A tale of two Scottish teenagers – with one difference

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, I’d like to introduce you to a couple of teenagers. Their names are John and Greg.

They’re both about the same age, and live quite close to one another. They attend the same high school, sit in many of the same classes, and have similar hopes for the future.

Both are hard-working at school, and well-liked by their teachers. All things being equal, they’d be expected to leave having achieved similar qualifications, and go on to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

But all things aren’t equal.

During the school year, John usually wakes up at around 7.45am after his dad knocks on his door. He gets out of bed and leaves his room, passing by the bedrooms of his brother and sister on the way downstairs. They are younger than him, so they’re almost always already having breakfast with his mum, and he joins them at the kitchen table.

The house is always warm at this time, even though it’s nearly winter, because the heating is set to come on nice and early. His dad says it’s best not to wake up in the cold and then turn it on, because it’s not a very good way to start the day.

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Most mornings John has cereal, a slice of toast and some orange juice for breakfast, but sometimes he feels like some porridge – which is his mum’s favourite – or asks his dad to make him some sausage and eggs.

After breakfast he has a quick shower then goes upstairs to get ready. Clean uniforms are always in the bottom drawer at the end of his bed, and he usually spends a few minutes – and sometimes quite a bit more – making sure his hair is sitting just right.

He grabs his school bag and by 8.30am he is downstairs, ready to go. His brother and sister tend to appear a minute or two later, having been helped to get themselves ready, and then all three get into their dad’s car – he works from home most of the time, and even when he has to go into the office they’re always pretty flexible, so he is able to take everyone to school in the morning.

John gets dropped off first, as the high school is a little closer than his sibling’s primary, so he says goodbye to everyone just down the road from the school gates and heads off to meet his friends, who spend most mornings playing football for a little while before the first bell rings.

(Image: Derek McArthur)

Greg would play too, but he’s never there early enough.

He gets up at 6.30am during the school week, although he has often been awake a few times before that. The music from next door regularly shakes him out of sleep in the early hours, and it always takes ages for the neighbours to quiet down when that happens. During the colder months, he regularly wakes up shivering and has to pile some of his clothes on the bed over his duvet in order to warm up.

Some nights, he is woken up by his own heartbeat, and feels like there is a weight sitting on his chest. He doesn’t really know why this happens, and is too scared to ask anyone.

When it is actually time to get up and get going, his first job is to wake his brother and sister, who share a single bed on the opposite side of the room. Like him, they often haven’t slept very well either, and on those sorts of mornings are reluctant to get up – but Greg is used to it by now, and always manages to encourage them downstairs.

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The living room and kitchen are almost always cold. As he has gotten older Greg has realised that the air also feels wet, and he knows that if he looks behind the couch that sits against the outside wall he finds the same black spots that keep appearing on his wardrobe, no matter how many times he wipes them off. This is the third place they’ve lived in the last year or so, and although he hates having to move, he hopes they are all sent somewhere else soon.

There is usually some food in the cupboard, but if it’s not enough for all three of them he goes without so that his brother and sister aren’t too hungry for the walk to school.

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He then takes them back upstairs to get ready, but they have to be quiet because their dad is asleep. He has two jobs, and one of them involves nightshifts, so the kids don’t see him very much. Their mum leaves the house at 6am every morning for her job. Sometimes, if he is awake early enough, Greg lies in bed and hears her crying.

If everything goes to plan the three of them leave the house at 8.30am. That gives them time to walk to the primary school, and means that Greg makes it to the high school just in time for the first class of the day. Most days, however, he ends up late – sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes much more. The weight on his chest often comes to school as well.

He used to try to explain some of this to his teachers, but now he finds it easier to just stay silent.

It doesn’t seem like anyone is listening anyway.