» Kids

Further to childish racism stories..
It's far too complicated to explain why my little brother isn't actually my brother, so let's just say he is. I'm not a big fan of, nor particularly good with kids, but seeing as he only came into my life at the age of five and was a sweet, quiet lad, I was always happy to help out in school holidays etc.

One such instance of helping out involved me taking Brother and another lad out in town to keep them entertained until the parents had finished doing the things they had to do. Callum, the other kid, was the child of a family friend, two years younger than Brother. They'd been somewhat forced into friendship and it was pretty difficult to keep them both sweet at the same time, so in my infinite wisdom I took them to a museum*.

All was going well until Callum spotted a large black woman bending over some sort of exhibit to get a close look. He tugged my skirt, and pointed at her. Expecting some awful, shrill comment about her size or her skin, I tried to distract him and shuffle him along. But no. Callum stood fast. He had seen something, and he was going to comment on it. I couldn't budge him.

(loudly) 'Herrings.'
'Shhh, let's go find Brother.'
'Herrings, that lady...'
(slightly desperate) 'Come on, let's get some sweets.'
(very loudly, whilst I cringe) 'BUT THAT LADY'S GOT THE SAME SHOES AS MY MUM!'

I felt like a right fattist racist bastard after that.


*in my defence, it was the Bradford Museum of Photography Film and Television, which is a bit more down with the yoof.
(Wed 23rd Apr 2008, 1:31, More)

» Stalked

Psycho Kerry, qu'est-ce que c'est?
Sometimes I feel like I have a large pink neon sign above my head saying, 'Hey weirdos! Come talk to me!' And they do. And then sometimes they follow me.

Shoe Man was not so bad. I met him in Priceless Shoes in Huddersfield when he noticed I was trying on size 9s and they were still too small. He said he dreamt about feet like mine and wondered if I wanted to come to his flat and walk on him. He buy me shoe, my boyfriend can come too. I politely declined. From then on every time I went shopping, he would follow me around saying 'I buy you shoe. I dream your feet.' He was fairly harmless.

Even more harmless still was an ageing man with learning difficulties in the face who got on my bus. He desperately wanted me to go to his house and meet his mum and was willing to miss his stop every single day just for a few more minutes of persuasion. I felt sorry for him.

Crazy mans from Huddersfield, I could deal with. Crazy lesbians from Castleford, I could not.

I met her at college. She bummed a cigarette off me in the first week of my second year, and we had a chat. I like talking, I like new people, and I hadn't learned that someone who wears those hideous skirt-over-trousers things that were fashionable for ten minutes in 1999 with a navy blue bomber jacket every single day must be at least a bit tapped. She was fucking mental. God-botheringly rug-munchingly violently tearfully mental. It's a long story, but basically:

- She went to all my lessons, to sit outside the door waiting for me. Even the three-hour ones. She had two days off, but would come in just to wait outside doors for me.

- She would text me on average ten times a day. More on weekends. My fella at the time was not very understanding and very suspicious so I spent hours hiding in toilets trying to reply to them, for of course, not replying led to threats upon both of our lives. It didn't help that she seemed to think of vowels as a waste of a character so just understanding the texts took ages, and a misunderstanding would also lead to threats of suicide etc.

- She came with me to the open day at Sheffield university. On the train, she grabbed my hand, and then didn't let go all day. It was sweaty.

- Every day at college, I would have my character assassinated in the smoking area, often for hours, just because I talked to someone else, or didn't reply to a text.

I was very stupid about it and handled it very badly, but it was just because I truly believed she was a nice person underneath, and to be fair to her, when she was normal (5% of the time), she was lovely, and she had had a lot of problems in her life etc. etc.

She couldn't follow me to Sheffield, but now she texted me about thirty times a day, going from how great our friendship was and psychological analysis to Y FCKNG CNT and death threats, followed just as quickly by protestations of undying love. Eventually I sent her a letter telling her, basically, just to leave me alone. In the fullness of time, she did- although I got a text from her about a month ago, asking why I had to ruin her life, which I duly ignored.

I still have to have my phone on silent because the message alert tone sends me into paroxysms of fear.

Stupid thing is, as soon as I left college, she started doing the same thing to the only other friend I managed to keep there. Instead of putting up with it and desperately trying to believe that inside Psycho Kerry was a beautiful and worthy soul, she told her to fuck off. It worked.

The moral of the story is: don't be nice to people. Especially crazed lesbian christian types with bomber jackets.

Sorry for length and lack of teh funny- it's my first time!
(Mon 4th Feb 2008, 0:22, More)