I was browsing through ‘Chele’s ‘Blog’ (Michele Yunker—see link above) because it is always worth a read—and then a reread to make sure I haven’t missed something. ‘Chele writes very deep thoughts so a second read is always a good idea; those thoughts are such good reading that missing something would be a shame.
Well, it occurred to me that we were thinking along similar lines. My ‘Blog’ should have been up a few days ago but enforced idleness caused by excruciating agony in the lower back prevented me from accessing my computer.
Fortunately, the ‘Massage Man’ (Dino) has been now so I am more mobile.
These are the lines that I had sketched out previously:
We lived in a very, very small village in the wilds of East Devon. Like all villages of this type it has a distinct mentality. Let me explain what I mean.
At the age of six years I was walking to school down a very dark lane accompanied by my neighbour, a mentally challenged young man of a year’s seniority over me.
He sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; How I Wonder What You Are?”
At that age my hobbies were exploring the fields, rivers and seaside and, when wet, reading. I read books about birds, trees, aeroplanes and astronomy. Let me point out that I could not, and still cannot, poke a finger at a star and tell you its name; indeed, I have just about all my brain cells firing to make out the ‘Milky Way’! But I loved to read about planets, stars, comets and space, generally.
“We know what stars are. They are the same as our sun but so far away that they appear as points of light. They twinkle because of the light passing through our atmosphere. Light from the planets doesn’t twinkle because the points of lights are bigger.” Was my response to his song.
He looked at me as if I had just soiled my trousers.
Result? Several weeks of mockery at school—from everyone. “Ho, ho! He thinks stars are the same as our sun. Everyone can see they are smaller!”
Requests from me for alternative explanations fell on deaf ears and invoked even more abuse.
It was at this point that I became aware of how Galileo must have felt and, furthermore, that being clever was not clever. Being smarter than other people just made you a pariah. Especially in the village mindset.
At ten years old I passed the 11-plus Exam. Yes, yes! I took it early because my birthday is in August. Nobody else in the school passed.
Rushing home to spread the news, I told Mum that only one person in the whole school had passed.
“Really?” she asked. “Was that Jeannie Mitchell?”
“No.”
“Sally Clift?”
“No.”
“Arthur Stone?”
“No.” I was jumping up and down with impatience. “No! No! It was me—it was me!”
“Don’t be silly, David. We shall find out soon enough.”
Deflated.
And then—could we afford for me to go to the Grammar School? Oh, dear.
I went to the Grammar School. Wasted most of it. Trying hard not to ‘stand out’ made failing easy.
This is called ‘conforming to peer pressure’. The village mentality was winning. Success was measured, as I have said before, by getting on the bus in the morning with a bag of tools, a lunch-pack and a flask of tea to go and do a ‘proper day’s work’. This means having a trade like carpentry, brick-laying or plumbing.
You don’t have your own business because that’s for people who are ‘better’—it is important to know one’s betters and to know your ‘place in society’.
Money is bad. It is regarded as ‘filthy’. People are ‘filthy rich’. They live in a different strata of society which is not for the likes of us.
I had to escape. The military was the only real, practical, outlet. This was where I discovered that I didn’t want to be an officer. Why? Because a senior officer told me, at one point early in my career, that officer’s were not ‘ethereal people who lived in the clouds’. Oddly enough, I had that one figured out for myself from day one. But I didn't want to be part of a group who thought like that!
Don’t get me wrong, there are many really good officers and a couple, even now, that I count as friends but, like all sections of the community, there are good and bad.
The military was another sub-set of peer pressure. In this population you had to drink. This was necessary in order to be a ‘real man’. Non-drinkers were regarded as soft and effeminate.
So I stopped drinking. Strangely enough, I did not become soft and effeminate although I was excluded from social functions to a greater extent unless a driver was required.
I had to escape. Somewhere, lurking in a crevice of my mind, was the real me. It may be darker than the one that had assumed a veneer over my character but it had to be released
We are still not there yet. There is still a mix of the village mentality and the military mind-set trying to rise to the surface like an unwanted scum.
Perhaps I am now too old to change; the real me has been incarcerated inside my sub-conscious for so long that it will never get out completely.
At least I know now that nearly all the rich people I meet are really nice, genuine and, oddly enough, honest people who are generous with their help and advice.
That’s one wall that’s crumbled
All that’s really left is to convince myself that I really, really do not have any ‘betters’!
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