Oval rule pwn4g3
At school I was the classic overweight, NHS-speccy geek. Always at the edge of each game of playground football, picked last for everything. My scholastic sporting career is best summed up by the oft-repeated phrase: "Oh fuck, we'll take Calgacus but you've got to give us an extra player."

To make matters worse, we had to play rugby. I was put into the Dyspraxia XV with the halt and the lame and the otherwise incapable. As the shortest, least mobile member of the team, I was made hooker with a view to minimising my contact with the ball.

The only moment I did not find loathsome and humiliating was when I scored a try. The only try I ever scored in six fucking years of that stupid game. I briefly discovered my legs and flew up the wing, past our opponents - the whole of my year's 2nd XV (who could actually, like, identify a rugby ball in a line-up).

There must have been joy when I touched the ball down but it was crushed when the PE teacher refused to give it and gleefully called a line-out instead. He took great delight in showing me the slight indentation where my toe had touched the line. Not gone over it. Just touched it. "If we'd been playing football you'd have been fine," he explained.

Still, I had the last laugh as I can read without moving my lips.
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 19:04, Reply)