AtHomeWithTheDownies
No, for once I wasn't being sarcastic - I would like you to represent me next time I get in trouble.

And, back to the bike again, would I have taken out on the main streets where there was traffic (vehicular and human)? - No. Even at 14 I gad more sense than that.

But my bike riding activities were only the tip of the iceberg as far as dangerous stuff I got up to as a kid. But, surprisingly, only one kid out of my extended gang got seriously injured as I was growing up. He was killed, on a main road, by a (licensed) car driver.

Some of the things we did as kids make me shudder to think of now. Sliding down a steep shale hill on bits of cardboard and rolling clear to grab the roots of a gorse bush just before a 100 foot drop into a quarry. Or collecting birds eggs (a practise I loathe now) and the hideously dangerous climbs we made to get them.

Playing in abandoned houses and factories (where I managed to get a shattered cheekbone and a fractured skull during one game that went wrong), stealing lead of the roof of the local bank where a slip would have meant splatter. And lots and lots more. So riding a bike in a back street with no traffic didn't even figure on my danger-ometer.

But, the point of the story, wasn't about the bike. It was about what happens when you assume the wrong things. I assumed the guys that stopped me weren't coppers and paid for it. If I hadn't been lippy to them they would have, almost certainly, just made me put the bike back in the garage and perhaps, had a quick word with my parents.


Oh - and the fine I got was £35 payable at £1 a week. But that had consequences waaay down the line when I joined the Army.

The coppers reaction in nicking me was completely disproportionate to the offence (in not only my eyes but the eyes of my society in general - including the magistrate who bollocked the copper for the excessive list of offences. He actually asked the copper if he was on piece-work - that's where you get paid according to the amount of work you do).


Still, I'm not going to change my mind about the affair. I was there and you weren't Musuko. But you still sound like the sort of person who is hell-bent on getting to middle age as fast as possible. I can just see you now (on a helldesk - snigger) telling people that he leaves the server problems "To the younger folk as my nerves can't take the strain anymore...."

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 9 Jan 2008, 3:57, Reply)