A wasp changed the course of my life

By Jodie Young

We moved around a lot when I was a kid. My mum died when I was little, so it was just me and my dad shuffling around trying to find somewhere to call home. I used to collect primary schools. I went to 6 before I was 11 and as I left each one I swore to stay in contact with the person who had been my bestest friend for the short time I had been there. 

Our biggest move was from one side of the world to the other. We moved to England from Australia and I remember being so excited to come to here. I honestly thought I was going to meet the Spice Girls and marry Michael Owen. 

I started at school and was teased for my Australian accent. I called trousers, pants. Felt tip pens, texters. Plasters, band aids. But ultimately I was quickly accepted and like a chameleon I soon lost my Aussie accent and adopted a Hastings twang. 

I was happy to ingrain myself in early 00’s British culture. And felt like a fully fledged member of my new teen friendship group. 

Dad threw a spanner in the works and decided we should move to Manchester when I was about 14. We packed our stuff, as we had done several times before, and off we went. 

I feel like my biggest giveaway of not having my mum around was how I looked like when I was 14. Where other girls have had their mums showing them how to style their hair, buying them clothes or how to put on make up, I hadn’t had that. 

Girls my age seemed genuinely a bit more clued up on how to try and make the most of their appearance. I however had a thick, unruly, cow licked ginger fringe. It had a mind of its own and curled up and spiked out in all different directions. 

If my mum had still been alive she would have coached me on growing it out years before or I probably wouldn’t have had it in the first place. 

Dad’s new girlfriend followed us up to Manchester. He had been on his own ever since my mum died and I encouraged him to be with someone as I didn’t want him to be on his own. 

She smoked a lot of weed though and therefore it upped my dad’s already high intake. They actually met through their dealer, so maybe that should have been an indication of what was to come. 

Most days they would be sat on the sofa eyes glazed or actually just dozing off. Once I was talking to them for a full 5 minutes before I realised they had both fallen asleep. 

I worked out pretty soon that she hated any mention of my mum. She would kind of tut or make an annoyed noise every time her name was mentioned. I would test my theory and sometimes turn round a picture of my mum so that it directly faced her permanent seat on the sofa. When I would come back home the picture would be turned back and once, it was even facing the wall. 

She would send me to the shop to get her sweets when the munchies kicked in. I would get her those long jelly snakes and drag them back to the house in the gutter. It’s a wonder she didn’t get sick. 

Before starting school I had got a Saturday job in my dads friends tattoo shop. I would work behind the counter selling the bongs and rolling papers. Making teas for the tattoo artists and the customers. Quite a lot of Manchester gang members used to come in and get their back or chest pieces done. One dropped dead in the studio once. I was upstairs making him a cup of tea and heard a big crash. He had a heart attack and everyone was terrified the gang would blame the shop for his death. Luckily they didn’t. 

I had also made friends with some of the girls from on the estate we lived on. They had given up going to school long ago and were a bit older than me. They used to take pills and drink vodka red bull and talk about giving boys blow jobs. 

I finally started at my rough inner-city high school, with quite the culture shock. There was a certain way to do your tie (extra short and fat), Rockports and Winnie The Poo socks were for some reason, all the rage. And you meant nothing unless you had a Hooch coat with fluffy pom poms. I had none of the above and actually had never even heard of Rockports as they were pretty much non existent down south. 

Unlike when I moved from Australia I wasn’t accepted as easily. People would mock my southern accent. Saying it sounded funny when I would swear. Like I was only swearing to fit in, which to be honest was the truth. 

The first lesson, on my first day a wasp got caught in my fringe. That’s right, out of all the places that wasp could have flown it decided to nose dive into my uncontrollable fringe. 

Immediately, I jumped up and started screaming and swearing for help. Repeatedly saying, “there’s a wasp in my fucking fringe” and desperately trying to shake it out. 

Everyone was silent and just stared. Not even the teacher helped. 

That moment cemented my new school status. No one was to be friends with me and I was to be the butt of the joke. People would throw food at me in the canteen and laugh. I used to feel sick at the thought of going into school everyday, but also wasn’t too keen on pulling a sicky at home. I wound sit in the toilets at lunch texting my friends back in Hastings about how amazing my new life was. 

I was so unhappy at home and school that I used to write letters to my mum begging her to help me. I would write them and then sleep with them under my pillow hoping that would give them an extra bit of magic.

Around the same time my aunt went to see a physic who told her that I needed her help and I had to come and live with her right away. 

She invited me to Hastings in the half term to investigate the physics warnings. Obviously in my phone calls to her I had been giving it the big one about loving the city. 

Face to face though the whole truth came spilling out and we came up with a plan for me to go back to my old school and live with them. 

There are a multitude of reasons why it’s not the best idea to move a 14 year old girl across the country at the drop of a hat. And there are also probably a bunch of reasons as to why it didn’t work out. But really, looking back at it all, I think it was the wasp that changed things. If it hadn’t entangled itself in my motherless fringe, maybe I would have got by, made a few friends. Or I would have dropped out of school like the girls on the estate. Dad certainly wasn’t going to put up a fight anytime soon. 

If that wasp hadn’t thrown itself on my mercy,  I may have been living a very different life by now. All the signs were there for me to spiral onto a different path.

So, thank you wasp and to whoever sent you, as you changed the course of my life.