My First Racial Attack
I grew up in a small Scottish village. It was a pretty sheltered childhood - hardly any crime to speak of, and a distinct lack of teenage gangs. As such, I was a pretty innocent, naive child (I spent most of my ensuing teenage years making up for that). The village was tiny - everyone knew everyone else, and my class in Primary school had about 15 kids in it. The year below us had 10. What you could call a close-knit community, if you were a bit of a wanker.

Anyway, we were all white middle-class Scottish kids, apart from Sayid - he was the only Indian kid in the class. In the whole school, even. We didn't think anything of this - to us, race was something you tried to win at sports day, and as such there was never any bigotry.

Apart from one fateful day. I was eight years old, and had just started Primary Three, It was playtime, and the playground was full of kids laughing, playing and screaming like lunatics. We had started an improptu game of tig, one of those games where you made the rules up as you went along. I was 'it' and was running around, chasing children like a tiny Michael Jackson. I wasn't having much luck, and was slowly becoming more and more frustrated. Eventually, while chasing Sayid, he stumbled and I leapt like a deranged attack dog, shouting "TIG" in as loud a voice as possible. I was elated - finally I had caught someone...

"You didn't tig me - I was keys" shouted Sayid.

"What?" I exclaimed indignantly. "No you weren't. I didn't see you saying keys"

"Well, maybe you need new glasses, speccy"

This infuriated me. "Don't call me speccy!"

"But you are speccy. Four-eyes, four-eyes..."

The rage was building inside of me. I clenched my tiny fists, and shouted, "Shut up, you...you..." I searched my limited vocabulary for a suitably witty retort. "You...poo-skin!"

The whole playground went silent. Sayid stood there, staring at me with his mouth open, for what seemed like ages. Then, to my horror, his face screwed up, and he began to cry. I didn't know what to do - surely my insult wasn't that bad? Not compared to 'four-eyes', anyway. Why was he crying?

Before I could ask him, he turned and ran across the playground, sobbing all the way. Watching him run away, I began to feel quite pleased with myself. I had faced up to my tormentor and won. I had never made anyone cry before. Well, it served him right for calling me names...

The warm glow of victory lasted until I was called to the headmaster's office, just after playtime. The walk there seemed to stretch on forever. When I entered, he invited me to sit, and had a long conversation with me, during which I learned a lot of new words, like 'racism' and 'equality.' I learned it was wrong to insult someone based on the colour of their skin, and that we should be tolerant of other cultures. Most of it went over my head to be honest - I was only eight. The gist of it was, I was wrong to call Sayid a 'poo-skin,' and I should never do it again.

Afterwards, Sayid came in, and I apologised sheepishly. To his credit, he apologised for calling me four-eyes. We became good friends after that, and I still meet up with him from time to time. We can laugh about it now, of course - we were only kids.

And that was the story of my first and only racial attack. Pretty tame, as it goes. Though if it was nowadays, I'd probably be hung, drawn and quartered, and the school would be sued to shit. It was more innocent times back then...
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 21:23, 2 replies)

Sued to shit,
razed and the ground sown with salt...
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 27 Nov 2007, 6:21, closed)

lols
"I was 'it' and was running around, chasing children like a tiny Michael Jackson."

*click*
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Thu 29 Nov 2007, 8:50, closed)