hands and thrust hard against his shoulders and he flew backwards and his head hit the wall and he immediately burst into tears. The feeling inside me was the worst feeling, the utterly worst feeling. I just cannot say how terrible I felt to have caused him to cry like that. I was deeply remorseful and sorry more than I have ever been ever since and I made a promise to myself that I would never do such a terrible thing again and, unfortunately I haven't, I wish I had, often but I have always preferred to feel the pain that others mindless, often christian, usually british, have inflicted, usually intentionally, upon me.
So I did have the guts and I was not a complete coward but I didn't have the right method. I needed to direct my anger and my retaliation at Barry Florence and I needed to have done it almost immediately, the next day at least so that his gang influence would echo that anyone cares to lay a finger on me and despite the cost it will not pay to the assailant. That HAS to ALWAYS be the clear message that such bullies, such *rs**ol*s are delivered. And if they want to act as a gang and target individuals - as has always been the situation in my case then I believe it is up to that individual to go a step further if he or she chooses.
Before finishing this story I want to say that when he started to weep in front of me, Barry Florence that is not the good littlie boy I had hurt, I felt a wave of strong compassion for and towards him, that and pity. so it is important to appreciate that he was not a winner. I was hapy and well balanced generally while he on the other hand had something inside that made him break down and this is particularly striking to witness when you know, as I did, that this is the 'hard boy'. He was the hard case type of person. That does not excuse his behaviour or just as importantly, his followers, his little gang, his cronies, his pack animals, but it shows that he didn't gain much if anything out of all those years of his own personal philosophy in life and I would never want to share or swap with anyone like that - and I have unfortunately met quite a few with that kind of mentality. But also, he didn't stand a chance of gaining my friendship or trust - never in a thousand years. He made that an impossibility.
Some years ago, ten or maybe getting on for more like twenty, I don't really know now for sure, I met him in the astral. This is not the place to go into any explanation if you don't know what that means although I plan to do just that at some stage. Also, I knew that he was no longer alive in this world, that he had died. His words to me were along the lines of we could do things together and even including quite explicit sexual connotation in that which showed how little he understood me despite his newly acquired spiritual environment.
I am glad he is evolving and I bear no grudge or ill feeling but I do not forget and nor will I ever, ever, drop my guard against the cunning and evil minds of such people like that Barry Florence. I don't wish him to rot in hell, far from it, but if my thoughts about him make him restless in the spirit world then he only has himself to blame for that.
And as for wishing to be with him or to spend some time with him even briefly, no thanks, once was more than enough.
By Paul E. Coughlin, SaneThinking.com
3 April 2007
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