We’d moved here a few months ago and I quickly made new friends, both at school and in the neighborhood. There’s a place called Cooper’s Quarry which is now a formal garden with paths, benches, flowerbeds, an orchard, and a glade. It used to be an adventure playground and according to the group I’d befriended, it was ‘totally ace’. They spent many hours playing there, and the more dilapidated it became, the more fun they had… then the council decided it was dangerous and removed all the fun stuff, replacing it with flowerbeds and benches which are only good for OAPs and parents with pushchairs.
A few weeks ago, we were passing through Cooper’s Quarry and reminiscing about how much fun they had there, as well as grumbling about how boring it is now. I could only take their word for it since the space was redesigned before we moved to the area. Climbing frames, elevated walkways, rope swings, and a ‘death’ slide sounded loads better than what there is now. Looking back, I’m not sure who started it, but it didn’t take long for the rest of us to join in; stomping on the flower beds, uprooting shrubs, breaking branches, booting the bins and benches over, and generally destroying or disturbing whatever we could.
The act of vandalism was front-page news in the local paper, which stated that one of the gang had been caught at the scene and the others ran off. That one was me, but I didn’t grass my mates up. I’d have got my head kicked in if I had, and no one wants to be friends with a grass… so keeping shtum and taking the rap all on my own was, I believed, in my best interests. Being a minor meant they couldn’t print my name in the paper, nor could the authorities fine me for the damage caused, make me do hours of community service, or anything much… the most they could do was make me attend Sunday School which sounded really boring. The judge who heard my case said that I’d have to attend Sunday school for a period no less than 48 weeks and no more than 48 months and that my attendance period would be closer to 48 weeks if I did the decent thing and gave the authorities the names of my accomplices. I refused and claimed that they were some others I’d just met and I didn’t know their names or where they lived… but they knew I was lying, I knew I was lying, and I knew that they knew I was lying.
I figured it would be a normal Sunday School and having briefly attended one when I was around eight years old, I figured I knew what to expect. It was really boring. The teacher would read us Bible stories and encourage us to ask questions about God and Jesus, then we’d sing some happy-clappy Christian songs and talk about prayers… after a month or two I stopped going because I could think of better ways to spend my Sundays. Mum told me that this Sunday School will be nothing at all like that Sunday School… it isn’t anywhere near a church for a start, and it won’t even involve any bible readings. “How’s it a Sunday School then?” I asked.
“It’s a school you attend on Sunday.” my mother bluntly retorted. “I can’t believe that you’ve got yourself into so much trouble young man… we’ve only been here a couple of months.”
“It wasn’t my fault… it was the others who wrecked the garden.”
“And it was you who were caught,” she stated. “Are you going to name the others?” she asked.
“I can’t,” I replied. “If I grassed them up I’d be in even more trouble.”
“I can’t imagine you being in even more trouble than you are now Perry!” my mother snapped.
I tried to explain the unwritten ‘no grassing’ rule and imagined the consequences if I did grass on my friends… but mum said I was an idiot, and yet again claimed the right thing to do (other than not getting involved in the first place) is to confess the names of my accomplices. “How long is forty-eight weeks?” I glumly asked after her latest lecture ended.
“Well there are fifty-two weeks in a year, so forty-eight weeks is eleven months,” she replied. “And forty-eight months is four years,” she added with a hefty sigh. I’d already worked that out for myself… and when you’re only eleven and a half, four years is an incredibly long time.
“I know.” I gulped. Still, it’s only a Sunday School and it’s only once a week. It’ll be really boring but it’s not like I’d be doing a four-year stretch in Wormwood Scrubs.
