Member-only story
RECOGNITION, MISPLACED
How I Failed to Become a Popstar
A brief history of a missed opportunity.
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The year was 1985. I had just moved from primary to secondary school. In my village, the primary school was small; two corridors, one playground, a handful of teachers who knew every child’s handwriting. It felt like a family. I did well there. Good grades. A wry sense of humour that never tipped into cruelty. Teachers liked me. Pupils liked me. I liked myself, in the uncomplicated way children often do.
Secondary school was different. Bigger. Louder. Faster. I hardly knew anyone. Overnight I went from being the boy everyone recognised to the boy no one noticed.
I didn’t help myself. I was all limbs: long arms, long legs, no muscle to speak of. Slender in the way boys are before they know what to do with their bodies. Pale skin. A few wisps of facial hair too light to shave. Light‑brown curls that refused to be tamed. And the school uniform hung on me as if it had been designed for someone else entirely. I looked like a sketch of a boy rather than the finished thing.
My sister tried to help. Before the fresher’s day she put me in clothes she said were “properly trendy,”…
