One of those was 20-year-old Thomas Davies from North Cornelly, who hanged himself in February 2007. He had been friends with two other young men, David Dilling, 19, and Dale Crole, 18, who had been found dead weeks earlier.
This got me thinking, along with tilde's nostalgia thread, about being in clubs or gangs when you're a kid. Not like official clubs or anything, but the ones that you make up with your friends or relatives when you're small. I suppose that the exteme end of this is actual street gangs, but I'm sure that for most of us, any self regulated organizations that we were members of as kids were mostly harmless. So this is another nostalgia thread about childhood clubs.
A lot of books and tv shows that I engaged with as a kid seemed to be about clubs as...famous five, secret seven. BMX bandits. A team. They were all about tight organizations with quite rigid hierachies, where the boys and girls had different kinds of roles..there was a leader, there was a foil. As a result, I was a member of a few organizations of my own, as I grew up.
The first one, aged probably around 6 - 7, was based almost entirely on the bmx bandits, and was probably the least well organized. The whole thing started when my parents bought a shed. I loved the shed so much - it was private, and full of exciting things, and the smell of the varnish was amazing. So, after they got the shed, it quickly became the administrative hq of the bmx bandits - a loose group of about five of us. Duties included producing marketing material, (such as posters featuring pictures of people on bmx's), riding on bmx's, and carrying out pseudo investigataions around the building sites nearby, on the look out for toxic waste, weapons that could be scavenged, or documents that might lead to clues about things. Nothing really came of it apart from hauling lots of crap into the shed. Disbanded around the same time that the next club formed.
The "U.S. Commandos" were a far sleeker and more admin-focused group. Started off with an A Team angle, but ended up more like MI5. Probably went on from ages 8-11 It was my brother, me, and our two cousins, helen and chris. We were ranked according to age, so I was leader, or codename "US Com 5". We all had briefcases, which I think had been re-appropriated from their origins as roland rat themed christmas sweet packages. We had operations, all of them documented, planned, and debriefed in log books. They usually revolved around antagonising our parents, using things like water, string, and fake turds. As a result of this club, almost all presents I received for birthdays and christmases were stationary. Folders, pads of paper, rub on transfers, stencils, hole punches, general office equipment. Admin headquarters was my brother's room, although my cousin chris and I were also in an an 'inner sanctum' type subgroup, to enable co-ordinated tortue of our siblings. We communicated by letter, and by reports produced on the ZX Spectrum and sent to each other in tape format. This club disbanded after relations between my brother and I had broken down to where they are now, which is extreme mutual distrust. Corruption, spying, people slacking on admin duties, and the frequency of internal espionage operations meant that it could no longer function
Anyway. I've probably gone on for too long, but I was wondering, was anybody else in clubs when they were kids? What did the clubs do, how were they structured, and what role did you play? I think that it's interesting to see how your natural role back then evolved into your many roles as an adult.
[ 23.01.2008, 06:31: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
posted
I was in a little gang of socialist hippies when I was about 13. We would do things like pool our dinner money so we could go to the local shop and buy cigarettes (sold individually in those days) and a full-sized picnic every lunchtime (not even a sandwich short). We also had this trick of smoking quite openly in our corner of the playground while the teachers used all their energies catching the dull-witted idiots who would hide behind the bike sheds to smoke, as if that was simply the last place anyone would think to look.
We also used to have Blues jams during playtime, using comb-and-paper Blues harmonicas and singing songs about Dr Martens boots.
So, if your school had a small group of complete twats that no one else talked to, then that was probably us.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: was anybody else in clubs when they were kids? What did the clubs do, how were they structured, and what role did you play?
It wasn't so much a 'club' or a 'gang' in the traditional Compton sense, but there were 7 of us who were a very very tight group. So much so, that we all basically lived in Wes's basement (his parents were very rich so the basement was bigger than my first flat and had a fire place.. And, directly above it was his dad's Vet's practice so we'd sneak up and steal his nitrous canisters and he was the first of us to have a car). We did everything together, and between the 7 of us, we had the resources to do just about anything. Two were affluent so money was always on hand, two were thugs so any sort of 'trouble' was handled, one was super smart so homework was sorted, and the other was the patsy that we'd blame shit on if we got caught.
It really wasn't organised too much, as we all had our roles and when one tried his luck and tried to be above his station, he was quickly reminded that we were equals. We all have the same tattoo to remind ourselves that whilst we pretty much never talk anymore, I know that if I needed to, I could pick up a phone and they'd be there.
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: I think that it's interesting to see how your natural role back then evolved into your many roles as an adult.
My role was more of a moderator. When things got heated, I was the one that usually stepped in and cooled things down and no matter what party we were at or how fucked I was, I was always the one that had to talk to the cops if the showed up. My role was rather successful because of the things that we did together, we never got in trouble. I was able to talk my way out of a speeding ticket for doing 100+ in a 35mph, get the cops to turn a blind eye to the fact there were 300 kids in a field getting wankered on beer and drugs, talk my way out of a firearms charge to name only a few.
How my life now has been effected by then? Well, I think I'm still a natural moderator as I'm the one that steps in to stop something happening and it gave me the confidence to know that no matter how bad it is, I have the strength to get through it and not to be afraid of anyone or anything. The negative side to what I had then is that the bond of friendship was so strong and so complete, I find it near impossible to have 'friends' now. I tend to view relationships with people in such a way that I have millions of acquaintances who I'd happily spend an evening on the piss with or whatever, but a 'friend' to me is someone I'd die for if need be and I just haven't let myself open up enough in the 12 or so years since high school to let that happen.
Sometimes it does depress me that I shut down the ability to have 'friends' based solely on the fact that it'd never be like it used to be, but then I think that it has taught me that being a 'friend' is more than bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party... It's more like being part of a whole and you'd do anything to protect that whole.
-------------------- Evil isn't what you've done, it's feeling bad about it afterwards... Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again. Posts: 3793
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I was in a 'gang' between the ages of about 8 and 11, with my brother (almost 2 years younger but only 1 school year apart), a boy from down the road about the same age as me but who went to a different school to us, his sister who was the same age as my brother, and occasionally my stepsis who was in between our ages (she didn't live with us and was only there at weekends or holidays). Our nicknames varied depending on mood, but most usually were based on callsigns from Top Gun and our age/position in the group. So I was Charlie, the older and cooler boy was Maverick, my stepsis was Ice, my brother was the joker and so was Goose and the younger girl was Slider (I don't think she'd seen the film but still knew her name wasn't that great, and it amused the rest of us to call her that). We had fields out the back of our houses, so used to climb trees, hang out in our treehouse or their garage, block the road by playing football, cricket or street hockey, and sometimes get in fights with a rival gang from a road on the other side of the fields, usual kids stuff really.
As to roles relating to later in life, then I was the oldest one, the quieter, 'clever' one, who would generally decide what to do, and could get people to do what I wanted fairly easily in a non pushy way, but not technically the leader since I didn't want to be, and not the best looking or coolest, but pretty laidback and easy going, so just friends with the most popular boys...yeah, I think that's still a fairly accurate picture of me.
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I was never in a gang or club (unless you count the ecology club in high school...which i was president of), but in high school there were about 6 or 7 of us who were a very tight 'clique'. Inside jokes galore, going to all ages alternative/goth clubs and just being silly girls.
I did get into a fight with another girl at this club called The Trocadero. I thought it was a friend grabbing my arm and when I turned around, someone who I thought was a friend, punched me. Which, of course, started a brawl between us. I kicked her ass though! Posts: 2918
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Being a military brat, I was a member of a number of paramilitary organisations as a kid. The most memorable was the "Tribone-Gruppe" on Akrotiri base, which was modelled on the Waffen-SS and had a symbol with a skull and three bones instead of the customary pair. Hence Tribone.
Not long after the group was founded, we created a new language, a sort of Italo-German, and Tribone became Triboni - and while the Triboni-Gruppe ran the military the "parliament" was called the "Triboni Tribune" (pronounced Tree-bown-ee Triboon-uh). We created identity cards and everything.
The group at its height (1983) consisted of me, my brother, the two boys who lived next door, three brothers who lived down the road, and a couple of guys who were in my year at school. There was also lovely redhead Adele from two doors down, who was the on-and-off "medical officer", charged with the treatment of wounds - which were pretty frequent, often caused from crashing from one of the many military vehicles (I had a Pzkpfw. VI "Grifter" while my brother had a Pzkpfw. V "Strika").
Our group consisted of RAF brats, while our "rivals" were usually Army kids - first the 3LI and then, in what was to become a pretty serious rivalry - the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (aka the "Jocks"). We spent much of our time patrolling the bondu behind our street, setting up barricades and generally marching or biking about. In winter, we'd set up a camp by a area which became a lake, often swimming out to one of the makeshift buoys to place a Triboni flag on it.
The uniforms were pretty rag-tag (it really depended on how serious you were and how much stuff you could cadge off your Dad) everyone had a hat or cap and a "Sam Browne". The official salute was, erm... Right, I think you can probably guess.
We once had a base "open day" which was modelled on similar events that were regularly held on service bases - the bikes were cleaned up and arranged, everyone stepped out in their best uniform, and there were parades (read: marches back and forth across the garden). At one event we had the "stocks" where parents of the Triboni-Gruppe were pelted with wet sponges and balloons, and on another occasion we rounded off the day with a footy game against "Scotland" (i.e., the "Jocks") - which turned into a farce over a disputed goal-line clearance.
There are some photos in one of the old albums at my parents' place - though the sight of six pre-teens looking like a rag-tag platoon of Hitlerjugend might just be a little too much for some.
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