Walkabout
I went to high school at the age of eleven. I had long hair, past my shoulders, because I was Feral. I enjoyed being feral. The school had a problem with that. I found out on Day One that Being Feral was strongly disapproved of and severely frowned upon. To my everlasting surprise this was not only the case with The Management, of whom these things could potentially be expected, because it was virtually in their job description (“thou must hate kids”), but, almost even more so, with what can only be called, for want of a better word , my “fellow students”. If Frodo had had a fellowship like that he never would have gotten out of The Shire, and Sauron would be ruling the entire world from Mordor as we speak. Everywhere I went the other kids were hissing at me, spitting and slurring insults and abuse: “feral”. That was a strange one, because I thought that was a compliment. “hippy” and “scum” were two other ones. Sometimes, in accidental fits of soaring insp...