Fight Or Flight

Chapter 1 - Information Communication Technology (ICT)

Chapter 1 - Information Communication Technology (ICT)

I first saw them hanging Ed out of the third-floor window at the beginning of Year 10.

I had an extra guitar lesson that morning and I was late leaving the music room, though the music teacher gave me a note explaining why I was running so late for my next class.

As I ran from the Main Block to the Four Storey Block, I looked up to the ICT classroom - the place where I should've been working on my spreadsheet coursework - and there was Ed, dangling silently, each of his legs held by two hands from within the classroom, his head looking down to the concrete floor thirty or forty feet below.

This became a regular event for most of that year.

It usually happened while we were waiting for our ICT teacher to arrive to class, or when the teacher left the classroom to talk to another teacher. Or have a sly cup of tea in the technician's room.

We were left unsupervised and, for a while, unoccupied - despite his instruction for us to get on with our work 'quietly', while he left the room on his urgent business.

Before long, boredom set in and the lads would start looking around the classroom for something to entertain them.

That something was usually Ed.

Edward Forester, or Ed, as he was always referred to by teachers, had the look of somebody who'd been singled out since the first day he'd entered secondary school, and most probably all the years he attended primary school, too. Though I can't say I really paid much attention to him in those years before Year 10. He was there, but really kind of anonymous.

A bit like myself, I suppose.

English classes are held on the ground floor of the Four Storey Block. Science is on the floor above and then there are five large ICT suites on the third floor, with History and Geography and Modern Language classrooms on the top floor.

There's a real good view of the whole town from the very top of the block and, on a real clear day, you can even see the Liverpool skyline sparkling like the Emerald City in the far distance.

I sometimes tried to imagine how it must have felt to be continually picked on, like Ed, and be subjected to such treatment. I can't even begin to imagine the feeling of terror he felt while being hung out of the window, waiting for some indifferent teacher to come back into the classroom.

Of course, I never spoke to him about it back then; or asked how he felt or offered him sympathy or support. Nobody did. And nobody ever grassed on the lads who did it to him. I suppose we all (including those most bullied) ignored what the posters dotted around the school told us to in such circumstances:

Talk, Tell, Tackle.

Some of the other girls I was friends with at the time even cheered as his small body disappeared out of the window, and Beattie and Waugh - his two chief tormentors - held a leg each and began to ask him if he could fly. And if not, would he like to learn how to fly?

The rest of the class ran to the windows, along the side of the building from which Ed was hung, holding their phones in their hands, videoing his ordeal, shouting to him to look down. Or don't look down. Or shouting, you're gonna fall, Ed! They're gonna let go of your ankles and let you drop. Bye, bye, Ed! Text us on your way down, Ed! Have a good trip, Ed...

It must have been terrifying for Ed, knowing one slip and...

It was strange, he never screamed or shouted or cried. In fact, he never made a sound. And when he was eventually pulled back inside the classroom - after the kids keeping a lookout alerted Waugh and Beattie of an approaching adult - he would just shuffle back to his seat, his dark, sad eyes looking to the ground: a silent conspirator in his own torment. Somebody who had learnt to accept his role, and fulfilled it almost as if it were a duty.