One thing I could never forget…

is any time someone put their hand out socially. I couldn’t talk to ppl until I was 28 and when in school I was as quiet as a mouse particularly secondary school. That could have been paranoia about stuttering. I stuttered until the age of 15, stuttering is a **** of a condition and any stutterer would have my deepest empathy. As a stutterer I thought the world revolved around my stuttering, it was only when I came to the greatest realisation in life -‘nobody cares’ that my speech became fluent. I found it hard to make friends in school but eventually made friends then when I was in transition year the classes in my year were reshuffled, my friends ended up in different classes and I was back to square one. About two weeks into transition year I was on my own one day in Art class and the most popular guy not just in my class but in the entire year invited me over to sit with him and the other popular guys, I never forgot it. About ten years later I bumped into someone from that class in a pub, we got chatting about what ppl were now up to and he told me the popular guy was having severe problems with a psychotic neighbour. Having friends in low places I was confident I could get the problem sorted. I got straight on to a lunatic who assured me he would ‘talk’ to the psychotic neighbour. I didn’t ask what he would ‘talk’ about, if you don’t need to know- you don’t know. The psychotic neighbour knocked into the popular guy from school with a bottle of wine saying he was very sorry.  The popular guy asked me why I did it. I reminded him of that day in Art class.