Today, me and some of my friends were hanging around down by the back of the library on the grass down slope from the benches. It was a nice, sunny day today and we were just talking. Must have been about six of us... As we talked, a small group of about ten people crossed the busy road, walked by us and headed up to the benches. We knew their kind... We ignored them, avoided eye contact, and kept talking amongst ourselves...

Now I have to explain... In my town, we are the rockers, the metalheads, the grungers, and the punks and we are catagorized by the other people into the "goths". We listen to various music, though heavier then the crap on tv like the crazy frog. A trend among us are the green army jackets with the german flag on the shoulder. I myself have one, except it has the flag on both shoulders and the entire thing is dyed black. The other group that came into the area after us were scumbags. At least thats we call them... I don't know what they call themselves. They wear cheap hooded jumpers, tracksuits and runners. They drink, smoke and move in clusters.

Now, I have to tell you about one of us. Just incase, im not going to use his real name, I'll say Andrew. I have known this little guy nearly his whole life. He has 3 years younger than me and I see him as a litte brother. When he started to hang around town, I gave him the name Android Andrew. This was because my friends and I had another friend named Andrew, and we were trying to avoid confusion. Now, there is something different about Android Andrew. Like most of us, he grew his hair long, but unlike most of us he has an afro. A very nice afro! And... its red, naturally. Because of his hair and his name and the fact that he is a really cool little guy, he became very popular among the "goths" . He was liked by the older ones such as myself and looked up to by his peers... He moved into the town and so now, is in every day hanging around with friends. As he is so popular and wears the green army jacket and goes to the rock gigs around town, he soon became common knowledge to the skangers and the scumbags....

When my friends and I walk around town, we get stared at by the middle aged and the elderly who don't trust us, and by the younger people, we sometimes get insults thrown at us... which we are used to and we ignore... but today, was different. The group of scumbags went up and sat at a bench and we stayed where we were, talking. Then one of them came over, shouting at Android Andrew "Ya red c**t, i'll bate the curly head off ya" and such. We are generally used to this so we ignored him and prepared to leave, gathering our things... Andrew was sitting, facing away from him. The scumbag came over, kicked him in the back and knocked him onto his front then kicked him in the face. I stood up, but I didn't know what I could do. I moved in front of him, but didn't say anything. If it had been a skanger, I would have punched him in the face but with these scumbags... Even without his group of friends waiting behind him on a bench, they come in gangs called "Familys" and those guys don't mess around, they carry knives and other weapons... I would have hit him anyway and gone with the fact that these scumbags didn't know us but they knew Andrew. And anything I did to him, they would do back to Andrew ten fold... I could smell the alcohol off him and it was about 4 in the afternoon. He didn't hit me, but kept shouting at Andrew, then my friends headed toward the gate to leave and I walked after them, slowly. The scumbag picked up a stick and hit me across the back of the legs as I went, but the stick was huge, and too heavy for him so he had trouble swinging it and didn't hit me hard with it all. On his second swing, the idiot hit the gate.

Andrew is ok, he had a gash on his lip but we cleaned that up.