The Football

Over the years I've visited hundreds of schools in Italy to talk about bullying. The visits have been face to face or virutal and more often than not we talk about the stories, Egghead or Egghead the Movie, which are largely autobiographical.

Through the story, the students often open up about their own world and their own experiences of bullying. It's easier to do that through the eyes of a character in a book. Somehow, a story always works its magic.

The first time I went to a school to talk about Egghead, I must admit, I was a little nervous. 'How are they going to react?' I thought, 'when they see this old man in front of them and not a young boy, the spell will be broken.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Stories bridge gaps across generations and cultures. The students peppered me with questions about the characters, and their motivations. They wanted to know what happened next after they had finished the last page. All the questions and answers were in English. I never told them that I spoke Italian. I hoped that their curiousity would conquer their fears of speaking in English. The urge to know more, to know something that goes beyond the page and into a world that belongs to them.

When I started the meeting I noticed that the students had brought a football with them. You can just about see me holding it in the photo above. Just after the photo was taken, the kids invited me to play football with them in the playground. In the story, Egghead desperately wants to play football but is excluded by his classmates. By bringing the ball and signing their names on it, they wanted to right a wrong, to address a problem that was created decades before they were born.

So, we played football.