Mr. Keegan Gets A Glasgow Kiss

1979 (14 YEARS OLD)1 month ago

1979 - 14 Years Old

The qualifications for becoming a teacher at Blessed George Napier, my secondary school, were quite straightforward:

1. Be excellent at your subject.

2. Be Catholic.

3. Be an eccentric lunatic.

While at the time, criterion #3 really bothered me, in retrospect, I wouldn’t have had it any other way,

And perhaps the most number three-est of them all was my maths teacher, Mr. Keegan.

Keegan was probably the most acerbic person I have ever met. He would “spice up” his discussions of systems of linear equations by interjecting dry, weird, and/or insulting yet ultimately hilarious observations and sayings.

He also had a son. Keegan Jr., who worked at our school as the technical drawing teacher. Keegan Jr. kept all of the TD equipment elaborately locked up in cart that he proudly called his “bandit-proof chariot.” He also spent his lunch hours taking long-distance photos of Chris Tancred, Richard Barlow, and Alan Watts smoking in the tree-lined walking path that ran behind our rugby pitch.

Like I said, eccentric lunacy was mandatory. The Keegans had it in spades.

Keegan Sr. would mock the the students who came by bus from the nearby town of Bicester, defer to me about all things American (even though I’d only been there once on holiday), and made fun of Wayne Sibthorpe’s and Singhy’s DA haircuts (if you spent as much time doing your homework as you do combing your hair…). That sort of thing. And when he assigned difficult homework on a Friday, he usually followed it with, that’ll ruin your dad’s Sunday evening.

He even gave us pieces of cryptic life advice.

And perhaps his greatest was the gem, always have an ugly friend.

But Keegan would have to change his DA comments about Sibthorpe. He was the original Ted in our year. Singhy and Mark Hillary joined him a bit later. And this trio became the nucleus around which others orbited – those who didn’t want to fully commit or those who weren’t allowed to by their mum.

I was in the latter group.

But Sibthorpe had started to move on, and much to the chagrin of BGN Teds, he was starting to get into Be Bop DeLuxe and The Clash.

I was on the cusp of transitioning my friend group, and had only started to hang out with Singhy occasionally. And never with Sibthorpe. Most of the time, I was still with my old group.

During breaks, this group of friends would endlessly walk loops around the main building of our school, talking and joking. Occasionally, when there hadn’t been rain for several days, groups of girls would be sitting on the grass, talking about whatever girls talked about.

And on the best days, Vivian Rice would be sitting on the grass holding court with her friends. She was the eldest of the Rice sisters, three of the most beautiful girls in the entire world. There was Viv, who was three years older than us, Claire, a year older, and Jo, a year younger.

They were the holy trinity.

Even years later when I discovered the magnificent Corrs (three beautiful sisters and an ejit for a brother), the Rice sisters still beat them hands down.

And Viv had taken Keegan’s advice to heart by surrounding herself with ugly friends.

They weren’t actually ugly; in fact, they were quite fetching. It’s just that all girls wilted in the shadow of Viv’s bloom.

A bloom that was enhanced by the fact that she would often wear a pair of very tight green cords. Tight tight. We would have been able to use the phrase camel toe, but it hadn’t been invented yet, so we didn’t. We just vaguely knew of its magical siren call.

When Viv was holding court on the grass, we would amble slowly along that side of the building, and then we’d speed walk like those people in vintage films of New York City around the other three.

Once, Richard O’Neill farted so loudly that everyone, including Viv, laughed. There was no way for anybody in earshot to identify the culprit.

We all became likely suspects, so we kicked him out of the group.

And while the intoxicating feeling of sexuality loomed over all of us, we were too young to understand it fully. So most of our conversations revolved around what Viv would like to get for Christmas from someone she fancied.

We had narrowed it down to either a macrame plant holder or, better yet, a box of Milk Tray…

We were discussing which flavour Viv would like best and were slowly coming to the consensus that it would be the hazelnut one, shaped like a heart, when Sibthorpe ran past us like the wind.

Odd. We’d never seen Sibthorpe run, not even in PE. Still, the caramel one would be her close second favourite.

Then Spud, our French teacher, came running around the corner, just this side of a heart attack.

Have you seen Sibthorpe?, he wheezed, stopping for a moment to hold his side.

Someone shouted out, Do you want to borrow my bike, Spud?

He shouted out Bugger Off and got back to the running.

And the lime creme would definitely be her least favourite…

It would be the following day that everyone in school found out that Sibthorpe had given Keegan a Glasgow Kiss.

And for those of you who think it might be the toothless version of a French Kiss, it’s one of these:

On Monday morning, BGN thronged with gossip. Nobody knew the full story. Just bits and pieces that were weaved together into Sibthorpe headbutting Keegan, Keegan making a whimpering sound as he tried to push Sibthorpe away, and Sibthorpe taking off.

I don’t know what happened to Sibthorpe in the immediate aftermath, and my only other memory of him is on our school trip to France a year later. So Cousins (our deputy headmaster for the boys) didn’t kill him.

But Monday in maths, Keegan was on top form, mocking our dads for being rubbish at doing that weekend’s homework.

Everything was the same.

Except for the large, make-up-covered welt on his forehead.