Jason Byrne was on the late night interview with my fine self on Sunday night. A pretty in dept chat that covered many topics including the school discos. In turn I started thinking back to my own school discos. When I was eventually allowed to go, it was a pretty big deal. Keep in mind my mother didn't want me outside the door as a child so it must have been a pretty big leap of faith on her behalf, to let me out near gurls!
After 3 hours of negotiations, a mediator and political involvement, the manager finally stepped down and things went back to normal. What? Sorry! After all of the above, I was left loose. The preparation process was intense. With 3 bottles of gel, my hair was stuck to my head like a rock. Nothing would shift it (which was very true in more ways than one), not even the wind. Which was great in my mind. Then a bottle of me Dads Brut was applied quite liberally. And when I mean liberally, I mean the whole fuckin' bottle. I cant really remember what I wore, but I have a vague feeling there were jeans, a shirt and some Harley Davidson t-shirt involved. Quite the catch. I know, I know. So I met a few friends and somehow we got to Roco!
All the years of watching Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson kiss and mount women, I was ready for action. As far as I was concerned I was as mad as Martin Riggs and I got a spin in an F-14 to the dishco. All the thoughts bursting in and rescuing some Patsy Kensit lookalike and flying off into the night were quickly disintegrated when I got in.
The night was spent with a few mates doing laps of the huge sports hall. Without stops at the shop for overpriced Coke and sweets, a lap could have taken anything up to 15 minutes. Throw in regular "Wanna dance" and "Wanna dance with him" questions, with the subsequent rejection, the lap would have then worked out at around 16 minutes.
I'm not sure how many gurls I asked to dance that night, but I'm pretty sure they all said no. Yeah, they all said no. I'm sure some even started crying. Granted, that was probably the brut.
The whole thing ended by midnight. My mum was picking me up outside. So after dodging the violence with the various local gangs, who used tree limbs as weapons I was in the car and on the way home. So that was the first school dishco. They got better after that, and I managed to score a few times. But I'll always remember the first one. And I suppose in someway I was like Martin Riggs. I took a few bullets and survived. All I needed was the straight jacket and Danny Glover!
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