Back when I was in Avalon Primary School, the kids had disliked and taunted me since I'd started there at 5.

Around age 7, I got the idiotic idea that if my parents were rich the kids would like and respect me. Where that came from I have no idea. I did read an enormous number of fairy tales - maybe it was because the princess was so often the darling of the kingdom.

Anyway, I started boasting that my father was a millionaire - a lie.

 

Next thing I knew I was being taunted worse than ever before.

Soon the kids were demanding that I give them money to prove the wealth, sums like £20.

At home, Mum used to give me two shillings (back then the equivalent of 20 cents) pocket money per week for putting out the milk bottles and bringing in the milk. I used to save it for buying birthday presents. That amount was pittance even then. Many of the working-class kids got £1-4 per week with or without chores.

 

So I began stealing from my mother's purse while she was drunk, and giving the money away to any kid who asked.

Oddly, Mum never seemed to notice the money was missing. Maybe she never kept count. Or perhaps, aware of her faulty memory due to drinking, felt too ashamed to double-check or ask questions.

 

At any rate, the boasting only made me less popular and more taunted and teased. And the particular kids who kept coming back for money still did not become friends.

 

I was pretty dammed stupid. Even after I'd realised my mistake, I kept going out of a kind of shame - an unwillingness to admit my lies and tell the truth. This is the first kind of pants-on-fire.

 

The suffering of loneliness and the fear and distrust of my tormentors burned into me deeply. Here is the second pants-on-fire.

 

One could describe these fires as Hell. I used to cry myself to sleep every night.

 

During the summer holidays of my eleventh year, I realised just how bad my errors had been, and made the decision to stop stealing from Mum, and lying and giving money to the kids. In my last year at primary school, some of the worst of the teasing eased off a bit, and three girls asked me to their birthday parties. That, to me then, was a monumental success.

 

To this day, I do not expect people to like me and am always pleasantly surprised when they do. When someone becomes my friend in real life, my gratitude is so deep that I love them more deeply than they can possibly know.

 

Oddly, I do have a small circle of good friends.