When I was 10, a girl in my friendship group had a rubber ball on a piece of elastic, with a plastic ring that you put around your finger so that the ball could... I don't know; do something like a biff-and-batt toy with your hand. We'd never seen anything like this before in our lives and, like kids do, the girl (we'll call her Tracey, because that was her name!) kept bringing it out of her desk, and enthusiastically playing with it at breaktimes. She'd got it from the newsagents nearby her house, she said, and it cost 10p (this was 1986/87, for the record). And yes, she said, if we each gave her 10p then she'd get ones for us, too!
We all went home and raided our piggy banks/begged our parents for 10p (my pocket money at that point was 50p a week, unless I did chores to earn more, but was held by my parents, so I did a bit of both) and brought the money in the next day. Tracey said that she'd buy our balls-on-elastic that night on her way home from school and bring them in the next day. Everyone was very excited about this.
I was the only friend not in the same class as Tracey and the others. The next day... everyone in the same class as her was given their ball-on-elastic. There hadn't been enough, she told me; she'd get mine that night... I'm sure you can see where this is going. My ball-on-a-string never materialised, my friends became "the balls-on-string gang", and I asked for my 10p back. Politely, because that was how I was raised, and without menace, because I was a timid child for reasons I'm not going to go into here, but which horrifically affected me at that age.
A week later, I'm called to stand beside my teacher's desk. And interrogated - in front of everyone (although they were probably all oblivious) in my class as to why I'd felt the need to bully Tracey for 10p. Didn't I get enough pocket money at home? Didn't I know how nasty and cruel it was of me to demand that Tracey give me her pocket money? Tracey was very upset, had been crying in her mother's arms, hadn't known how to confide in anyone that I was bullying her for a measley 10p!
Now at this point, I could have stated the truth... but somehow, I knew I wouldn't be believed. I wasn't a child who lied, my teacher had no reason to disbelieve me, but somehow? I just knew that Tracey had manipulated a situation into being able to keep my 10p... and be seen as a victim of bullying in the process. So I bit my tongue (literally) and simply nodded or shook my head as the teacher expected me to. To this day, I can remember feeling the heat of rage and embarrassment in my face, and a sort of despair that my teacher and the head-teacher (whom Tracey's deluded/manipulated parents had made the complaint to in the first place) believed that I'd do such a thing. I didn't even think about the possibility of them telling my parents. Actually, they didn't - unless my parents had worked out the truth, as I'd had to ask for the 10p from them and tell them why I suddenly wanted it - because it was never mentioned at home (and I was waiting for it to be). I simply felt hurt, and hopeless. Angry and yet weirdly calm, too.
I didn't speak to Tracey again after that. I shunned her. And, strangely, perhaps because I was shunning her, or maybe because she'd started to pull similar stunts on the other kids, everyone else in our large friendship group - boys and girls - started to turn their backs on her, too. Her older sister, Samantha, was absolutely lovely and still very much a part of the friendship group for another year or so - but Tracey?! Persona non grata on a playground! Still, she had her ball-on-a-string and the 10p she stole from me to keep her company...
It's been 34 years since this happened and I still feel the burning mass of despair and rage deep inside my belly when I think of this. I suspect I'll be on my deathbed and muttering about the injustice of being accused of being a bully when I was raised not to be. I could have become one after that day - but I turned my cheek the other way and simply cut her out of my breaktimes at school, and ignored her if we were forced to blend classes for some reason (she was the year below me, but we had mixed classes). I dealt with it like I did everything that year - alone. I didn't tell my parents, even though I knew they would have been at the school, stoutly in my defence. But it left its mark upon me.
And so, Tracey who was in Mrs Keen's class in 1986/87, with an older sister called Samantha and a brother called David - if you're reading this... I'll never forgive you for stealing my hard-earned 10p - but I will thank you for concreting inside my mind that, very often, bullies claim to be their mark's victims. Because of you and what you did, I found it very difficult to trust anyone going forwards, because my teacher should have known I'd not do something like that to anyone. And you should have known better.