Slightly tenuous link to gingerdom...
Reading through these answers had made me think back to my primary school days, particularly to a diminutive classmate with ginger hair, a ratface, and yellowing buck teeth. Due to these teeth, he was universally known as Colgate.

I don't think a day went past when he didn't get the shit kicked out of him for something or other, he didn't even seem particularly arsed, most of the time he bounced. His home life wasn't the best either, his dad was basically a combination of Jim Royle and Onslow off Keeping Up Appearances, fused to his armchair surrounded by empty cans and overflowing ashtrays, barking obscenities whilst his mother silently fumed at her terrible, terrible choice of a life partner. Or shat out another kid, there were about 8 of them.

After primary we went to different schools, though I did still ocassionally batter him when I saw him round town, out of a sense of nostalgia maybe. That and he just wouldn't stop insulting or pushing you until he got his beating.

As we grew older, he became more and more interested in petty crime, vandalism, shoplifting, and glue sniffing. After a certain amount of leniency by magistrates, due to his cheeky side (he could be pretty funny when he wanted, though usually just abusive), there was no choice but to hand him a custodial sentence. Prison didn't go too well for him, shall we say, and he emerged a changed man, hunted, insular, and with a new-found smack habit. With no qualifications/experience of work, a criminal record and increasing dependence on heroin, he got locked into the classic cycle of offending, jail time, probation, reoffending, jail time... He's what you'd call an institutional man now, either that or he's dead.

I look back on the hard time he got from me and others at school, the taunting, beating, social isolation and degradation he went through every day. I look back, and I think to myself...

If I somehow manage have a ginger kid, I'm going to drown the little freak at birth, as there is a clear, demonstrable link between ginger hair and heroin dependency.
(Gertcha_cowson NAH MATE, Sat 27 Feb 2010, 9:36, 1 reply)

A Top Tip
on how to deal with possible (certain?) future heroin addiction.

Nip it in the bud.
(barrycounty, Sat 27 Feb 2010, 16:31, closed)