Rebel Without a Cause

Wokingham’ s answer to James Dean

When I was fourteen years old, I rebelled.

The problem was that there wasn't much to rebel against: I had great parents who were kind and generous. We lived in Wokingham, according to The Sunday Times, one of the best places to live in England for young families, and I loved my school—well, if I am honest, most of school. We were comfortably well off, and I had everything anyone could want—a big garden to play in and even my beloved Labrador dogs, Buttons and Beth.

The rebellion took a specific form - I brought a poster called ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (below), which features James Dean walking down the street in the rain. I then put it up in my bedroom. My mother hated posters, and she hated things stuck on her wall with blue tack even more. My mum liked white walls and order. This was the first time I had consciously chosen to do something I knew would annoy her.

Although I loved my mum, I have to confess now I was fourteen that she had started to infuriate me, so the poster was a great way to get a reaction. One of the things that she did that annoyed me was hoovering at the weekend at 7.30 and banging the Hoover against my bedroom door, this was designed to wake me up as she hated people laying in bed and she wanted me to, 'have my breakfast' so she could tidy the kitchen up.

So the poster was a deliberate act of rebellion from someone who had nothing to rebel against. But the point is, at that age, I needed to rebel. I needed to find out who I was, how I would be received by the world.

Inside my emotional world felt like meringue, sort of crispy on the surface but soft and gooey on the inside. So I didn't tell my parents them when an American boy at school head butted every morning because I knew I had to go through it and deal with it myself; I didn't tell them when Mr Wilde locked me in the cupboard at the back of the maths room for the lesson because I was rude to him (can you imagine that happening in a school these days). After all, I knew my Dad would be cross with me and would not rush up the school to confront Mr Wilde; I didn't tell them when the other boys in my class chose an unpleasant nickname for me that upset me and made me lay in bed at night not sleeping; I didn't tell them when the cricket master kicked me for calling him Pengy his nickname to his face - because I felt I deserved it.

I could go on with a catalogue of incidents from another less politically correct age that would never be tolerated now, and I am not condoning them, but they were my life, and I knew that to be me, I had to overcome them all and understand them. I also knew that my parents could not solve them for me and that their intervention would make it worse. I knew that no matter how much they loved me (and they did), they could not affect the external world and shape it to suit their son.

Subsequently, my emotional world strengthened and success on the stage at Drama Club and on the cricket field helped me to develop resilience. I knew early on that I was not bothered about being popular, as an only child I liked my own company and I also knew that I only valued the opinion of others who I really respected. So things got easier as time passed.

Things settled down with my Mum, and I grew to understand her; we had a similar surreal sense of humour, and that helped. She also stopped fussing and asking me things. When I was sixteen, the rebellion needed to be directed at my father if I was to self-actualise and become a man in my own right. The rebellion took the form of dyeing my hair different colours to see how he reacted. I also used to pull his leg about his Bobby-Charlton comb-over. Hair suddenly seemed important. No matter how much I annoyed him, he was always there for me with understanding, but he let me find my own path and understand my own values.

Young people need to speak their truth, they need to rebel, but a parents role and an adults task at this difficult time is to keep young peoples’ hearts open and hold the level with sensitivity! In a sense they need something to rebel against- this is the right time to rebel (you really don't want men rebelling at the age of 40)

It was when all said and done, a great honour as a teacher watch young people grow and develop. I never walked down that boulevard (there weren't any in Wokingham) like James Dean, but that poster was important to me at that moment in time and although Mum hated it she let me keep it on the wall!

Thanks for reading.

David

#thebrazieroftruth