This is what had happened on the morning of the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. I had become involved in a playground altercation with another kid. Having received the aforementioned Evans first and only punch, he had to my astonishment gone down as a result—also with such apparent force it didn’t look like he would be getting up any time soon! I was more shocked than he was. My plans thus far had not allowed for any such an occurrence. I had to revise my strategy and quickly. Having already opened my eyes, I decided to replace my glasses and make a run for it, which is exactly what I did.
I was safe, for now at least. However, when my adversary did come round, I was more than aware he was bound to want revenge. I was reliably informed he had been declaring as much shortly after coming to. To put it more precisely, he had vowed that come home-time he was going to kill me outside the school gates.
Suffice to say, upon hearing this I had been peeing my pants ever since.
The news of my forthcoming assassination had been eagerly telegrammed to me several times—more than I needed to hear but of course this was the usual guaranteed scenario. There was never a shortage of gleeful messengers around when there was an after-school duel to be advertised and the more likely you were to lose, the more desperate the messengers were to let you know the exact details of when and where you were going to get your head kicked in.
These messenger kids are the worst. Destined to become wasters of perfectly good oxygen as they grow older, they are the child apprentices of the kind of adults that take pleasure in the art of spreading bad news, the kind of people who need bad news to use as a currency to make themselves briefly more interesting. You know, the kind of people who take part in and watch those terrible daytime talk shows and trash each other live on national television.
My opponent meanwhile was odds-on favourite to have me over in any discernable ‘proper’ fight and by all accounts he was now fuming—angry as a wasp in a jar apparently. The weird kid had knocked him to the ground in full view of his contemporaries and he had lost face; not only that but that face was now a little bent and he owed me—something he would have to put right at the first available opportunity. He was in no mood to delay the process for a second longer than was required. Home-time it was to be: cometh the hour—cometh the beating. I was left feeling in no uncertain terms that when the school bell went for the final time that day I was going to get it and I was going to get it good.
I was able to think of little else. I felt sick, I wanted to go to the toilet, I wanted to cry and I wanted to die. All four of which were likely to happen before the day was over.
So, as you can probably imagine, the Space Shuttle launch was a much welcome diversion—especially seeing as we were going to be allowed to watch it on television. I even considered it might be the type of event to make the angry kid realise the bigger picture for the human race as a whole and that killing another thirteen year old in cold blood may not be in the spirit of the day.
The television room, not unlike my bottom that day, was packed and full of apprehension, so much so, that some of us were forced to sit on the floor—not that we minded, we were spellbound by what was going on, plus it meant we didn’t have to do our normal lessons as they’d been put on hold until after the launch.
This was an all-round cool situation, and it was getting cooler by the minute as NASA was suffering technical problems giving rise to an ongoing delay.
‘Please, let the launch be delayed for several years,’ I thought to myself, long enough for the angry boy to meet the girl of his dreams, have a small family and retire to Southport. Long enough for him to realise the ultimate futility of inane hand-to-hand combat between fellow men…and more importantly, fellow schoolboys.
But alas it was not to be. Before long the Columbia countdown over in Houston had restarted along with the impending ‘death by fight’ countdown that was currently taking place in my head.
This situation had now officially morphed into becoming another one of those moments in my life that I wished would never end, for the second it did my intended fate would surely befall me and in front of all the world to see. Like my brick wall moment with Tina, it was now that I pleaded for the planets and the solar system to pull together and show mercy upon this young and needy soul by miraculously and cosmically bringing time to a grinding halt and in so doing, save this shaking, quaking juvenile wreck of a child from pissing himself into oblivion. I swear, if Discovery were still waiting to take off here and now that would have been fine by me.
I decided it was time for a prayer.
‘Dear God, please let time stop here for ever. Sure I know it would mean I’ll never realise my potential as a human being past this point, I will never know what it feels like to take my first trip to the seaside behind the wheel of my own car, to buy my first home, to have a child, to witness another Labour government, to truly become acquainted with the ways of a woman, to stare on in wonder at the simplicity yet effectiveness of the format of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (a game show currently over fifteen years away from even being conceived), but frankly I don’t care because it would also mean that I’m never going to have to face the school gates pummelling that’s most definitely coming my way in what’s now just a couple of hours. Please God, out of the two options I am more than happy to sacrifice all of the former for even the slightest chance of the latter.
Amen.’
Time may sometimes seem like it stands still but the clouds and the clocks tell us it doesn’t. Perhaps a moment is as close as we ever get. Maybe a moment is the stillness between the ticking of time, the bridge over the river, if you like, the halfway house between the now and the then.
For me this stillness is usually enough and I have learnt to enjoy such ‘moments’, diving into them and pushing them apart to make them last as long as possible, but back then, in the early Eighties, sat in front of that television, in that classroom, there was no such pleasure to be had, time was very much against me.
Acceptance though is often liberation. ‘Let go, let go, let, go,’ I said to myself and as I did so miraculously my prayers were answered.
Unconsciously, as I was sat on the floor, I began to stroke the carpet tiles—partly I suppose for some kind of self-soothing, contemplative comfort, like a wise man might stroke his chin or a dog might lick his private parts, and partly I suppose out of resignation, my resignation to the fact that, whichever way I looked at it, my goose was cooked—I was a dead man walking.
I continued to brush my right hand, palm down, across the carpet in a thoughtful arcing motion, half contemplating the wonder of what was taking place across the Atlantic, half wondering whether the mad kid was going to start killing me by punching me in the stomach or in the face first and whether I would bother trying to defend myself or just let him get it over and done with. But, as these thoughts danced around my consciousness, I found myself becoming distracted, distracted by something on the floor, something under my right hand. There was a bump in the carpet.
It felt like there was something running under the texture of the weave. I ceased my stroking and lifted my hand so I could see what it was, but there was nothing there.
‘Strange,’ I thought. I checked again—the carpet tile was dark brown and quite hard to see so I leant down this time to get a little closer but, nope, there was definitely nothing to report.
I resumed my self soothing, running my hand across the carpet but again I felt the bump, almost immediately this time. Again I looked to see what it was, but again nothing. Was I going mad? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, I was under a great deal of schoolboy stress at the time—maybe my mind had had enough of me and wanted out.
I went to stroke the carpet a third time and whatever it was, blow me it was still there; it may have been invisible but it was definitely still there. What on earth was it? And then I noticed my hand, the hand that had been doing the stroking—the three outer fingers looked