Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I had a flashback the other day. One of those quick, sudden flickers of memory we old fogies are prone to. I was daydreaming in the check-out queue at Tesco when I noticed a beautiful young girl serving at the till next door.
Realising I was beginning to stare, I was about to look away when she looked round directly at me and gave me a wonderful, friendly “yes, I know I look good” smile.
I returned the compliment, realising of course, that it was a recognition reserved for that somewhat smelly yet entirely harmless genus, the old codger. And I thought, with regret, how nice it would have been to receive such a glance when I was young enough to accept it as an invitation.
And in an instant recalled a moment long ago, when I did. Almost.
Stepping down memory lane
I was eighteen years of age, halfway through an engineering apprenticeship, and as suicidally unhappy as only a teenage youth knows how to be.
It wasn’t the apprenticeship that depressed me – I was as interested in that as I had been from the beginning. And I was enjoying being part of the adult life of the factory, as well as my growing skill as a toolmaker.
The downside was that I was required to spend two days a week at the local technical college, which was altogether too much like those dreadful schooldays I once thought I had escaped.
- Plus, I was permanently dog-tired, the result of spending every evening out with my mates and never getting to bed before two in the am – before struggling up again less than five hours later in order to catch the bus to work.
- Plus, my pitiful apprenticeship pay was never enough to keep me up with my mates, all of whom were in proper, full-pay employment
- Plus, my girlfriend had just dumped me. Which is, as everyone knows,a devastating,almost unbelievable blow to the male ego. Real end of the world, what is the point of carrying on stuff.
The most beautiful girl in the world
Howmsoever, I had just jumped off the bus, on my way home for my mid-day meal, bored to desperation by a morning of force-vectors, differential equations and the laws of that Newton bloke. Knowing I would fall asleep and would only be able to arouse myself enough to return to an afternoon of more of the same by pressing my forehead against the cold of the mirror above the fireplace.
When I saw her. The most beautiful girl in all of the world, known or unknown. She was walking along the pavement. And – in case you haven’t got the point – she was gorgeous.
I had no chance
My reaction however was not joy but sullenness. I stared gloomily at her, aware that such perfection could never have anything to do with me.
She was without doubt destined for marriage to a film star (we didn’t have pop stars or overpaid ball-kickers in those days) and never to an ordinary, grubby, satchel-carrying, shabbily-dressed yob like me.
Then she looked at me – and smiled.
At me.
A man again
I won’t attempt to describe that smile. Or the effect it had on me and my sulks. You get the idea I think. The sun came out, that’s all. The grey cold autumn weather transformed into high glorious summer. Just for me.
That was it. Nothing else happened. No chat leading to a date leading to a fairytale romance. She was too young – barely sixteen at a guess to my manly eighteen. And in those days such a gap was impassable.
Besides which I had in my pocket enough pence for the bus fare back to the college, no more. And on my face the plentiful scars self-inflicted whenever I shaved.
Yet the encounter was enough. The girl may well have been out of my league. But she had thought it worth her while to smile at me.
I was a man again, master of my destiny and ready to defy my fate.
Bring it on, world.
Image: Manitou2121 under CC BY 2.0
