Dear Clare 

Our son’s starting at a new school in September, and though we don’t live all that close it’s really high in the league tables so we glued his fingers together when he sat the Eleven Plus. They saw his handwriting and must have thought he was a complete 'tard because they offered him one of those sought-after Special Needs places. 

We had an introductory day the other day, and we came home a bit worried about how Jamie (that’s our boy) will fit in. All the other kids seem to know each other from their previous school, and I’m terrified that, because his ears stick out, all the other boys will gang up on him like they did at the last place and call him, with all the heartless vitriol of small children, Potato Head. 

What can I/we/he do to avoid this horrible eventuality? 

Concerned

Pershore 

Dear Concerned 

It can be really difficult for young children to make friends is they look different, come from a long way away or have one of those hilarious stutters or lisps that makes their nervousness all the more amusing. 

Our son had a similar problem when he arrived at a really good school – probably the best school in the country with excellent facilities – though not because of his ears. He was into building short-wave radios and the so the others all called him ‘geek’, ‘battery-boy’ or ‘cunt’. And though the calibres are different perhaps your boy could do what he did though his revenge might be wrought with the humble potato than the hi-tech nickel-cadmium battery. And he won’t have so much trouble blagging his way through the metal detectors. 

Get a two-foot length of 4” drain-pipe in which he can ‘carry his artwork home from school’, a bicycle pump ‘for his BMX’, and 2L coke bottle ‘for lunch’ and a tap ‘for show and tell’. Then, during morning break, he can use a couple of matches to melt the drainpipe to the tap outlet, the coke bottle to the inlet, and the pump valve into the bottom of said bottle. Then he should close the tap and start pumping air into the bottle or, as our son so amusingly calls it, the ‘chamber’. The bottle will be able to withstand around 400psi, so tell him to pump as long and as hard as his darling little arms will allow. 

At lunchtime he should select a potato from his carefully-prepared lunchbox (feel free to hide ball-bearings in this, but tell him to watch his teeth!) which fits snugly into the drainpipe, aim it at one of his oppressors, and turn the tap. With a muzzle velocity somewhere in the region of 500 feet per second, he’ll soon be standing over the headless corpse of his fellow pupil, saying, ‘It’s MR Potato Head to you, motherfucker.’ 

Or you could try bringing up your problem at the PTA, but in my experience it’s a complete waste of time. And the biscuits are always stale.

All best 

Clare