Posted by Poppy on October 5, 2005, 6:14 am, in reply to "Just put that away (Part 1)" Years later I was teaching an adult-education evening class for English A level. They were a very nice lot, as they invariably are because they really want to pass the exam, apart from a young guy of 20 called Mitch, who was lazy, rather rude, and very silly. The others disliked him intensely, and at times I had to tell him off for being disruptive as if he were about 14. Like most yobs, he always sat at the back of the class. One evening after the end of the session two of the women asked to speak to me in private. We went into the corridor, and they told me that Mitch was exposing himself to them in the back row. “All right,” I said. “Leave it to me.” I was going to be very pleased to get rid of him. I went back into the classroom, and he was still sitting there. “Come on, Mitch. The caretaker wants to lock up.” “No.” “Mitch, if you don’t come, now, I’ll have to call the caretaker to get you out. Now, let’s go.” “No.” “One way and another I’ve had enough of you. Do as you are told.” “I can’t, I can’t! I’ve got my c*** stuck in the desk.” “What!? How on earth could you have done that?” “There’s a big knothole. I put it in, and it grew, and now it won’t come out!” I went to the school canteen and got some cooking oil. As he applied it and eased out his whatnot, he was crying with shame. He apologized to the two women, and I had no more trouble with him. In fact, he was quite clever when he stopped showing off. But every time I looked at him I felt the urge to hoot with laughter. Back to where I began. I saw the flasher a few days before Christmas. I was in town very early to catch a train, and cut through the shopping center by the side of Tesco, which wasn’t yet open. I noticed a well-dressed, middle-aged man with a briefcase just standing there in the passageway, and wondered vaguely what he was doing. As I walked past him he gave a nervous laugh, and said, “What do you think of this, then?” He was exposing himself. I just stood there, unable to believe it. Again he said, “What do you think of this, then?” “Ineffective advertising,” I replied. He ran away, and I rang the police on my mobile. They seemed puzzled that I wasn’t afraid or upset, but I never had been. Flashers rarely hurt anyone, but I’m sure they upset children and some women, so they must be reported. As I sat on a later train, having missed the one I wanted, I suddenly remembered how once all those years ago I actually did report a man. I’d be about 12, and was taking a short cut up an alleyway in Coventry to the Earlsdon library. I was thinking about “Just William” books, for which I had a craze at the time, when an old bloke popped out from somewhere and flashed. I dropped my books, two “William” stories which I was returning, and one fell in a puddle, which made me much more cross than being flashed. I went straight to the police station in Earlsdon, where I was seen by a WPC. “Now,” she said, “I want to ask you a question which you may find rather strange, but do your best to answer. He was holding himself you say. Was it up, or down, or was he twirling it around?” I didn’t realize for years the implications of this question. Twirling it around! The image was so bizarre, so ludicrous, that I burst out laughing. “You are a very rude little girl,” said the police officer. “And I don’t believe you. You can go away.” My own girls, brought up in a way quite different from mine, saw a flasher only once. The twins were nine, their elder sister ten, and he was lurking in a bush near their primary school when they left to come home. I had, of course, warned them about inappropriate behavior by adults. They had run back to the school and told a teacher. “Did it upset you?” I asked. “Of course it didn’t. We laughed at him. He just looked so silly. And we told him he did before we ran away!” I couldn’t have handled it better myself. Poppy Link: Post a response
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(Originally posted on March 16, 2003, 1:24 am)
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