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I was praying for it to stay dormant, and unseen, at least until after the last dance. Until the final riffs of Bob Dylan’s ‘Positively Fourth Street’ had faded, the lights had gone up and the Bible class dance was over. Until I had held her. Ooh Fiona! Perhaps even whispered that I liked her. How gallant, how courtly.
Bible class social because that was what we did in the 1960s. We didn’t go to bars and clubs at 10.30pm on a Saturday night. We were headed home on the last bus at that hour. The social was held in the church hall where God’s “keepers of decency” patrolled, prising apart over-amorous dancers and dislodging knee-sitters. That was the level of promiscuous behaviour that prevailed in those days. Outrageous!
Hullo!
Anyhow, this teenager, this young buck, was infatuated with the cutest twitching nose on Watership Down. Ooh Fiona! She was a netballer, an artist, played the violin and had a luxuriant mane of wavy red hair. It swished in slow motion. A vision of loveliness.
I rehearsed a few conversation-starters and one day after finding a backbone, I stammered “hullo” at her. What a line? Sure to become a bullet point in a ‘How to Win a Heart’ manual. A stuttering, salivating “Hullo!” Hey Valentino!
But incredibly, astonishingly, she smiled right back and said: “Hi”. How inspired? “Hi”. I quivered and quaked. Suddenly, cosines and tangents were irrelevant. Conjugating French verbs was yesterday. I was too busy wrestling with a complex and wonderfully fuzzy thing called love.
That was when I plotted my own ‘Operation Overlord’, my D-Day.
On Saturday night at the Bible Class Social when Dunedin’s answer to Dylan headed down ‘Positively Fourth Street’ yet again, “You’ve got a lot of nerve …..etc, etc” , I would summon up some nerve of my own, fluff up the bobtail and sidle over and ask her to dance. Just hopefully, that wee nose would twitch consent.
I played the moment over and over in my mind until Saturday evening when this bunny was preening for the dance. When I pressed the nose up against the bathroom mirror, there it was. A huge pimple of snow-capped K2 proportions. There had been low level seismic activity all week, but now it was set to blow. On Saturday night. On D-Day. A large beacon of despair smack on my chin. Lovely.
No last dance
When K2 erupted all over the bathroom mirror my plans disintegrated with it. There could be no social. There could be no last dance. A combination of excess oil, clogged hair follicles, bacteria and inflammation, and whatever else causes a K2, had spectacularly scuttled my love quest. Foiled by a zit! “If she is a good person, she will see past it” I was assured. But I was distraught. I remember weeping with frustration and disappointment. Acne can be cruel. Adolescence, and pimples, can mess with your emotions.
Eventually K2 disappeared off the landscape, as did the love interest. I never saw her again. It was only 60 years ago. Perhaps there’s still a chance? Perhaps she’s still out there? Where art thou Fiona? The face has cleared.
No sympathy from one colleague: “Well, we all had a pimple that needed popping”.
He wasn’t to know that for a couple of years I was always just a few pimples away from a full-face breakout. They dictated what I did, when, and with who. A motley, pock-marked, pimply complexion ruled my life. My mother understood my pain. She would gaze at me, smile and place a reassuring hand on the minefield that was my face – almost as if she was defying some hideously contagious disease. For a few moments I did not feel like an outcast.
So it’s probably not surprising my heart went out to Skye Stout last week. Don’t know her, just know of her – as much of the world knows her now for all the wrong reasons.
Skye’s a 16-year-old who had just signed her first professional football contract with Kilmarnock Football Club in Scotland. It should have been a moment of great pride, a moment to cherish. The club celebrated her – splashed her image all over the Club’s official account – a nod to talent and success.
Flick them a finger
But some ignorant, gutless, faceless, bullying trolls chose to look right past her achievement and mercilessly savaged her online for her facial acne. Humiliated her. Charming!
To suffocate the haters, the club tore down all the posts mentioning Skye.
Skye flicked her detractors a stylish, defiant finger by slamming in a free-kick from the edge of the box in her first game. You can’t take success away from success.
Why don’t the trolls show Skye’s courage and crawl out of their dark, sad caves and show their faces? Have an opinion? Then own it. Let’s see what hate looks like. And perhaps they could tell us what they have achieved in life that goes anywhere near the deeds of our young midfielder.
As one Skye supporter posted: “You are a strong beautiful young lady”. Another said: “Grown-ups abusing a 16-year-old. What sad pathetic, unhappy lives they must have”.
Bullies never win!
And from sister Tamlyn: “Thanks for showing baby sister love and support. Means a lot Xxx”.