A Tale of Mischievious Youth

I wrote this a while back, but it has become relative again, so here goes:

In school I was one of those kids who was singled out and verbally abused quite often, don’t feel sorry for me though because while I didn’t fight back I always found a way to release the aggression. The act I probably regret most of all was that of locking a large group of pensioners in church for over an hour and all it took was a small piece of wood through two door handles. Harmless fun it seemed at the time but something I’m ashamed to admit to in hindsight. I was also pretty infamous for terrorising the residents around where I lived, a roll of cotton was my weapon and playing knick-knock from a safe and secure distance was the regular evening activity.

Oh how I wish the trail of mischief ended there. I was once part of a small group of friends who lived near a wasteland of sorts, there were trees and ditches and huge mounds of dirt for miles around and as children it naturally became our haunting ground. We would build tree houses and dens in the coolest of places and swinging across some deep, dangerous ravine was usually the only way to gain access to them. We would sit and talk and laugh and play cards for hours on end, there really was nothing better as far as we were concerned.

That was until the construction workers came and threatened our home from home. They were planning on flattening the whole area to pave way for a brand new housing estate but little did they know we weren’t about to give up the fight so easily. For the next few months we sabotaged just about anything we could get our hands on, we started off small; defacing jackets and deflating tyres and once our confidence was up we set fire to their main office which contained a whole lot of important paperwork. We knew it wasn’t their fault the work was going ahead but we were young and naïve and we were taking out revenge any way we possibly could.

The reason I bring up this subject in particular is because lately the area I live in has slowly become populated by more and more youths, it’s getting to the point where I can’t drive home without veering passed a series of teenagers in matching black tracksuits who are causing trouble in some form. They’re either kicking a ball at an unsuspecting victim or kicking the wing mirror off of my car; and while I hate them for it I wonder if I’m in any position to judge, after all it wasn’t all that long ago I was doing thing’s of a similar nature. It just seems that the trouble they’re causing is far worse than anything we ever got up to, you know? Maybe that’s how life works, you grow up and your perceptions change.