Thursday 10 July 2014

250 Words: Strutting Simon

“Actions speak louder than words,” his father had advised when he became a teenager and asked about ways to impress girls.  And so the teen-boy developed a strut and a swagger as he tried to set himself out from the other boys parading the school corridors. 

It worked for a time, girls noticing this confidence in him and pausing by his locker to speak with him.  There were hands held, kisses between classes, kisses at the back of buses and cinemas.  He became a sort of a stud in these early glory years.  Nothing lasted but he didn’t mind at that point at all. 

As time wore on he did want more, though, as the girls quickly became women but he remained a boy, a preening peacock they grew sick of.

School discos and corridors gave way to pubs and clubs and he took his gait into town on a Friday night but no one took any notice so he took solace in drinking and dancing.  He tried to turn the latter into a new swagger, to match that of earlier days, but his discotheque coquetry got him nowhere.  He tried to turn his father’s advice on its head but the slaps showed his talk was worse than his walk.

Over the years he tried different tactics, slowly honing his vocabulary and sharpening his interpersonal skills- until the swagger disappeared and he became more like the person he’d been before he became a peacock, eventually finding someone to be with.


See also: ≤140 Characters, or Tweet Repeat: 14, from whence this was expanded.

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