Thanks to a wet night in Soho, I was reminded of swimming last night. It wasn’t that wet. I was just stuck in one of those situations that reminds me that, no matter how much I think I have grown and matured, there are still some classic personality flaws that have existed since I was 13.
I hated going swimming whilst at school. Not least because of the cliches of my gawkish appearance and apparent lack of swimming abilities. But the true barometer of how popular you were at school… the coach trip.
In the queue to gt on the coach everyone was squabbling for position, I’ll sit next to you, want to sit next to me? Can I sit with you. Who you sitting next to?
I don’t think I was unpopular, but in these social situations, the young me, very much like the present me couldn’t ever assert himself enough, and would instead be a piece of debris carried along by the tide of eager children and, although having my own preferences as to where I’d like to sit, I’d more often than not end up squeezed onto a sit with people I didn’t much care for, nor them for me.
Last night I found myself back in that position. After a gig a bunch of us were traveling from one bar to another bar. We didn’t take a coach, but the natural selection of the human transportation system happened.
Like a walking coach we walked down the road two abreast, mini slightly drunken conversation were had by lots of twosomes, one or two threesomes. And one onesome, me. I tried to join some of the two/threesomes. But couldn’t I felt not only slightly pathetic but also 13.
Once in the bar it was fine, we were a group again, no one else had probably even noticed. But I realise that I was fully formed at 13 and these neuroses will stick.
Although, maybe it meant I was the driver. That means I’d have power and mystique.