Children are a decidedly odd bunch and their brains work in an unsual way. I suspected this for a long time having once been a child and having to work with the little clowns has confirmed my suspicions.
I arrived at school early after recently being told to arrive at school earlier. A simple instruction that I acted upon with great success and yet if proof were needed about the minds of children, I also told several of mine to not be late and they still arrived late. Idiots.
As I made myself a cup of tea, one of the younger students walked past with a cup. This in itself is not that unusual I admit, and if the story stopped there, you would probably feel it didn't warrant mentioning. Luckily for you the story doesn't stop there, because unlike children I'm not the sort to tell you pointless bits of information. Stupid children.
I looked at the cup to see what muck the boy was drinking and he was it appeared drinking some water with a small turtle in it. I turned back to put some milk in my tea; those kids always drinking weird stuff whether it's Aloe Vera juice, cold green tea or water with turtles....HANG ON.
I spun around. Nobody drinks water with a turtle in it. Not even here.
I had no idea who this particular student was so I addressed him as I do with all new children..."Oi you, come here".
He came here. Obviously a smart one.
Me: "Why do you have a turtle in your cup?"
Boy: "Is a turtle."
So much for him being a smart one.
Me: "Not 'is a turtle' you say 'it's a turtle'"
Boy: "Yes is a turtle"
For fucks sake, anyone would think I was speaking a foreign language.
Me: "I know, why do you have it in a cup and why is it here in school?"
Boy: "My pet. I bring him today."
Me: "I see. What is he called? What's his name?"
Boy: "Name is Obama."
Interesting; a communist, Muslim turtle from Kenya.
Me: "What do you feed him? What do you give Obama to eat?"
Boy: "Beef burger, teacher. Get him big."
Beef Burgers? You won't get him big, you will get him dead.
Who the hell in his family is going out and buying him beef burgers to feed to a tiny Turtle called Obama? What sort of person simply listens to the insane request of a little child and then thinks "Sure, let's run with that."? If he wants to feed his turtle burgers on the basis that it will make it big, who am I as a parent to say something crazy like "No, let's get him some turtle feed"?
I began to think what would have happened if my parents had agreed to my every whim as a child. The first thing is that I would be dead. As dead as Obama the turtle is going to be in about a weeks time.
The other thing that had me contemplating my wishes and desires as a child was a popular Facebook picture of John Lennon with a supposed quote from him about how when he was 5 years old his mother told him to aim to be happy and at school he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said "happy". Then the teacher said that he didn't understand the question and he replied "You don't understand life".
It is quite the quip and being a boring pedant I very nearly commented on the numerous postings of this quote to point out that Lennon didn't live with his mother when he was five. Moreover there is no evidence that he ever said what was being quoted.
Thankfully for everyone concerned I managed to reign in my insufferable, know it all smugness and instead thought about what I had dreamt of as a five year old and it would not make for a very deep and meaningful Facebook status.
If like my little friend with Obama I had also been allowed to try and follow my dreams at the age of five, I would have led one of the most fascinating and yet surreal lives imaginable.
I only had three pressing dreams as a young boy of five or six. The first was to change my name by deed poll to "Robin" and move into a forest with a group of friends. Being five or six years old I presume the group would have been largely made up of "merry kids" as opposed to "merry men" and the goal was basically to live in trees and shoot people with arrows.
A fairly noble goal for any child, but my desire to be involved in medieval conflicts as a chid outlaw was always going to be difficult given the era of my birth and my parents reluctance to set me loose into the nearest woodland.
But no sooner had one dream been crushed, than another was born in earnest.
Because I also had a strong desire to be changed into a Japanese boy. Being the worldly, educated man I am today, I refuse to buy into offensive stereotypes or wild generalisations. However, at the age of five I was a free thinker without the constraints of a politically correct world gone mad. I was of the firm belief that all Japanese people had an innate ability in Kung Fu and other martial arts.
I wanted to be a ninja and years of dedicated training seemed a lot more tiresome than simply becoming Japanese. To think that any old person can get a sex change these days and yet science is still months, maybe even years from being able to offer children a race change. How difficult could it have been for someone to just make me Japanese for God's sake?
My parents, Mr "not today" and Mrs "you can't do that" made absolutely no effort to make that dream become a reality either. Which brings me to my final yearning as a boy; a boy utterly devoid of a burger eating turtle or any sharp retorts for school teachers based on fictious life lessons. In other words, a boy in need of some excitement.
My final dream came about under unlikely circumstances. I was watching an extremely old episode of a black and white Flash Gordon serial film. I was born a long time after black and white left our screens and have no idea why a film serial from the late 1930's was ever shown on British television. But it was, and it changed my life. I had to do some google research just now to find out exactly which film it was and it was Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.
In this episode there features an enemy called "The Clay People". They are people - and this may come as a surprise - made from clay. Only watching this atrocious pap on Youtube just now, they would surely have been better named "The Pyjama People".
How any five year old, especially one as sharp and discerning as myself, ever watched a group of dreadful actors running around in loose pyjamas with some mud on their faces and thought they were convincing aliens is quite beyond me. What is even more beyond me is why that same five year old decided that his goal in life was now to become a clay boy.
I wanted to become able to blend into rocky, clay walls and to live underground in a series of damp, dimly lit caves waiting to ambush unsuspecting explorers. I already knew my stupid parents would object and probably offer precious little support in this endeavour so I experimented alone. I tried sticking pebbles to my skin. I thought about making a suit with slate and mud stuck to it.
Sadly my attempts were as ineffective as my ghost catching machine made from a shoe box with a portable vacuum cleaner inside it was.
So I never got to live the dream life of being made from clay and rock. A dream that became so strong a desire that I all but forgot about any need to be Japanese or practice my archery skills for the inevitable stand off with whoever was the standing Sheriff of Nottingham at that time.
A quick Wikipedia search reveals the sheriff at that time was Thomas Ball Edward Hilton. The name of a money grabbing, oppressor of the people if ever I heard one. No doubt he slept easier at night once word had got to him that I was focusing on the bigger picture, and looking to become a clay based alien life form.
So while I look back at all the things I have failed to accomplish, I now get to see other young children telling me about their ridiculous dreams. It is almost like Karma. I'm being punished for my idiocy by smiling and nodding at the idiocy of the younger generations.
Speaking of the nonsense that is Karma, I was on a subway the other day when a man in an electronic wheelchair got on. Now calm down before you think I am about to say something vile. I know the wheelchair community and I had a recent run in, but that is all behind us now. What happened was that as he reversed I looked up and emblazoned across the back of his chair in yellow font was the word "KARMA".
It has to be the most inapproproate and ironic placement of a single word that I've ever seen.
Now either that man has a very self deprecating sense of humour or somewhere there is a wheelchair production company being run by a five year old whose parents indulge his or her every wish.
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