What did I do to be so black and blue?

Title of a song by Louis Armstrong 1955

Ok, the story of my black eye. I suppose I must have been about 12, and I went to school with this very black eye. I was late for school that day, which was nothing unusual for me, but it meant a 15 minute detention after school. I didn’t care; to be honest I would rather do an extra 15 minutes at the end of the day than get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning. Actually I had quite a vivid imagination when I was younger, and during my long walk to school I would often think up some amazing stories as to why I was late again, which helped the time pass much quicker during my boring 3 mile walk. I didn’t for one minute think that my teacher would actually believe that there was a massive crocodile blocking my path, but as I had to stand at her desk and explain my lateness to her in front of the whole class, sometimes I wanted to tell one of my stories just to make everyone laugh. I’d get to school feeling quite excited, thinking I had such a great story to tell, and then I’d walk in and sheepishly say “Sorry I’m late, I slept in”.

Anyway, this was one such day. I don’t recall any teachers asking me about my black eye during the course of the day, but they had obviously noticed it and discussed it amongst themselves in the staff room. By home time when I sat at the desk in my form room to start on my homework, I was approached by both my form teacher and my head of year, together. They sat down in front of me looking very serious and expressed concern about my black eye. They asked me how it happened. “My brother did it”, I said. “Why did he do that?” they asked. “Because I slapped him round the face” I replied. Looking relieved, and with a slight smile on their faces, they asked what had prompted me to slap him. “Because he pinched my bum”. Well by this time they were laughing, and they couldn’t resist asking for the full story, so I went on to explain that I was playing with a tennis ball (because that’s what 12 year olds did in those days), and just to irritate me (because that’s what older brothers do) he took the ball from me and held it up in the air so that I couldn’t reach. He was only sitting on a bench in the kitchen, but I was so short for my age I was still struggling to reach. There I was stretching and jumping trying to reach this ball and then to distract me further he pinched my bum. I automatically slapped his face without thinking, and then as quick as a flash he punched me in the eye. Shaking their heads and laughing the teachers got up to leave me to do my homework.

Incidentally, I didn't get anyone asking me about my burn.