Читать книгу Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny - Limmy - Страница 8

I sometimes wonder if I’m a psychopath. Or if I’m warped in some way.

Something bad happens, and I don’t really care, or I might even find it entertaining. I don’t mean that I sit watching tragedies on the news, laughing my head off, having a wank. It’s just that every now and then, somebody will talk about how something is bad or dangerous or tragic, and I’ll be wondering why I don’t feel the same way.

I blame Carnwadric.

Like, I don’t know if this is anything to do with it, but see when I was wee, boys would make crossbows. They’d get a couple of pieces of wood, a hammer, nails and elastic bands, and they’d make themselves a crossbow. They’d put a wooden clothes peg on it, pull it as far back as it would go, and try to hit each other, right in the fucking face. A piece of solid wood, flying at your head at more than 100 mph. None of that eye-friendly foam-bullet Nerf gun shite. Or they’d make ninja stars by sharpening bits of metal, and they’d chuck them at cunts. Or they’d get pre-made weapons, like an air pistol or a Black Widow catapult, and fire them off at people or windows or something else, to see what happened.

And I’d be watching it all, as a wee boy. I wouldn’t be horrified, because nobody said I should be horrified. I’d be watching, hoping that something bad happened.

Boys would put stones on train tracks, to see what happened. To see if the train would come flying off, with everybody in it. When it was sunny, they’d find a piece of broken mirror, head to a busy road, and shine the sun into drivers’ eyes. I did it myself once or twice. You’re kind of hoping that you’ll blind the driver, causing him to crash and die. Well, you’re maybe not completely trying to kill somebody, but what else are you doing it for? You don’t really think about it. I was only about eight at the time.

Boys would do all sorts of things to hurt people, for a laugh.

In primary school there was a game called Pile On. A boy would get grabbed, and everybody piled on them, like it was rugby or something. You’d be trying to crush them, to see if they’d suffocate, to hear him not being able to breathe – and then you’d stop. Another time, it would be you getting piled on. It was a laugh.

There would be things that weren’t a laugh. There was something called the Pole Crusher, that older boys did to younger boys. A boy would be grabbed and lifted up, held horizontally, with his legs spread apart, and rammed into this pole in the playground, so that it crushed his cock and balls. They tried to do it with me once, but I started screaming and crying and they let me go. They got somebody else instead, and I stood and watched, happy it wasn’t me.

And then there were things that they’d do to themselves.

They’d do things like make these big rope swings that hung from bridges, and everybody wanted a shot because it went so high that, if you fell off, you were a goner.

Or they’d go to the top of the Kennishead Flats, these high-rise tower blocks, 20-odd storeys up, and they’d sit on the lights that jutted out from the building, because there was a chance you could fall to your death.

Or they’d go up to the tyre factory and steal a tractor tyre, then they’d take it to the top of a hill, one that rolled down into a busy road, then two of them would climb inside and get their mates to push them so they started rolling down towards the road. Just to see what happened.

There was just all this stuff where you were either trying to kill somebody or risk getting killed yourself. And some boys did get killed. You’d hear about somebody falling from the top of the flats, or falling down the lift shaft. It would be shocking news that everybody would talk about for a few days, then they’d go back to carrying on as usual. It was like Russian roulette or something.

It was mental, really. But it didn’t feel mental at the time. That’s what I’m trying to say. Nobody came along and said, ‘Now, now, that’s enough of all that.’

Well, there was this Sunday School thing. Some Christian thing, over at the school, that I went to a few times. We played games for a while, then they got out a projector and lectured us about Jesus, to try and make us all good. One day, some boys outside opened the windows to the hall, and threw in a firework. A mini rocket. There was a panic as the rocket lay there with the fuse thing sparkling away. Nobody knew what to do. Then it screeched all over the place, in every direction. Everybody fucking shat it. You didn’t know where to go.

It was magic.

I don’t know if that’s warped me in some way, all of that. It’s not that I still go out with a broken piece of a mirror in the summertime, I’ve grown out of that kind of stuff. But there is still a part of me that’s into it. I’m a 44-year-old man with a family, but there’s still a part of me that wants to reflect the sun into a driver’s eyes, causing him to close them, which causes him to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill about six people, including himself. There’s a part of me that finds that funny.

It’s terrible, I know. But like I said, I blame Carnwadric. It rubs off on you.