POST FROM THE PAST: THE 'OUTSIDER' (EXPANDED)...

 

I was looking at a photo of where I used to live back in the mid-'60s and early '70s, comparing the field where I used to play across from my house with how it looks today (see here) and a memory jumped into my mind.  Which was that, on the evening of the flitting, after settling into our new home, I made my way back along to that field.

It was almost an instinct.  After all, I didn't yet know anyone in our new neigh-bourhood, so it felt only natural to continue the habit of nearly seven years and seek out the environs that were familiar to me.  As I entered the field, a group of local kids sitting in a far corner, turned and saw me approaching them.  "What are you doing here?" one of them asked in an unwelcoming tone.

Back then I didn't understand their sullen coldness towards me, but I think I do now.  We hadn't informed any of our neighbours of our intention to move, so it would have been a surprise to them on the day.  Maybe our moving was regarded as a betrayal of sorts, an abandonment of the area and those who lived there - as if we'd thought we were too good for the place and turned our backs on it.

In only a few short hours the local kids now viewed me as no longer belonging there, but it was yet far too early for me to feel part of our new neighbourhood - leaving me in a kind of limbo as far as 'district identity' goes.  Luckily, I didn't feel too displaced, as our new residence sat atop a hill just as our old one had done, so the general impression of the topography was similar in some ways, which doubtless helped me adjust to the new locale.

I've never quite forgotten just how quick people can be to shut others out of a group at the drop of a hat and consider them 'outsiders'.  Luckily, I've never had a 'gang' mentality, so it didn't much bother me that I was no longer regarded as one of 'the lads'.  Still, like I said - I've never quite forgotten.

******

For two and a half years I yet attended the school over the road from where I'd lived and was therefore back in the neighbourhood five days out of seven.  Also, for a time I continued my Saturday car-washing enterprise in the pub car park on the far side of the shops across from my old house, so it never occurred to me to feel disconnected from the area.  Even after I quit school, in the evenings I'd hang about the neighbourhood shops and nearby locales with those who didn't view me as an 'outsider'.  In fact, as I learned much later, there were some who assumed for many years that I still lived there due to my seemingly constant presence.

Because I was there regularly and often passed my former home, I did so with no pangs of regret as part of my subconscious presumably hadn't quite registered I no longer lived there.  Eventually, as I grew older and my visits to my former environs became less frequent, they gradually became more dear to me.  It must've taken at least a dozen years before I began to miss the place, by which time I was in yet another house to the one we'd flitted to back when I was still a young teenager.

It's strange, but sometimes I feel that I do still live in that house, but that goes for every place I've ever lived in as my memory returns to each of them in turn at different times, depending on the prompt.

What about you, Crivvies - any similar thoughts, feelings, or experiences?  You know where the comments section is.

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