Smelly's Re-United

What became of the Smelly’s? All of those poor lads and lassies everyone avoided at school except as figures of revulsion and derision. The poor ‘matted’ folk, caked in grime and God knew what else.

I knew of two Smelly’s – one in primary and one in secondary school – and I didn’t know them by any other name. They must have had names (no-ones Christened ‘Smelly’) and I’m sure the teachers must have referred to them by name, but I can’t remember either. They were just….Smelly!

So, with these thoughts and questions in mind I registered with ‘Smelly’s Re-United’ which was a social media site I did not expect to find but there it is. The blurb says ‘This site is for Smelly’s only. Please respect this rule and don’t pretend to be a Smelly just to take part’

I wanted to find out what had happened to the Smelly’s in my schools so I went ahead and entered the name of my primary school and sure enough it came up with a list of individuals and what dates they had attended. It appeared that there had been Smelly’s going way back to the fifties right up to about the eighties. Between 1969 and 1971 when I was there was a chap named George Francis so I clicked on this name and brought up his page. Sure enough class 2A 69’ to 71’. His blurb gave little away other than he still lived in Glasgow.

‘George – I was in the same class as you for two years at Carhill. I was Davie McCallum then but have changed my name since. How have you been?’

It was true I did feel like an interloper; like someone who didn’t belong here. I was never a Smelly but I felt I shared some sort of affinity having been bullied so badly. Perhaps I should have been on Bullied at School Re-United?

I had a great many questions I wanted to ask Smelly, or should I say – George. Who were his parents that let him go to school in such a state? Did the school ever enquire into the matter? I know they turned a blind eye to casual bullying; did they do the same with Smelly’s? How did it feel to be sitting there day after day being reviled or spat at? Did you become inured emotionally? How did you cope with it? And, most pertinently to my nosiness; what had become of him since? I had to wait some days for a reply to my introduction.

‘Not sure how to respond. As I recall you were not a Smelly. This site is for Smelly’s only. Explain your motives’

I was gobsmacked by this. Not by its defensiveness but by the fact that it was articulate. Now that I thought, I don’t recall that I ever heard Smelly/George utter a word in the whole two years I shared a classroom with him, now it was ‘explain your motives’. It also struck me that he was referring to he and his fellow travellers on this site as ‘Smelly’s’. Surely they’d want to forget but no! maybe that was the whole point. Maybe they discoursed as a form of therapy. After all, this place was for those thought of as the very ‘lowest of the low’. In terms of social currency, he remembered, there were none so poor as the smelly’s. This was a shared experience and really very exclusive to a very particular type of hurt and, he hoped, healing. He should explain himself and leave.

‘I’ve been thinking about this George and, of course, you are bang on. I don’t belong here. I was badly bullied at our school but that’s not the same. I guess I was just curious about a number of things, but this is perhaps not the place to be so trivial. I’m sorry to intrude and will understand if you don’t want to talk any further and want me to leave the site’

Truth was that now I really was curious and hoped that George would let me chat with him. I felt I was entering a doorway into a truly unique human experience. The experience of the utterly degraded and excluded. I felt privileged to be in this world of the Smelly’s but knew I might not be here very long.

I thought of my days at Carhill. It was a working class school in a working class area, housed in a Victorian building. My brother was a few years below me and would be in the ‘junior’ playground while I was being bullied among the big boys. After one particularly humiliating scene I swear to this day that my brother and a couple of his wee pals came through to console me. I think my emotions have been cauterised like a welding joint ever since, like I can’t get past it somehow. The utter shame.

I was beginning to portray George/Smelly in my mind as the big Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Unsmiling and unresponsive, how did he perceive all around him?

There was no response for days and then…

‘I think you should know David that not everything was as it seemed back then. If anything, I seem to remember you getting a rawer deal than most. As for me, well, let’s just say that I survived intact’

This was curiouser and curiouser. ‘Survived intact’?

‘I must say George, I’m intrigued to know what you mean. Surely it must have been a humiliating experience for you as well as your friends on this site’

And it was here that he let me in on the devilish cunning of the whole thing. He told me that Smelly’s weren’t actually Smelly’s at all. In fact, it was all a ruse to keep everyone off their backs. When Smelly’s went home, they washed and scrubbed up and sat with their perfectly ordinary families at the table for tea. Then, in the morning, they donned the Smelly ‘outfit’ again and made for school.

‘Teachers never bothered us, and apart from the insults, neither did anyone else. No bullying because people wouldn’t touch us for fear of the dirt or contamination. We were free just to soak up the lessons and, you wouldn’t have noticed, pass all our exams with flying colours. Every Smelly on this site, almost without exception, was top of the class in everything. I often felt, David, like encouraging you to become one of us, but that would have given the game away’

I was invited by George, after he had consulted the others, to remain on the site as an ‘honorary Smelly’ but I chose to leave and never go back. I always felt they were laughing at me….