NOT RECOMMENDED READING FOR ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18. PLEASE GO ELSEWHERE IF YOU ARE NOT AN ADULT!
Waking up at half past five is hardly unusual for me. Waking up after a chaotic load of nonsense from the dream world that could be instantly forgotten - ditto. And waking up totally alert, rational and ready to face the challenges of the day?
No problem.
My wife was on the afternoon/evening shift yesterday and got home close to midnight, so that she was making all the noises emanating from a peaceful sleep should not be surprising.
After several hectic days today is busy but all admin - producing and sending off invoices, chasing up banks, trying to sort out problems on Paypal, building a communal voodoo doll for all the ultraconservative parties in Europe and their neo-Fascist friends and sticking the largest pins I can find in it .....
So at 0530 nowt much to do except check the baseball results on mlb.com. The Red Sox had the first of two eminently winnable games against the Rockies last night. Only problem with me being a bad loser - would I get emotional if I had found out that they had lost?
Ah well - 11-4 win, so I cannot comment really. Emotions firmly in check, watched the highlights, read the game report, suitably content (an emotion, but not an extravagant one) checked email for anything interesting (is boredom an emotion - even the spam is getting more boring than irritating, what at my age would I do with a member expanded to an unreal size?), and headed off back to bed, but not to sleep, at 0620.
Emotions have their place as long as you do not take decisions based upon them (not that politicians seem to understand that - there is more bad legislation based upon raw emotions these days than I would care to discuss. Sadly).
My wife was still snoozing peacefully. After 10 minutes or so while still asleep, she reached her hand across my chest, placed her head on my shoulder - definitely a "feel good" moment for both of us. Remember the old Paul Anka song "Put Your Head On My Shoulder"? That sort of moment really.
On the subject of Paul Anka, he was in Toronto in 1975 at the same time that I was. I was either at the start or the end of my "see the whole of North America in 21 days" trip. He was performing at one of a series of concerts. According to the press (I was not at the concert) he told the audience how good it was to be "home" (= Canada). Interesting he went back to California (or was it Nevada) afterwards. Nothing like patriotism to warm up most people's emotional responses though - well maybe not in my case, but with most people ....
Anyway apart from my life going quiet, I haven't noticed much that has roused Germany to excitement or turmoil in the past couple of weeks. The major headline yesterday in the national tabloid "Bild" was about some celebrity getting married - equals nowt much happening.
Obama was here last week of of course. Ever the great orator, it sounded all like 2008 again. "Action not words", you feel (emotion!) like telling him occasionally, but at least he hasn't started another unnecessary war or carried out policies designed to bring the world economy crashing down (unlike his predecessor, and maybe his successor - the opposing party in the US seems to be more obsessed with controlling women's bodies than owt else these days which doesn't augur well - their answer to economic problems meanwhile seems to based upon everything which caused the crisis in 2008), so you have to happy with minimal success rather than grotesque failure.
So work apart, your mind drifts back to the UK and the scandals involving teachers and their pupils/students.
I have read a lot of puerile gunge on this subject on the past few days, often from people who should know better. Try asking the people who know. At this point I was going to produce a link from YouTube, but fume, (irritated, gets angry, uncontrollable emotions take over .....), fume - I get one of those copyright prevents us usw usw messages, so no link.
Instead, from 1980, Police - "Don't Stand So Close To Me" - lyrics:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/dont-stand-so-close-to-me-lyrics-the-police.html
The lyrics are the important thing really. Musically the original version of the song is brilliant, I was never too keen on the remake.
In the light of the Forrest trial last week, I have, I repeat, read so much gunge on this subject it passes all credibility. Sting (as Gordon Sumner) started out adult life as a teacher before becoming a singer. The song is not autobiographical (he taught a younger age range than this anyway), but acute observation is applied in certain instances.
You would think to read the media outlets on the subject that there were all these young male teachers out there wickedly salivating like the crummy paedophiles they are over the innocent bodies of the poor vulnerable children (primarily female, but Gay is also possible) who wouldn't know how to resist.
WRONG! TOTALLY WRONG! ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY WRONG!!!
Digression: I have never heard of a single instance of this happening in Germany incidentally - they must be missing summat - end of digression.
As in the words of the Police song above "Young teacher, the subject of schoolgirl fantasy". As in the Forrest case with the girl who cannot now be named but whose identity is so widely know it is hardly worth following the directive not to mention it (Megan ******) - it often, even usually starts with a schoolgirl crush, budding hormonal growth usw. The teacher is often not the one who is doing the salivating - the reverse is the case.
As I have mentioned in the past on this blog, I was, as a young teacher in the 1970s (and for benefit of the UK tabloid press - this phenomenon of teenage kids getting involved with their teachers is not new or summat that has only started in the past few years, it has been around a very long time!) propositioned by schoolgirls 3 times. Average age 14 years and 7 months. I was not that handsome, I was aloof, shy, distant, not that friendly and prone to be a disciplinarian. And yet I was propositioned, quite seriously, three times! Not sure whether the more amusing "come back in 10 years time when you're old enough" was used once, but the standard reply was along the lines: "Go away and don't be so silly!".
Now if this happened to me, then it must have happened to a lot of guys who were a lot more attractive physically and certainly more personally appealing than I was (in those days anyway). I am sure that this must have happened many times. I am also certain that in over 99% of cases an immediate refusal was forthcoming! Schoolgirl crush immediately crushed (some persistent wretches were prone to return, see later)! In the words of the above song: "sometimes it's not so easy to be the teacher's pet"!
There are exceptions to the rule. There are the occasional bad apples. There was the case of the so-called "Salford stallion", Christopher Drake, who was involved with not one girl, like Forrest, but three. Eventually he was caught after an incident at his upmarket apartment block where he was "entertaining" one of the girls when another of his teenage "acquaintances" (my, we are being cutely polite with the terminology here!), threw a very noisy temper tantrum based upon jealousy, the police were called and the rest is history. Check out his nickname on google if you really want the sordid details. It makes for pretty atrocious reading.
And you had heard of the Forrest case but not the case of the "Salford stallion"? This is a bit how the UK media works, my friends - Drake was in the North of England, so it is at best regional parochialism (unless it involves soccer), Forrest was in South of England, so of course it is not merely national, but international news of massive importance (the BBC to their credit manage to avoid that sort of thinking, but it is IMHO the exception that proves the rule!).
Move on.
This brings me to one other point that has been bothering me all week. Forrest was jailed for six years this week (interestingly the same term that Drake got. I hate to think how ex-teachers get treated in jail, but I digress). He was described in the press as a "paedophile".
Actually, technically, he isn't. He is an ephebophiliac. As is Drake. As are most of the bad apples caught having sex with underage teenage girls.
The differentiation is, or ought to be, significant.
Paedophilia is in essence having sex with a prepubescent child. The child is not capable of participating in the exercise, and the act is to all and intents and purposes a thoroughly disgusting form of rape.
Ephebophilia is having sex with a teenage girl or boy who is not at the legal age of consent, but is capable of participating in the act. Still undesirable and not recommended, and still worthy of the individual being locked up. But a lot more complex situations arise from it. In a country where 40% of teenagers below the age of consent are apparently sexually active according to a survey a few years ago - you see the problems (in Germany that figure stands at a grotesquely high 25% in the same survey, so imagine 2 in every 5 teenage girls between 13 & 15 in the UK ....).
There has been a lot of gunge this week in the press about "vulnerable" teenage kids, or kids at a "vulnerable" age. The problem being that this makes all of them sound like passive recipients of unfortunate actions, when they are often nothing of the kind. Many kids of 14 and 15 of both sexes are already only too keen to show off their prowess, boast of their reputations in this respect usw. Vulnerable only affects the peer group members that they impress.
It is far too early, they are far too young usw? I agree actually. The facts of the matter is though that a lot of kids do get involved in this type of activity very early. This is again not new. I can quote friends back in the early 1960s who were already indulging in this sort of behaviour at the age of 14. And well-educated kids from good homes with caring parents as well. And as for listening to their parents who tell them "no" - see my item on "Cool" the other day. Do you really listen to your parents or your peer group?
And so when the 14-year-old girl with the schoolgirl crush and an amount of sexual experience sets her eyes on the young male teacher ..... Is the "child" really vulnerable? Or is the teacher possibly vulnerable, if he lacks the will-power to say "no"?
In most instances - see above - it is not a problem. But see Sting's song and see the problems involved. Back in 1980 after I moved to Manchester, I read one article in the local press of a young male teacher of 26 who was jailed for one year for one "indulgence" with one female 14-year-old pupil. Apparently she had pestered him and pestered him for weeks, and always been told "no". Finally for some reason he finally gave way. Why is difficult to understand, but with these persistent wretches .....
The sad part of the story is apparently that she hated the experience and went home and told her parents who complained to both the police and the school.
I cannot imagine what fascination getting involved with kids of that age would have for an adult anyway. That is not just down to my age now incidentally - it merely repeats what I thought some 40 years ago. For those who do not think like that though, I would remind them that they are professionals, they have the good name of their profession to consider, and would also note the two examples quoted on here as to what can happen if you do follow any ridiculous fantasy (and I do not think six years in jail is a worthwhile reward for any such misconduct).
Meaning leave the fantasies to the kids - and make sure that they stay just that and don't become anything else. In the long-term it is probably in their interest that they stay just that as well.
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