» I should have been arrested

Lil' Cusser
When I was about 11, I began to discover hateful feelings brewing inside me. This was at roughly the same time as I discovered both rap music and the art of profanity. One day, I put on my wicked-cool dungarees with some horrendously enormous hoop earrings and decided I was going to vent this new found frustration by writing my very own rap song. The topic of my song was adultery. Now, to clarify, I had hardly even kissed a boy on the lips by this time so I certainly didn't have any experience of being in a commited, sexually active relationship, let alone catching my man atop another 'ho.' Nonetheless, I felt wise enough and pissed off enough to empathise with those who had. (My inspiration, I'm assuming, came from some sort of totally realistic scandal on EastEnders.)

Anyway, I spent a couple of days getting my deep and meaningful phrases down on to paper, trying to make sure the anger really came through. Essentially, what this meant was cramming as many curse words as physically possible into a lot of fairly short phrases. An example of which went something like "Go f*ckin' cry to yo' new motherf*ckin' slut!" and "Don't want yo' f*ckin' d*ck no more."
For the record, I did actually try and rap this out loud which, considering I was eleven, SO white and reasonably middle class, must've been outstanding!

Well, once I was pretty much done with the 'song', I knew I had to hide it. My mum still isn't big on swearing and back then I was her sweet, innocent little girl, so there was no way she could see this sexed up, aggressive bit of verse. So I hid it in the most cunning, imaginative, private, secret place I could think of... under my pillow. As I'm sure you are aware, eleven year olds don't generally change their own sheets and what do you know, I just so happened to finish my masterpiece the day before my mum decided it was time for fresh covers.

Arriving home from school, I could sense tension in the air. I called "Hello!" in my usual cheery tone, but there was no response. Instead my mum walked solemnly out from the living room and, clutching a folded bit of paper, she uttered the words "Sophie, we need to have a talk." We sat in the living room and she challenged me about the writing. In true, hardened rap artist style I, of course, burst into tears and started stumbling towards some kind of excuse. Now, here's where the 'slightly out of order' bit comes in.

My best friend at the time was a girl called Hannah. She was a really lovely girl but her family were, to put it delicately, a little rough around the edges. Hannah's mum did used to swear occasionally in front of me but it was only the odd "Crap!" or "Bugger!" if she did something clumsy. All in all, she was a bit hard, but actually a pretty cool lady... Regardless, being a desperate, foolish tweenager, this woman's light cursing was the first thing that came to mind. So, I told my mum that Hannah's mum had taught me the words, played me rap music and even explained the concept of cheating to me...

As you can imagine, my mum was furious. She bought every word of my sob story, and believed that this fellow mother had been teaching her daughter about the evils of the world, just for fun. I used to see Hannah a lot, but it was never the same after that. I was hardly allowed to go to her house anymore and my mum even told a whole bunch of other mums about what the nasty woman had been doing. Hannah's mum had been quite popular but no one's reputation can survive an accusation like that, and gradually she lost touch with quite a few of the parents she'd been friendly with.

What I should've done at this point was confess, and explain to my mum that I was just going through an emotional shift and had found my calling in the medium of rap... Yet sadly, I did not. Too scared of my mum thinking I was a foul-mouthed jerk of my own accord, I let Hannah's mum take the heat, and although it's not a matter of laws, I definitely should have been arrested.

(Apologies for length..!)
(Tue 31st Jan 2012, 1:49, More)