“The pain of youth becomes the story of age.”
Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
Image created with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot
It’s a pleasant spring morning in Scotland. I’m giving my legs a shuffle and feeling my heart pumping life force around my body. It’s the Clyde Walkway, and I figure I’ll do a ninety-minute walk before picking up a new guitar in Glasgow.
Apparently, the man walking on my left comes from the same town I grew up in until I was fourteen. He goes on to tell me the most bizarre story.
“I’m at school one morning.” (Isn’t it strange, how we speak of the past in the present?)
“What school?” I ask.
“St Gerard’s, in Govan,” he replies, then continues. “After school that day, I go to the Plaza to see The War Wagon.”
“Oh, I saw that! Wasn’t the movie shown with it The Perils of Pauline? Goodness, I had a teenage crush on Betty Hutton. My pal Dec and I went to see it three times in one week,” I say.
“So, after the movies, I go home—and guess what?” he says.
“What?”
“No one’s in. They did a runner. Moved.”
“Get away.”
“Sure. I knock on the neighbour’s door, and they tell me the removal lorry came and took everything away that afternoon.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I call my grannie, and she tells me they’ve moved from Govan to Pollok.”
“What happened next?”
“I have no money, so I walk it—from Govan to Pollok. And when I got home, it was just like another day. My mother said, ‘How was school today?’”
While we walked, a silence descended as I tried to take all this in. I think kids were tougher back in the day. But that depends on the time, place and guardians. "The past was a different country, they did things differently there" the author wrote.
But then I asked my fellow walker, “So what was the story? Why didn’t you know you were moving?”
“I must have just forgot they told me we’d be moving that day.”
"Sure, give them the benefit of the doubt; it's the right thing to do."