George
My best friend from primary school, George, was a very nice, gentle, and somewhat shy lad. Desperate never to upset anyone, he once held in a fart in assembly with such great gusto that when it eventually escaped, it actually whistled out, like the sound of a boiled kettle. He also accidentally called the teacher 'Mum' on more than one occasion, and once turned up for PE naked because he'd forgotten his kit and didn't want to admit it.

Anyway, we also happened to be in the same Cub Scout group, and when we were about ten, the adults took some athletic equipment out into the park on a nice day and we had an impromptu sports day. George went for the high jump with such determination that he not only cleared the bar, but indeed missed the mat, coming down in a heap on the grass.

After the cruel laughter you'd expect from adolescent boys had died away, me and a couple of lads walked over to see how he was, and after an adult had picked him up and checked nothing was broken, we walked him off, badly winded, to sit on the sidelines. One of the other lads - a more popular lad than me - seemed to have decided that it would be fun to make George think it could have been really serious; 'You're lucky to be alive!', 'Someone in my brother's year at school died doing the high jump!', etc.

Anyway, I was at that stage of my youth where being popular was really important to me, and I could be a bit of an arsehole if I saw an opportunity to gain an advantage. George was obviously still shocked and struggling to breathe, and if these lads thought it was fun to mess with him, then why not? They were cooler than me, anyway.

So I leant over to George and asked 'Thinking about it - how do you know you're NOT dead? You could have broken your neck and this could be the afterlife. Maybe the afterlife is just where your normal life carries on because you don't know your dead. But you are dead. Eh?'

'Am I dead?'

'Maybe. If you were dead, and we were all in your imagination. Would we tell you?'

'Am I dead?'

'I can't say'.

And we went back to the games.

That weekend, my Mum got a call from George's Mum. Apparently, I had so convincingly persuaded him of the real possibility that he was dead, that he'd sulked for two days before asking his mum. It had taken her an hour, and help of a priest, to persuade him that he wasn't dead.

I wasn't very popular with either his parents or mine for a while after that.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 12 Jan 2012, 13:49, 3 replies)

near-existential teasing at the age of ten
I like it :)
( Yo 'Ho of Charlie mass-market saucetrepreneur, Thu 12 Jan 2012, 13:55, closed)

i like this.

( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Thu 12 Jan 2012, 13:58, closed)

^^ What tits said ^^

( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 12 Jan 2012, 14:18, closed)