...because it's never too late.

I received mail from someone who remembered the same Devlin had tried to drown him in a puddle by the bicycle park. And this reminded me that, for sheer ugliness, my first year at Inbred Nazi High was hard to beat. Now you'd think that after twenty years we'd all have forgiven childish spats and that using this space for infantile name-calling would be well beneath me. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

To set the scene: I was used to being littler than some kids, because I had started school younger than was customary. I hadn't expected to be surrounded by a bunch that could have been kicked off the set of The Lord of the Flies for conduct unbecoming. Today my extreme nerdosity might be understood as ironic homage to Spongebob Squarepants. Back then, everybody just saw it as me begging to be "bliksemmed".

The T-Rex of the playground was Devlin. (What's in a name?) He lacked the wit and charm of, say, Jimmy Abbott, and being anywhere near "his" patch of muddy, Kikuyu grass was as much fun as shark diving wearing a wetsuit stuffed with bloody chum. It was taken as a direct challenge to his God-given right not to evolve. He was a rugby coach's wet dream, if you had that sort of rugby coach.

Devlin's terrifying predatory focus also saw him through tricky situations like smoking a cigarette while taking a pee. Trying to spray-paint his name above the maker's mark on the metal piss-trough was a project of high art. He'd make a couple of false starts to avoid putting out his skyf or cauterising his foreskin and, with eye-popping strain, resolutely squirt his signature. Every flourish cost that boy's kidneys an extra squeeze.

Standing at the urinal one day, the whiff of Gunston Plain cigarettes and dripping left sleeve let me know he was next to me. Any driver of a convertible who has ever stopped at a traffic light alongside a truck with its windscreen washers on will recognise the experience. He was grappling with spelling as usual and I had visions of him grabbing my hand and making me write out his name for him, using his fountain pen. So I slunk off to my place lower down the food chain.

See, in Standard 6/Grade 8 the change-room pecker order ruled and, if you didn't even have pubic hair, you were nothing. The suspense of waiting for your first real ball hairs to grow! Not even a stick of model aeroplane glue and strands from our lounge flokati rug could camouflage my inadequacy. It didn't matter if I could bench press his IQ. Even I, the owner of a Jet Jungle limited edition chopper bicycle, was powerless against those big, dumb muscles. But eventually puberty, flatulence and gum disease come to us all. I've become "a man of your age", meaning that people feel free to make comments like, "That's pretty good for a man of your age." And, "By now a man of your age should have... (Insert random, crappy product here)."

I don't know what ever became of Devlin. One day on the playground, he shoved a kid who, although much smaller, shoved back. The attempted drowning in a puddle ensued. Watching from a chickenshit distance, I recall Devlin sort of won the scrap, but he never seemed so big after that and eventually he just faded. Maybe he captured the heart of the Accountancy teacher and they settled down in Vasco to raise little rugby players. I do know that I admire the other kid to this day. A man of his age can look back and realise that he's always done pretty damn well, no matter what the odds.

I'm going to post this now, before I get to thinking too much about a really big man, scarred, psychotic and still smoking Gunston, who might take exception to being the subject of this blog.

Spot you round the corner!