Wed 21 Dec 2016, 03:26
The "monsters" of my early teenage years in the 80's – I was a tiny bookworm – were the moped gang. They used to sit on a fence, next to to our school. Spitting, screaming, smoking, burping, and using snus (a moist powder tobacco product, still common in Sweden). They liked hard rock bands like WASP and most of them had long, dirty hair (more or less mullets), strong smell of hair spray and too much perfume or after shave. You could smell them from quite a distance. Many of them used trimmed mopeds, so you could hear – not without fear, I can tell you – when they were getting closer, usually fast. They loved to bully anybody younger. I did a lot to avoid them. Some people said they carried knifes (at least one of them did, I saw it once inside the school). Sometimes they "baptized" new pupils by flushing those (not me) who were not careful enough in the school toilets. Also grown ups feared them. There were stories in school about what they had done in previous years: throwing food in the cantina, cutting off a teachers tie, smoking and farting during lessons, trashing the school ventilation system. Most of the people in the moped gang lived in a quite bad neighborhood (a lot of social problems) near the school. I remember passing through this neighborhood – it was a huge shortcut – looking for threats around the corner...
Now, almost 30 years later, I understand that the kids in the moped gang were people dealing with quite rough conditions. Alcoholic or absent parents, learning problems in school. At least some of them have spent time in prison and have had serious drug problems. Some are even dead by now. But still, they were the terror of my teen age years. Perhaps more of a "random encounter" in RPG terms, or maybe main villains...