Another Short Story....
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
GAVIN
Fifteen is a bad age to be. Too young to be grown up and too old to be a cute kid anymore.
All your bits are doing strange things; growing, breaking, getting hairy all at the same time but also completely separate.
All the girls of the same age are now women and seeing older men, all the older girls see you as a child and all the younger girls who are children pursue you mercilessly for their first taste of romantic entanglement.
Now you have a choice: succumb to their advances and be ribbed constantly by your mates or spend the next indeterminate foreseeable months totally devoid of female companionship.
Not a very happy choice to make. It was against this background that one of the most bizarre teenage romance stories of all time happened.
It goes a bit like this………
“Get up you lazy toad!! You’ll be late for school!!”
“Why is it? thought Gavin, “that mothers never, ever, ever, ever find fame and fortune in fields where their immense vocal talents would be better appreciated? Town criers; ring masters; boxing comperes, fog horns or even screaming, howling banshee hell-cats?”
“I won’t tell you again, GET UP!!!”
This latest ‘announcement’ finally persuaded Gavin to stir himself.
The teen years are basically a time or learning.
The seeds are sown for the inevitable degeneration into bachelor pad life.
Look in any teen bedroom and you will see the early signs; four pairs of socks in various stages of decomposition will mutate and grow into almost every item of clothing in later years; two or three empty crisp packets evolve into numerous Indian, Chinese and burger takeaway boxes ; the occasional fag butt hidden away behind the vase somehow will manifest itself in years to come into dozens of varying receptacles overflowing with ash, stolen pub ashtrays, milk bottles, jar lids and half empty cans of flat Safeways own premium lager at probably 39p a can.
The late return library books become late return phone bills and so on and so on.
Gavin rolled out of bed and stumbled bleary eyed into the bathroom. At the tender age of fifteen there is still that wonderous warm innocent belief in the toothpaste fairy.
Whilst in the bosom of your family toothpaste, miraculously, never runs out.
Such a shock it is to the system when in your own place you awake one morning to discover that not only does Father Christmas not exist, or that the Easter Bunny is pretend but most shocking of all is the final and brutal realisation that there is no toothpaste fairy who miraculously always produces a fresh, full tube even before the old one has run out.
You then discover the Clean Clothes fairy, the Ironed Shirt fairy and the Bog Roll fairy doesn’t exist either.
Bleak reality stares you in the face as the evil monstrous ghoul which is the ‘launderette’ rears its ugly head but thankfully for Gavin this was still many, many years away.
After a rather brief wash Gavin felt slightly more alive.
Breakfast happened and within no time at all Gavin was on his way to school.
He always took the same route.
Left at his front gate, right at the end of the road and right again into the High Street.
Past the chemist, past the newsagents and past that coffee shop – the very same one that the girl of his dreams worked in.
She was everything a girl could possibly be – beautiful, blonde, well proportioned, intelligent, 17 and of course going out with someone else!!
This last point was obviously a bit of a bummer as far as Gavin was concerned.
She was in the sixth form at Gavin’s school and as all his mates were aware of his complete infatuation with her, he was teased relentlessly morning, noon and night.
She would walk past as Gavin and his classmates were waiting outside a classroom.
“Wahay Gav! Here comes your woman!”
“Look out Gav! She’s checking up on you!”
“Oi Gav! Isn’t that the one you fancy?”
Every day the same embarrassing shouts, every day the same gut-renching longing and every day the same total dismissal of his very existence by his own personal goddess.
Gavin knew her name was Debbie and he knew she worked in that coffee shop down the High Street on Saturdays.
The one time Gavin had managed to pluck up enough courage to actually go into the coffee shop he had been dismayed to find a huge gaggle of his schoolmates already there.
He joined them grudgingly knowing that his opportunity to speak to Debbie alone was completely shot away.
Fifteen year old boys are boisterous at the best of times and en mass they are every shopkeepers and restaurateur’s nightmare come true.
Gavin had sat hoping and praying Debbie wouldn’t serve them. Inevitably she did.
“Seven coffees love, and a cup of love juice for our Gav!!” quipped Ian.
Ian was the typical over developed, undereducated, self styled ‘joker’ of the group.
He always made bad tasteless remarks which he invariably followed with a raucous laugh.
This was normally the reason his peers would find amusement as Ian’s laugh resembled a herd of wild goats being run over by a large traction engine.
Debbie addressed Gavin personally requesting his order.
So taken aback was he by this that even though his brain was telling him to order a large coffee, all he succeeded in saying was, “Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh.”
She brought him a large coffee anyway, and in an attempt to make amends he reached for it from her outstretched hand spilling the entire contents over her, himself and half the table.
Gavin dropped a quid on the table, and as any self respecting young man would do, Gavin did a runner.
The following Monday at school had been hell. His every move was accompanied by “buh, buh, buh, buh” and shouts of “Careful, you’ll drop it!”
By Thursday Gavin was thoroughly pissed off by the seemingly endless “wit” of his classmates.
A fight ensued and Gavin found himself in the Head’s office being severely reprimanded for what amounted to encitment to riot. After an hours detention Gavin began the lonely walk home.
Not looking where he was going he walked straight into someone and knocked her and her books flying. G
avin scrabbled around collecting up the dropped books, and as he got up he realised the full enormity of the situation.
It was her!!
Debbie!!
He apologised quickly and legged it!
Too quickly to hear the “Thank you Gavin” which passed her gorgeous full lips.
Saturday was a big day for the town as the local football team were progressing in the Cup much to everyone’s surprise, not least that of the team itself.
Every year a team of welders, salesmen, car mechanics and failed first division stars are plucked from obscurity and become famous for an afternoon. Until they lose 12 – 0 and return to obscurity once more.
This year it was Gavin’s home team’s turn for the bright lights treatment.
Feeling brave Gavin went for a coffee and knew he had made a huge mistake the minute he went in.
Two tables full of his schoolmates and many others full of beered-up footie fans.
Debbie was working and looked seriously harassed.
Gavin was just about to leave when Ian spotted him and called him over. Successfully managing to order a coffee, Gavin sat down.
The footie fans were winding Debbie up hugely but she maintained her professional front.
Carrying a rather full tray of coffees, milkshakes and pots of tea, one rather ‘amusing’ prankster stuck out an inopportune leg.
Coffee, tea and milkshakes went flying as did the unfortunate Debbie.
Gavin, uncharacteristically, flew to her aid and helped collect the debris.
“Are you a-a-a-alright?” stumbled Gavin.
“I am now,” came the reply. As Gavin helped Debbie to her feet, a wave of ridiculous impetuousness overtook him.
“Would you like to, maybe, if you’ve got the time, perhaps, if you’re not too busy, maybe, perhaps, like to, if you want, come out with me tonight……. perhaps?”
“Is that a proposal?” asked Debbie, a little confused.
“I suppose it is!” replied Gavin, shocked by his own bravery.
“Then if it is, the answer is yes!” replied Debbie warmly with a smile that would melt concrete let alone ice. Taking Debbie firmly in his arms Gavin kissed her to tumultuous applause from the rest of the coffee shop.
“Perhaps,” thought Gavin, on his way home, “perhaps fifteen isn’t such a bad age to be after all!!”
THE END
Copywrited properly by me so f*** off. March 2000
Fifteen is a bad age to be. Too young to be grown up and too old to be a cute kid anymore.
All your bits are doing strange things; growing, breaking, getting hairy all at the same time but also completely separate.
All the girls of the same age are now women and seeing older men, all the older girls see you as a child and all the younger girls who are children pursue you mercilessly for their first taste of romantic entanglement.
Now you have a choice: succumb to their advances and be ribbed constantly by your mates or spend the next indeterminate foreseeable months totally devoid of female companionship.
Not a very happy choice to make. It was against this background that one of the most bizarre teenage romance stories of all time happened.
It goes a bit like this………
“Get up you lazy toad!! You’ll be late for school!!”
“Why is it? thought Gavin, “that mothers never, ever, ever, ever find fame and fortune in fields where their immense vocal talents would be better appreciated? Town criers; ring masters; boxing comperes, fog horns or even screaming, howling banshee hell-cats?”
“I won’t tell you again, GET UP!!!”
This latest ‘announcement’ finally persuaded Gavin to stir himself.
The teen years are basically a time or learning.
The seeds are sown for the inevitable degeneration into bachelor pad life.
Look in any teen bedroom and you will see the early signs; four pairs of socks in various stages of decomposition will mutate and grow into almost every item of clothing in later years; two or three empty crisp packets evolve into numerous Indian, Chinese and burger takeaway boxes ; the occasional fag butt hidden away behind the vase somehow will manifest itself in years to come into dozens of varying receptacles overflowing with ash, stolen pub ashtrays, milk bottles, jar lids and half empty cans of flat Safeways own premium lager at probably 39p a can.
The late return library books become late return phone bills and so on and so on.
Gavin rolled out of bed and stumbled bleary eyed into the bathroom. At the tender age of fifteen there is still that wonderous warm innocent belief in the toothpaste fairy.
Whilst in the bosom of your family toothpaste, miraculously, never runs out.
Such a shock it is to the system when in your own place you awake one morning to discover that not only does Father Christmas not exist, or that the Easter Bunny is pretend but most shocking of all is the final and brutal realisation that there is no toothpaste fairy who miraculously always produces a fresh, full tube even before the old one has run out.
You then discover the Clean Clothes fairy, the Ironed Shirt fairy and the Bog Roll fairy doesn’t exist either.
Bleak reality stares you in the face as the evil monstrous ghoul which is the ‘launderette’ rears its ugly head but thankfully for Gavin this was still many, many years away.
After a rather brief wash Gavin felt slightly more alive.
Breakfast happened and within no time at all Gavin was on his way to school.
He always took the same route.
Left at his front gate, right at the end of the road and right again into the High Street.
Past the chemist, past the newsagents and past that coffee shop – the very same one that the girl of his dreams worked in.
She was everything a girl could possibly be – beautiful, blonde, well proportioned, intelligent, 17 and of course going out with someone else!!
This last point was obviously a bit of a bummer as far as Gavin was concerned.
She was in the sixth form at Gavin’s school and as all his mates were aware of his complete infatuation with her, he was teased relentlessly morning, noon and night.
She would walk past as Gavin and his classmates were waiting outside a classroom.
“Wahay Gav! Here comes your woman!”
“Look out Gav! She’s checking up on you!”
“Oi Gav! Isn’t that the one you fancy?”
Every day the same embarrassing shouts, every day the same gut-renching longing and every day the same total dismissal of his very existence by his own personal goddess.
Gavin knew her name was Debbie and he knew she worked in that coffee shop down the High Street on Saturdays.
The one time Gavin had managed to pluck up enough courage to actually go into the coffee shop he had been dismayed to find a huge gaggle of his schoolmates already there.
He joined them grudgingly knowing that his opportunity to speak to Debbie alone was completely shot away.
Fifteen year old boys are boisterous at the best of times and en mass they are every shopkeepers and restaurateur’s nightmare come true.
Gavin had sat hoping and praying Debbie wouldn’t serve them. Inevitably she did.
“Seven coffees love, and a cup of love juice for our Gav!!” quipped Ian.
Ian was the typical over developed, undereducated, self styled ‘joker’ of the group.
He always made bad tasteless remarks which he invariably followed with a raucous laugh.
This was normally the reason his peers would find amusement as Ian’s laugh resembled a herd of wild goats being run over by a large traction engine.
Debbie addressed Gavin personally requesting his order.
So taken aback was he by this that even though his brain was telling him to order a large coffee, all he succeeded in saying was, “Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh.”
She brought him a large coffee anyway, and in an attempt to make amends he reached for it from her outstretched hand spilling the entire contents over her, himself and half the table.
Gavin dropped a quid on the table, and as any self respecting young man would do, Gavin did a runner.
The following Monday at school had been hell. His every move was accompanied by “buh, buh, buh, buh” and shouts of “Careful, you’ll drop it!”
By Thursday Gavin was thoroughly pissed off by the seemingly endless “wit” of his classmates.
A fight ensued and Gavin found himself in the Head’s office being severely reprimanded for what amounted to encitment to riot. After an hours detention Gavin began the lonely walk home.
Not looking where he was going he walked straight into someone and knocked her and her books flying. G
avin scrabbled around collecting up the dropped books, and as he got up he realised the full enormity of the situation.
It was her!!
Debbie!!
He apologised quickly and legged it!
Too quickly to hear the “Thank you Gavin” which passed her gorgeous full lips.
Saturday was a big day for the town as the local football team were progressing in the Cup much to everyone’s surprise, not least that of the team itself.
Every year a team of welders, salesmen, car mechanics and failed first division stars are plucked from obscurity and become famous for an afternoon. Until they lose 12 – 0 and return to obscurity once more.
This year it was Gavin’s home team’s turn for the bright lights treatment.
Feeling brave Gavin went for a coffee and knew he had made a huge mistake the minute he went in.
Two tables full of his schoolmates and many others full of beered-up footie fans.
Debbie was working and looked seriously harassed.
Gavin was just about to leave when Ian spotted him and called him over. Successfully managing to order a coffee, Gavin sat down.
The footie fans were winding Debbie up hugely but she maintained her professional front.
Carrying a rather full tray of coffees, milkshakes and pots of tea, one rather ‘amusing’ prankster stuck out an inopportune leg.
Coffee, tea and milkshakes went flying as did the unfortunate Debbie.
Gavin, uncharacteristically, flew to her aid and helped collect the debris.
“Are you a-a-a-alright?” stumbled Gavin.
“I am now,” came the reply. As Gavin helped Debbie to her feet, a wave of ridiculous impetuousness overtook him.
“Would you like to, maybe, if you’ve got the time, perhaps, if you’re not too busy, maybe, perhaps, like to, if you want, come out with me tonight……. perhaps?”
“Is that a proposal?” asked Debbie, a little confused.
“I suppose it is!” replied Gavin, shocked by his own bravery.
“Then if it is, the answer is yes!” replied Debbie warmly with a smile that would melt concrete let alone ice. Taking Debbie firmly in his arms Gavin kissed her to tumultuous applause from the rest of the coffee shop.
“Perhaps,” thought Gavin, on his way home, “perhaps fifteen isn’t such a bad age to be after all!!”
THE END
Copywrited properly by me so f*** off. March 2000
