The Finger of Time.
Those moments when your life could have gone in two different ways are hard to clearly identify. I think most of the time we come to the situations we are in because we drift into them, and just as easily, we drift out. But sometimes it's possible to say, pretty much for sure, that something was a pivotal moment. I'm not talking about getting hit by cars or near misses involving drills and lurking electrical wires in plaster board - sure these are pivotal as well, but only in that they represent a 'stop.....carry on' moment. No, I'm talking about those events where things could have been different for your whole life. Example. Years ago, before I even entered the heady heights of sixth form I was in an English class. I guess I was about 14 or 15. The teacher, who had the unfortunate moniker of 'smelly' Minton (not something she was given at birth, but rather a schoolboy/girl comment on her, probably wholly imagined, poor hygiene. This myth had perpertrated our school so much that each Christmas, poor woman, her desk became inundated with soap and tins of deodorant) gave us an assignment on a poem by Coleridge called Christabel which goes on and on and on....anyways, Smellie's assignment was to write a story on what happened next - given that Coleridge never bothered to finish it (understandably, he was propably interrupted by the postman again, or just to fucked on opium to care). So, with my young writers muscle flexing I wrote a convuluted jarn involving witches, and curses and whatnot. I was pleased with it, thought it pretty good....and I guess it was okay because Smelly decided to read it out in class. Now, you have to understand - to get the full pivotal moment thing - that this was not the first time my stories had been read out. Right from little school my stories had been read out to the class by various teachers (most of them sweeter smelling), my joy only slightly tempered by the fact that the hard kids would make sure I received a punishment beating on the bus home for daring to stand out. So Smelly launched into my story and the class, dare I say it, was almost listening with half an ear. Even to someone like me, whose idea of high literature was Terence Dicks's Doctor Who Stories I thought it sounded pretty good. My young heart swelled with pride and I realised that, yes, I could be a writer. And then it happened. Smelly, in her excitement misread a crucial word. 'Tinged' - how hard could it be, I mean the context was right and everything. But oh no, she read out 'fingered'. So, instead of the sentence 'the witch tinged Christabel with her evil' (which suggested lingering malice) we got 'the witch fingered Christabel with her evil' - which, in the lanquage of the playground, sounded like soft porn. A mutter of laughter ran through the class, my cheeks burned, Smelly continued unnoticing and my dream of being a writer turned to ash.
Which is a sad story.
Nothing terrible happened, but just one incident out of many which sticks and has repercussions. But hang about, what if she had read 'tinged' and that hot sweaty summer day was disturbed only by my school bag being hurled out of the bus window on the way home, rather than the suppressed laughter of 20 odd kids. I've of probably decided, on very flimsy evidence, to become a writer and taken English and Drama 'A' levels. I'd have probably got some mediocre grades (given my twin obsessions at that age with a. not working and b. wanking, this was almost a foregone conclusion) and gone off to somewhere like Netherly Edge Polytechnic or Clackington College of Higher Education to study Creative English. Once there, (and thus not meeting any of the fine people I was to meet in later life in the 'fingered' timeline) I've have hung out with a group of chain smoking, bitter, angsty wanna-be writers. We would have rejected everything - particularly those who thought our cutting edge essays and short stories were wanky crap - and generally been pretty miserable. My heros would have been Mailer, Hemingway and Thompson and, having neither the physical stature of the first two or tolerance to alcohol/drugs of the last, I would have felt shamefully inadequate. Sure, some stories would be published in second rate magazines but nothing would ever get to the big time. Unlike, Melvin, from our writers group who would drop out in his second year after getting shortlisted for the Booker prize and being lauded as 'the great white hope of British writing'. Oh the agony, especially as he owed me a fiver and had shagged the thin asmatic goth girl who worked in student bar that I fancied. Plus he was always really enthusiastic about my work but you always knew, deep down, that he was a cunt. So I leave college with a Desmond (2:2 - say it aloud and you'll get it) and go on the dole for a few years with the intention of writing the next great English novel. As it turns out, I can't even write the next great Clackington novel and eventually find myself teaching English at a school where, if I'm lucky, I get through the day with only a mild punishment beating (and thats just from the other teachers). In my mid 30's I find myself headhunted by Offsted and end up touring failing schools, writing reports on bitter angry teachers who hate me, and then sleeping alone in a bedsit in Crewe where I hate myself - the only thing drowning out my sad lonely thoughts being the couple shagging next door.
Which is a sadder story.
So, Smelly, I am glad that you fucked my story, even if only with a finger, as I suspect that in that instant of time in a hormonally charged sweaty classroom things could have been routed on a very different road.