The school bully, I’ll call him Mike. He wasn’t big or strong, he dressed smart and he had his little gang of enforcers – three of them. They weren’t out to bully me specifically, but they were a pain. My best pal they decided was gay – which isn’t such a big deal these days, but in the 70s it was a real slur, and they kept banging on about it all through High School. Relentlessly. He wasn’t gay of course, he left school got married and had 4 kids!

Anyway, Mike was the ‘leader’ of our school year, the most important guy. He wasn’t clever, wasn’t great at sports but he was ‘the man’. I remember one time where he wanted me to play piano in a music lesson before the teacher showed up, he grabbed my lapels and dragged me over to the instrument just as the teacher came in. Felt pretty humiliating in front of the class.

I endured high school then left. Roll on many years and we were 50 years old. I got a friend request from him on Facebook. I thought whaaaa?!??!? That annoying jerk from school! I accepted, but sent a rude sweary reply telling him that he and his friends were a right bunch of *********’s back then. He didn’t reply, so we were ‘friends’ on facebook. A while later, a woman from school who was also on Facebook suggested that the three of us should meet up down the pub. A first I thought no, but then I thought what the hell, I can always walk out.

So, the three of us met up and ended having a lovely 5 hours of reminiscing about school days! Mike, was unrecognisable. He was very thin, very humble, and very embarrassed about the person he was back then. He seemed kind now, he met and married a woman who had three young daughters and he was a good father to them. He spent his life in a fairly dead end job, where he was basically nobody. His ‘days in the sun’ were all at school where he was important.

So, he turned out to be a lovely person, but sadly 8 months later he was gone. He got pneumonia and it finished him off. It was sad, but I was glad that I could remember him as a lovely person in later life rather than the bully at school.