The fight that never was
I went to a big and fairly rough comprehensive but nothing too scary. As long as you kept your head down and knew who to stay away from you'd be fine.

As anyone else who went to a school with about one and a half thousand kids knows, there's a kind of collective knowledge about the ritual of the fight. It's as if "the herd" just knows.

So though fights were likely to break out at any time and any place within the school there was certainly one type that was more common than all the others.

Starting out as possibly a minor disagreement between two kids, one will big himself up to their friends saying how the other kid is "Goanee get a batterin'" (I'm Scottish btw). The friends will convince him he should and that "Aye, ye can take him". This kid will usually be the harder of the two and confident of being able beat the crap out someone wussier or smaller than him, he will then start telling everyone around that he *is* going to fight him.

This is generally done at lunchtime about 20 minutes before lessons are due to start again after most kids are back from the town centre. Word spreads and there starts a small group led by the main protaganist and his mate in search of the other kid. This results in an initially small bunch doing laps of the school all the while adding numbers. Chinese whisper style, details filter through to all the new arrivals as the what's going on, who's after whom etc.

It's quite hypnotic and impressive how quickly a few hundred children can suddenly and instinctively assemble and wander around and through buildings and playgrounds.

Then the crescendo. They've spotted the intended victim or at least been told where he is - the chase is on. Suddenly the lead few of the group burst into a sprint and though it takes a few seconds to filter through to everyone else, a terrifying rabble of teenagers starts to charge. Once the running has begun the teachers are helpless to stop it.

So anyway...

Most of these fights were an anti-climax. The few good ones were mostly over by the time I got to them and one particular day me and my mate Paul were really bored and just talked about how we hadn't seen a fight for a while. I can't remember why I did this but we were just walking away from our usual lunchtime hang out and I shouted to the group of guys playing football, "Paul's gonna fight Johnny MadeUpName*". "Hahaha, very funny djtrialprice" says Paul and we walk around the corner.

And then we noticed some people behind us.

"Who are ye goanee fight Paul!?", "How (this is Scottish for 'Why'), whit did he dae?", "Can ye take him?" etc. Paul was a cheeky bastard so he played along, "He said ma maw cooked a shit breakfast."

So it was funny to start off with but after a couple of minutes we had kids we'd never seen before following us. Hard bastards in our year joined the front of the group and started cheering Paul on. This was becoming a bit too serious and the point where we could say, "Not really, it's just a big joke" had passed. So we walked on getting nervous thinking what the hell are we going to do?

Walking round the back of the school we decided to take the narrow path round back to the front. We'd just about got the mob down to three people side by side so we took our chance and legged it. All the while we were shouting out "There's the bastard, get 'im!". In a flash of inspiration we ducked into the sided of the building and let the big heavy fire doors really slow down the pursuit and thankfully by the time we were inside and up a flight of stairs we could safely claim to have lost him and nevermind, we'll get him later.

Looking down from a first floor window at the very enclosed area we'd led everyone to like the Pied Piper, there were teachers surrounding all routes of escape for the mob. They were actually getting a bollocking for encouraging fighting and I could see the Deputy Rector handing out detention to an unfortunate handful.

At the time we were too shit scared to appreciate the humour of the situation but needless to say, Paul enjoyed his new reputation around school for the next week or so.

"Oh aye, I got him as he came aff the schoolbus the day efter. Smashed his pus in. He's no' been back to school since."

And strangely enough Johnny MadeUpName* never did make it back :)

* possibly a made up name
( djtrialprice, Tue 14 Mar 2006, 11:54, Reply)