Why Dad Hid His Shaving Brush
I was a bully, no excuse.
I often ran away when I was a kid, though my mother never noticed. I’d come home later morning to find her hanging the washing with embroidered peg bag hung around her neck. There’s a cookie on the table, she’d say, oblivious to that fact I’d run away. When we sat down to our evening meal, I never spoke of my adventure. Dad would tell of his day working. Mum, still wearing her gingham apron put on at breakfast, would ask about school and if any clothing repairs were necessary. At school, I learned some children hated other children, bullied them, called them names, and those bullies came in different shapes and forms. George Bryant, a smaller boy, and Billy Harrison, a not so small boy, with me, somewhere in the middle, played a game called ‘The Electric Chair.’ To play this game, we needed one toilet, one criminal, one shaving brush, one shaving cup and soap, and one executioner! George took a bit of catching, being small and agile. Billy and I were no slouches and cut off his escape. We secured his wrists with my dressing gown cord. I run up the stairs in my home and borrowed Dad’s shaving brush from the bathroom, along with his stick of shaving soap! I beat up a good lather in an old mug. Once a creamy lather, I smeared it around George’s mouth. He sat perfectly still. Billy tied a piece of black cloth round his head, covering his eyes. When everything was ready, we guided George to the toilet and sat him down. I ask him to say a few last words. He said, Why does it always have to be me? I replied, because you are the smallest. On the count of three, I pulled the chain. The surge of water symbolized the electric current running through him. George, we insisted, had to writhe, and wriggle and blow the shaving foam all over the place so that it looked like he was foaming at the mouth. He had to shake and tremble and finish up wriggling on the floor. Sometimes George didn’t tremble enough, so we had to begin the entire process over. At the third attempt, Dad caught us. He asked what we were doing. I told him we were executing George. This is not a game children play, he told us, sternly. Billy Harrison sniggered, turning his head away, but his shoulders gave him away. Dad hid the shaving brush and foam from that day forth. It was great growing up. Today, this recollection still shivers down my spine. Its cruelty shames me. Today, I watched a boy on a television newscast- perhaps he was ten — carrying a loaded AK47. The reporter said that many young Palestinian children carried weapons and trained to use them.
I guess their fathers had hidden the shaving brush, too.