As a child, I attended many schools because my dad’s job had us on the move in almost every one of my primary school years. As a consequence, the main focus of my young life was to become accepted into new friendship groups, and in this pursuit, I learned behaviours that have taken me many years to shake off.
Because of the challenges I faced and my responses to them, I have come to recognise and understand some negative aspects of human nature. Of late, apart from THE VIRUS, I have been preoccupied, as most of us in the UK probably have, by Donald Trump’s inability to let go of his position as President of the United States.
An incident at my primary school in Sutton, Surrey had me recognising Trump’s behaviour in my nine-year-old self: It was during some contretemps with established groups who did not wish to be associated with the alien, landed from Peterborough, I expect. Prior to the altercation I was reduced to playing with my younger brother’s friends, in the lower school playground. On the occasion of which I write, when faced with unwanted aggression from my own age group, I yelled to one of the small boys hanging around nearby, ‘Get the gang!’
In a moment of wonderful fantasy fulfilment, this small urchin turned and ran, and I heard him in the other playground, calling his mates together. Absolutely on cue, they ran to me, gathered around me and glared at the, now unremembered, perpetrators.
My overriding feeling was one of power. I gave myself status as the leader of this small gang of boys. It was intoxicating and I continued telling myself this story, that I was in charge and important, for some time afterwards.
This is, I believe, what DT is doing. He believes his own story; it gives him a sense of importance and boosts his ego. He is not thinking of the repercussions of what he says and does, he is too busy playing the part he has created for himself. Of course, I was nine at the time of my story, whereas the orange guy is 74. I can’t help wondering what influences have led him to become this puppet in his own show.
As a post script, I searched for the school in Sutton. At the time it was called Avenue Road County Primary School but it is now Avenue Primary Academy. Their website shows a school very different from the regimented 1963 version of my recollection. Things in education have changed a lot, as demonstrated by this YouTube video of the staff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i99QuloJhIA&feature=youtu.be. What fun. A great effort by those wonderful staff to be positive in these stricken times.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo