Various mental illnesses run in my family, on one particular side. My father is schizophrenic, dissociative, and a number of other things. My grandfather started to decline into dementia at a relatively young age. My uncle was also bipolar. My cousin Simon, whom this post is mainly about, has
Aspergers syndrome.
Simon would spend afternoons poring over bus timetables. On one such afternoon, my grandfather snatched the timetables out of his hands. "What on earth are you looking at those all the time for? You know nothing about buses. You don't understand these." He was astounded when Simon was able to recite the timetables perfectly and answer questions about the running times of nearly all the buses that ran in our area.
Simon would also spend hours standing in the street, seemingly staring at nothing. He would always do this with a pencil in his hand, waving it up and down with two fingers. This attracted the attention of various undesirables in the neighbourhood, who singled him out as the estate weirdo and started to bully him. They would ride around him on their bikes, throwing things at him.
One day, it all changed. All thanks to Malt Loaf.
Take a look at the picture of
malt loaf on wikipedia. Imagine a very immature person taking a loaf of malt, and shaping it into a rough sausage shape. Perhaps the immature person would make it curl a bit, and taper it at one end. Then perhaps the immature person would leave it to stand for 30 seconds or so in a bowl of water. The malt loaf becomes a very,
very convincing looking fake poo. So convincing that poor Simon retched and had to run to the bathroom when he saw the product of the very immature person (who shall remain unidentified) and the malt loaf.
Once Simon had calmed down and we explained to him that the dirty sausage was in fact just malt loaf, we hit on the idea that it could be the answer to his bully problem.
We stuck a lolly stick into the center of it and told Simon to take it with him when he went outside. If he saw the bullies, he was to wait until they rode up to him, then show the poop-on-a-stick to them, throw it at them if possible, or just chase them with it.
That afternoon, armed with the pooh-stick, Simon ventured out into the street to take his usual space-staring stance.
I like to think of what happened next from the bullies' point of view. There they were, ready for another fun filled afternoon of taunting the local mental. After a minute of highly enjoyable taunting, the mental produces what appears to be his own excrement on a stick. Grinning wildly, the mental chases them, pulling bits off the piped waste and throwing it at them.
Simon was never bothered by them again.
