Coming of Age, 20, me it was 11

Coming of Age, 20, me it was 11 ©

By

Michael Casey

Well an item in the news attracted my attention, Coming of Age in Japan which is when they reach 20. Ditto in Korea. It’s in the newspapers so you can read it for yourselves. So, it got me thinking, when was I all grown up. Well it was when I was 11, Summer of 1970 before I started at Grammar school, the 3rd brother at the same school, hence I was called Casey Minimus by the Latin teacher, a very small man called Mr Hanny.

He got Max Francis who was 6feet 4inches to stand at the front while he taught the body parts in Spanish, so Max was a visual aid. His younger brother Simon was in the same class as me, 1B, which may have stood for Brothers, as we all seemed to have bigger brothers in the school. The UB40 guy Ali was in my class too, he broke his collar bone playing rugby and cried, we though he was a girl for crying. A friend I made in 1B was in the class too, so I know him 52 years. I think 4 of the class became Drs including my friend but he was just a PhD not a Medic.

Now I could say a bit more about the class, such as MacKenzie a Black guy who could run like the wind, I think his dad was the cobbler down the road, as for Clive he’s a Rastaman now, last time I passed him on the Dudley Rd years ago. Anyway your environment is part of your Growing Up. That and your family. So in a way I was all grown up, or wide as Big D might say, he was so small he was nicknamed after a brand of peanuts. Woke rubbish was not recognised 50 years ago.

So if you grow up with lodgers in the family house, then you learn about them. We even had an alcoholic struck off Dr as a lodger, dad carrying down her Piss Pot to empty in the outside toilet is one of my memories. We had a fridge of sorts too, all the fancy Minton tiling was where our daily 6 bottles of milk were left to stay cool. We were a family of 8 after all, 2 girls and 4 boys, plus mom and dad, hence 4 children’s milk and 2 sterilized milks, not forgetting our cat and dog, making 10. Sterilized milk was for dad to take to work at The District Iron and Steel Brasshouse Lane Smethwick, in a little bottle, as the heat from the furnace curdled any children’s milk. He did want milk for his tea after all, that’s what sterilized milk is for after all.

So you grow up seeing the alcoholic lodgers, Mrs Casey here’s the rent. As they swayed at the side door, dragging on a fag. Then when they bailed out you had to clear out, and why are nurses so messy? You have to keep their  rubbish for 3 months, in the old coal shed in the house next door, just in case they come back to pay the owed back rent. Dad is gone 20 years in 2 week’s time, he was far too kind, a gentle gentleman.

So I have experience of tidying, I even had a lodger die on me while I tried CPR. But that was ten years later. If you come from such a background you are grown up, and 50 years ago I knew too many things which I wish I never got to know for decades or even ever. You have to compartmentalize or not even think of it, hide in the bunker of your imagination or prayers till the storm passes or the tide ebbs. 

I could say more, I could write a PhD thesis, but I don’t need to prove anything to myself, nor anybody else. But I did nail PAX over my door once I got my own home. And then a year or so after that I did actually stumble into writing in 1987, it was not planned it just happened. What is in your life, just ends up on your page. Though 20 years of radio listening thanks to Frank Brown, who mum called the Best Lodger did play a part too. I remember him giving me an orange and he had the programme of The Jungle Book too from the Gaumont  Cinema, which was the biggest screen in Europe. Later the site became where Pinsent Masons office, where I worked for 3 years 30 years later.

Events in your life, direct and indirect play a part. I noticed in today’s article about Japanese coming of age, 20 you have a bank account. My dad got me mine when I was 8, I can remember the bank, and going in with dad to do it. I can recall what dad was wearing the string bound bank book. Though today with 2 student daughters I have nothing now. A day without pain is enough, or Tinnitus not driving me to the edge and beyond, which it does almost every time I wake up. Tinnitus is worse than all the pains I get and they are horrendous at times, hence the current hospital tests. 

Coming of age can be a sudden thing, or a series of things, with one being the straw that broke the camel’s back. Never Give Up is playing as I talk to you right now, Gallagher and Lyle are right, as was Saint Mark, but it is my own credo already and always. Life is full of colour, if you just say I’m Bored, or There’s Nothing to Eat, or There’s Nothing to Do, then I suggest look inwardly. The Greatest Journey is the Interior One, or failing that look at the back of the fridge, you can always make something with an egg, even if the egg is slightly cracked.