This is a story which I have briefly mentioned before in
another entry but I have never written about in any full detail. As anybody who clicked that link will now know, this story takes place during my time as an MDSA at The Corsham School.
On the days when I went out onto the school field to pick up rubbish from the floor, there was this one troublemaking boy who would often cause disruption, I never learned his name, but he was quite tall (almost as tall as me) and had a head of long curly hair. One time he called me over to him as I was walking passed, so I wandered on over to see what he wanted. He told me that there was rubbish on the floor and then asked if he could borrow
the litter picking claw to pick it up because he always thought it looked really cool and wanted to try it. So, of course, I handed the claw over to him so that he could get a chance to try it. However, once the thing was in his hands, he ran away as fast as he could. Perhaps he wanted me to chase him, I don’t know, but I decided to just stand there and wait for him to come back, which he did after five or ten minutes.
Another time, I was walking on past his corner of the field when he called me over once again. I asked him what it was that he wanted and he told me simply that he was hungry and since I always carry sweets with me, I was happy to offer him one. Sadly, sweets were not enough for him; he declined my offer of and then quickly rolled up the sleeve of my jacket and bit my arm. Luckily, he didn’t cut me, but he latched on so hard and he wasn’t going to let go. Luckily, I had my Trusty Water Bottle on me, so I took it out with my other hand and squirted water onto his head, causing him to let go. I apologised for getting him wet and asked him if he’d mind not biting my arm again.
Then, at another time still, I was walking along passed his corner and he called me over once more. I came down and asked what he wanted. All he said was “I love you” and grabbed me in a very tight hug. I was just crushed between his arms and his body and he basically just walked be around for a little bit. I was completely helpless and couldn’t really move at all. When he finally released me, I had another thing to ask him never to do again.
Towards the end of my time as an MDSA, I was walking passed his corner, when one of his friends ran up to me and told me I really needed to go down and see him, apparently he was very hurt. Now, if I had thought it was a lie or the start of some prank, I suppose this would be a nice little ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ type of story, but as it happens I did actually head down to see what the problem was. It seems he had been climbing up a nearby tree for some prank or another, and had then fallen out and dislocated one of his arms.
“I guess you should probably avoid climbing into those trees in future,” I said to him.
“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, “do something about my arm anyway.”
“Well, I’m not a nurse or a doctor, I don’t actually know how to pop your arm back in. If I did anything to you, it would probably just cause you a lot more pain.”
“Oh great, well, you’re helpful,” he moaned.
“Did you really think I’d have medical training? I’ll pop up and get somebody who can actually help to come down to you. All I can say is, maybe you should be more careful in future.”
So, I gave him a sweet and went off to get the school nurse to see him. Of course, this is a very abridged version of events (to stop it getting boring, I did, of course, see him many more than four times) but this sums up my interactions with this boy quite nicely, and I guess is a good cautionary tale for troublesome tree-climbers.
