About 20 years ago, when I was at the height of my glorious Goth extremity, someone threw a potato at me from a fast moving car. Not a cooked potato, I
may add, but one of the raw, heavy, painful ones. It hit me on the top of my arm and left a big black bruise.

Presumably, my flowing Victorian-style attire, brilliant mane of scarlet hair and theatrical make-up distressed the Potato Man, causing him (and I'm fairly sure, though not certain, it was a chap) to succumb to the overwhelming temptation to hoy a King Edward at me
as I strolled casually down the Leeds Road. What has always puzzled me was - did Potato Man have a tater ready in his vehicle just in case he saw a Goth or a Punk, did he see me and enraged, dash to the nearest shop to purchase said veg, or did he nip home and beg one off his wife? We'll never know.

However, I bring up this distressing incident only because today, as I left Wibsey Co-Op, someone hurled an egg at me, with considerable force, striking me on the back of the head. A companion egg then hit the car, in a very yucky fashion.

Now, it doesn't sound like much, does it? And doubtless some of you reading this will be chortling to yourselves and congratulating the Phantom Egger Of Olde Wibsey Towne - hilarious boyish jape etcetera etcetera. That will be because you've never been hit by an egg (unboiled, by the way). It hurts a lot. It's like being struck by a stone - only messier. It hits point first
and as every child knoweth, you can't crush an egg lengthways as easily as widthways. Therefore, being smacked on the bonce at random by an egg is not
only very painful and raises a mirror-image lump, it frightens the living daylights out of you because oddly, you don't expect to be hit by a missile when you're putting the shopping in the car. Weird that, but true.

OK, I'll give you Egging strangers is an old game, to be sure - but a few years ago it started to take on a more sinister aspect - women especially are being targeted and a friend of mine was Egged very painfully whilst
heavily pregnant. Who in their right mind throws a hard object at a pregnant woman? Hardly a comical jest - rather the opposite, in fact.

Obviously, The Lad I was with found the Red Mist descending in front of his eyes as I blubbered helplessly in the car and various kindly passers-by
enquired if I was all right. As he roared round the car park looking for the cowards who had lobbed the item the language was instructive to say the least. Had he got hold of them, they would currently be minus their ears,
apparently. I sat snivelling pathetically and thought about how the Eggers would be high-fiving each other and recounting at length their heroic attack. I could see them clear as day - three of them, all young, all bored,
all desperate to liven up a dull Sunday in Wibsey. Then one of them might secretly wonder how he'd feel if it had been his girlfriend who'd be hit and was crying. Or his mother, or sister. A sneaking worm of shame might,
perhaps, cause him to fall quiet. The other two of course, would keep right on with the war stories. Until the second lad suddenly felt, for no particular reason, rather childish, even a bit embarrassed, that he'd hurt
an unknown woman for no reason other than that he'd been with two mates and . . .

But the third boy, the instigator of the abuse, would keep right on laughing while the other two watched, unable to look each other fully in the eye - oh, not because they were bothered, you understand, but er, well - oh yes, they were tired, see, worn out, yeah, that's it - huh, Sundays, man, you know . . .

They never do it again, but the bully-boy who keeps laughing, laughs like that when later in life, he beats his girlfriend bloody in front of their kids because she drops his coffee cup, he laughs as he kicks his little
daughter so hard he breaks her tiny leg and he laughs when he smacks his baby son round the head; he laughs when he reduces a barmaid to tears with his cruel jibes or frightens an elderly woman half to death as she's crossing the road by pretending to drive his car at her.

He laughs a lot, that boy. Egging is great practice for him. It will serve him well in his future life as a craven bully and a tormentor of women and children. I say this because time and time again, the character of the mature man is seen in his boyhood attitudes and behaviours.

So when you laugh at the thought of some woman being Egged by a boy who'd be better off using that tremendous overarm throw to bowl for Yorkshire, think on - will you be giggling when it's your loved one weeping in your car? Of course you will! It's only a kiddie's joke, isn't it? Only harmless fun? Of course you'll laugh - won't you?

Won't you?