Things I miss from my childhood

We all miss things from our child hood.  Not a care in the world.  The games we’d play were always so simple.  Kick the can, Rounders, Tease the Pedo.  All great craic.

What’s that you say?

You’ve never played Tease the Pedo?

I beg to differ.  Any child who walks around anywhere at anytime is inadvertently teasing many pedo’s, especially bare foot, but before I say too much I’ll say this – Teasing the Pedo was one of the most fruitful activities we could ever do.

We were a smart little bunch on our street.  We knew who the local pedo was and we knew he had lots of sweets.  Growing up in the 80′s meant that we were even poorer than we are now, so we had to get our sweets any way we could.  Plus it was before the internet, so pedo’s had to be much more patient or we wouldn’t put out.

Poor thing, he thought he was grooming us, but we were just prick teasing.  Depending on the mood we were in he’d have to get us Dan Bars or Fizzy cola lollies.  This was because there was a phase when different numbers were printed on the wrappers.  If you got a number seven, you got a free Dan bar or Fizzy Cola lolly.  Chances were that if Mr Pedo Man gave us either of those, we wouldn’t have to go near him for an extra day or two.

For a Dan Bar, we’d throw on a tight t shirt and ice up our nipples.

For a Fizzy cola lolly we’d let him tickle us, which was alright really.  Who doesn’t enjoy a good tickle?

If he went all our and got some Double Dip bags or Mr Freeze cool pops, we might even pretend to be asleep while he took pictures of us.

Now, because it was called Tease the Pedo, we never actually did anything.  Other wise it would have been called Finding a Happy Place.  As I said, we were a clever bunch.  When ever he’d tell us to reach into his pockets for the sweets, we’d just giggle and call him silly.  One time he told us he had a special kind of lolly for us, but we said that because we were losing our baby teeth, one might come loose and fall out during eating it.  His face got all scrunchy and he kind of shuddered and squeaked, and all without having to close our eyes and pretend we were somewhere else.

That actually turned out to be a bigger bonus as we’d bring him our teeth when they did fall out and he’d dress up as the Tooth Fairy.  He told us our reward was under his pillow, but as we neared his bedroom the smell of chloroform was getting stronger.  So just like a Sunday newspaper journalist, we made our excuses and left.

That was the last we saw of him.

Couple of weeks later, he was found in a pair of Care Bear briefs and hanging in his wardrobe by a belt with a Punky Brewster video on repeat.

From then on we had to get our own sweets.  So we started bob a jobbing around the estate.  The drunk woman next door who had just been left behind by her husband was the best.  You could fleece her purse and she’d just assume she’d drank it all.  When she went into rehab, we had to resort to shoplifting, but that’s another story.

I would apologise for my behaviour as a youngster, but we didn’t have Playstations or Xbox’s.  We had Atari’s and Buckeroo!, what the fuck were we meant to do?

So what’s the moral of the story?  Protect your kids from Pedo’s?  I wouldn’t worry, your kids are smarter than you give them credit for.

I suppose there is no moral really.  All I know is that if I was still as cute with iced up nipples, I’d never have to buy another packet of Fruit Pastilles for myself again.

I’m getting old, man.