It's all in the name

The whole Normal thing (see previous blog) reminds me of two sisters at my primary school, lets call them Jewel and Beauty. Jewel was in the year above us and she was, as far as I can remember, a nice enough girl.

Beauty was in my year, in my class actually. She was about a foot taller than most of the boys, with broad shoulders and strong hands. When she looked at you, one eye would peer into yours, while the other looked over your left shoulder.

She was a bruiser of a girl, with a lumpy face which seemed to loom out of her sizeable head. She wasnt fat, just big, and her parents seemed the most appropriate thing for her to wear was ill fitting frilly pastel dresses. I suppose it should not be that much of a surprise when you consider they named their poor daughters, Jewel and Beauty. These are parents who just don’t get it.

The rest of us were a bit scared of her. She was not malicious, more relentlessly and constantly careless. She'd always be banging into you or holding your hand too tightly or tearing pages out of your favourite book. Once she had you in her sights she would bear down on you like a train and you would not have much choice about who you played with for the rest of the morning. Looking back on it now, I see that she probably had learning difficulties and life must have been pretty hard for her anyway. But I wonder how much worse it made things being named Beauty.