Soldiers and the IRA - Part 2
I guess they weren't impressed with my ability to keep my mouth shut. When you are a child and you play games like this, you really get into it and take them so seriously. Next thing I know, Paul swings the stick at me in an effort to forcibly extract the answer. (We played the way we saw it.) The rubber protective piece flew off into the air, and the stick part stayed with him. Down it came right onto the side of my neck. Im thinking, Even if I did know where the hell they were, your chances of getting that information just went down to zero. I thought we were friends, but a re-think is in order.
This brought tears to my eyes, which I spent the next five minutes repressing, because I didnt want to appear to be unsportsmanlike or a big cry-baby. After five minutes though, I couldnt keep from crying because there was the pain thing that seemed to start in my neck and move down my body. Oh yeah, I started swearing also, and telling Paul of the useful places I was going to put the stick once I could move from the fetal position I had assumed on the ground.
He was extremely upset and was almost crying himself. He couldnt apologize enough, but it put an end to my participation in the game. Both of my captors stopped at that point and we eventually went home. We didnt bother to tell the rest of the lads though, so it was a while before they figured it out. They were still wandering around the estate hiding from a foot patrol that would never come. Funny really now that I think back on it.
It was a while before I played that game again, and the next time we introduced some safety precautions. Yeah, we also forbade Paul to ever use anything that might at some point be used as a weapon. I had a lot of notoriety though the next few weeks showing off the wound to people, the girls in particular, but that is another story.
There were several versions of that story circulating amongst the lads in the neighbourhood with varying degrees of bravery and thuggery. Ah a childhood in Northern Ireland.
This brought tears to my eyes, which I spent the next five minutes repressing, because I didnt want to appear to be unsportsmanlike or a big cry-baby. After five minutes though, I couldnt keep from crying because there was the pain thing that seemed to start in my neck and move down my body. Oh yeah, I started swearing also, and telling Paul of the useful places I was going to put the stick once I could move from the fetal position I had assumed on the ground.
He was extremely upset and was almost crying himself. He couldnt apologize enough, but it put an end to my participation in the game. Both of my captors stopped at that point and we eventually went home. We didnt bother to tell the rest of the lads though, so it was a while before they figured it out. They were still wandering around the estate hiding from a foot patrol that would never come. Funny really now that I think back on it.
It was a while before I played that game again, and the next time we introduced some safety precautions. Yeah, we also forbade Paul to ever use anything that might at some point be used as a weapon. I had a lot of notoriety though the next few weeks showing off the wound to people, the girls in particular, but that is another story.
There were several versions of that story circulating amongst the lads in the neighbourhood with varying degrees of bravery and thuggery. Ah a childhood in Northern Ireland.
posted by Dr. Martin Jordan | 7:07 PM
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