Oh Brother!

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Chapter 3


By the time Neil started secondary school I was already in the 5th year. The rules were different to when we had been at primary school, the fourth and fifth years had a different playground to the first, second and third years. We also had different lunch times. So the only time I saw Neil was while we were waiting for the coach at night. Remarkably, although I remained in the same school to take my A-levels, Neil was not particularly troublesome. He had learned that it did not always pay to call on 'big brother' in times of crisis. My parents, on the other hand, had not.

I came home from school one day to be told "Neil's being bullied. What are you going to do about it?" Now I was not renowned within the school for my violent temperament. In fact, since my time in the first year when I took on the school bully ( a fight that I was credited with winning, although from my perspective he knocked the c**p out of me!) I had not actually indulged in many playground boxing matches. It turned out that the lad bullying Neil - a kid named Lewis as I recall - was a second year. This put me in a difficult position. I tried to explain that I was a fifth year, that Neil should report his problem to the teachers, and that I was busy revising. They would have none of it. I remembered Lewis when he was a first year. He had himself been bullied so I felt a little sorry for the kid. Still a parental order was a parental order, so I planned my campaign.

Lewis caught the same coach to school as myself and Neil and, since this would be the only time I would see him without the presence of a teacher, I decided to carry out my mission on the coach. I got on about two stops before Lewis and was waiting in ambush. As he got on and walked towards the back seat (I sat at the front of course) I grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back, and pulled him onto the seat. The conversation then went something like this:- "I understand you're bullying my brother?", "Ow, you're breaking my arm". "What year are you in?", "Ow, ow, second, ow", "well, Neil is in the first and I'm in the fifth, so that's about even, and if you bully him again you'll have me to deal with". It is a sign of the decline in educational standards in our country that Lewis accepted the fact that two is to one what five is to two, or perhaps it was just that having your arm half-way up your back reduces your ability to carry out algebraic manipulation. Whatever the explanation, Lewis didn't bully Neil again. Of course Neil never admitted that it was his fault I had become involved. In fact he even 'officially' told me that in future he would be grateful if I would leave him to fight his own battles. Sometimes you just can't win! It came as no great surprise to me that Neil and Lewis became friends for quite a while after that.


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