Confessions of a 13 year old cleaner
I guess the following is an inverse answer to this QOTW, however I could really do with the therapy. Long story, bear with me...

When I was 13, I was a bit of a tearaway; naughty and mischievious but always quite naive. After school had broken up for summer that year, I pestered my parents for money to go out with. Bored and annoyed, my parents tried to set me up with a paper round which I refused to do. Couple of weeks into the holidays, bored and broke, I gave in to my mums brainwave of putting a card in the window of the local newsagents, advertising my services as a gardener/cleaner probably with the good intentions of having some rich old widow take me on to carry her shopping.

Eventually an old man called Stan rang and asked if I could come and do some jobs around his flat. Reluctantly, I met him a few days later and we caught a bus to his tower block. He seemed very friendly and chatted a lot and when we got into his flat, I was surprised to see it was very clean and tidy.

For the next hour or so he got me doing completely unneccessary jobs like sweeping the 0.0003 dirt particles that were on the floor and dusting the already sparkling furniture. I was feeling mildly uneasy at the time but being naive didnt really understand why. Stan made me a ham sandwich and glass of pop and whilst I was tucking in out of the blue, I felt his hands on me, rubbing my shoulders from behind.

"Do you like being massaged?" Stan asked.

Oh fuck.

I replied "no, not really" in a little scared rabbit voice, and leant forward in the chair out of his reach. He didnt say anything but put his hands back on my neck and shoulders. At this point, I shot up out of the chair and stammered some excuse about 'having to go'. He gave me a tenner and saw me off at the door without saying anything else.

I was a bit worked up for the rest of the day and didnt bother telling my parents because I thought I would be lectured for not finishing the job (ahem). Then I just forgot about it.

Maybe about six years later I saw him and memories of the whole episode flooded back. I realised how close I had been to getting bummed by a dirty old man for ten pounds and a Vimto. He was in a bus queue and looked at me with slight recognition. I was a bit shocked and just blurted out "What the fuck are you looking at?" which frightened him a bit.

So there you go. I often thought about the possibility that he was a serial sex offender and about reporting him to the police, but my experience seemed nothing in comparison to sensationally tragic stories which seem to be continually plastered all over the media.

Apologies for length, but as a shrivelled old raisin of a man, he probably didnt have any.
( prem1um is full of life, Fri 18 Aug 2006, 13:01, Reply)