The Randan from Dime by Serebii

Sweaty socked
Uncouth and hairy
Tiny brain
Suppurating with salacious sexual scenarios
Last weeks grubby underpants
Buried among the rubble on his bedroom floor
Donkey voiced
Aggressive and swaggering
He obsedes arrogance
Self confidence
But underneath
He is racked with feelings of inadequacy
That are sometimes overwhelming
Not me of course
Good grief no
But I can certainly identify with some of it
I have two loving parents and two larger than life brothers
But I was lonely
Compelled by an instinctive need to distance myself from my family, and it’s values
Which was entirely consistent with my stage of life
I had no idea how to go about finding acceptance and approval in other circles
My best dreams are always of some mythical back lane where life is an uninterrupted innocent romp
I began to dread the weekends
Which were always another reminder of my inadequacy
The teenage rat race I called it
Where were all the wonderful parties and other social events?
How did one get to them?
Walk? bike? Take a bus? Get a lift?
With whom?
How come I never got drunk
And how did one get hold of booze anyway
On the inside I opted out completely
But on the outside I adopted the required bravado
And amazingly fooled many people
In reality I went to the pictures a lot, on my own
Gidday Watty! Out on the randan they would say, genuinely pleased to see me it seemed
But equally pleased to leave me to my own devices
I appeared to have dozens of acquaintances
But no friends
Perhaps they really did believe I had something better to do
I ached to be asked “What you doing tonight Watty? Wanna come with us?
But they never did
Later.. much later.. I did go to parties and they were often unmitigated disasters
It seemed that I had somehow lost a vital piece in the jigsaw puzzle of life
As if I had been out at the dental clinic
When my primary school class was taught some essential parcel of knowledge
I realise now that I was not physically unattractive or lacking in communication skills
I also know that I was no more ignorant or innocent or different than perhaps 90% of the school population
It was my own lack of self esteem and fear of rejection that kept me locked on a course of isolation

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