Oozing with character

I was at the pool the other day, getting changed, when a boy of about ten walked in. He was short, awkward looking, and quite overweight. His puppy fat jiggled gently when he bent over to pick up his gear bag, an inch of butt-crack showing itself at the top of his pants. He pulled his bright blue speedos up to above his navel and studiously checked the length of the drawstring before tying it off tightly. They were pulled up so high that the crease at the top of his leg showed out the bottom of the togs.

I shook my head slightly, remembering my own uneasy years at primary school, remembering how cruel children can be about anyone even slightly different. I found some old school photos a little while ago, which brought back memories of the teasing and ridicule. I was the short, unco-ordinated kid who couldn’t run fast or bowl straight. I didn’t play an instrument, and I spent every available moment at home reading books. I had wingnut ears, a nose that ran constantly, and an inordinately large head considering the rest of my body. My standing at school was fragile at best.

We had an area under our house that we used to store firewood. There was an old, upturned dinghy and an array of for-sale signs down there. After reading a string of Famous Five, Hardy Boys, and Three Investigators books, I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to start a secret club under our house, with booby-traps to keep out my brother and sister. I told one of my friends about this, who then told the rest of the school, much to my horror and everyone else’s delight.

A part of me wanted to go over and have a chat with him, try and tell him something that might ease his passage through childhood, maybe give him some shorts to cover the bright blue abominations that were folding themselves into his butt. But such things are not for me to do, not my place. I wondered what I would do if I were his father, wondered if his father was aware of how chronically uncool his son looked. But just then, his father walked in, a short, bald, well-overweight man wearing exactly the same speedos as his son.

Suffering builds character, I guess.