Bunk-Bed Tyrant of the School Trip

School trips were meant to be about bonding, adventure, and making memories. For the poor soul on the bottom bunk beneath me, it became something else entirely.

I took the top bunk, because of course I did. It was the superior position—a throne from which I could survey the room, drop my shoes on unsuspecting heads, and, apparently, exercise a bizarre form of tyranny that I still don't fully understand. And the poor gobshite on the bottom bunk? He regularly got pissed on from above.

The Setup

There was no particular reason for it. No feud, no grudge, no history of animosity between us. He hadn't wronged me, stolen from me, or even looked at me the wrong way. He was just... there. In the wrong bunk at the wrong time.

I don't know why I did it. Some people would call it bullying, and maybe it was. But in my head, it wasn't malice; it was impulse. A thought that popped into my head and demanded action, like an intrusive thought that I chose to act on. "What if I just..." and then I did.

The Execution

Night after night, I waited until the lights were off, until the quiet settled over the room, and until I was sure he was asleep. Then, in the darkness, I'd position myself and let it happen. No warning. No mercy. Just a warm, unexpected trickle from above.

He'd wake up confused, then horrified, then angry. But what could he do? It was the middle of the night; he couldn't prove anything, and even if he could, who would believe that the kid on the top bunk was deliberately pissing on him? It was too absurd, too childish, too petty to be believed.

The Motive

There isn't one, not really. I didn't hate him. I didn't want to humiliate him, at least not in any way that I consciously recognized. It was just... the devil in me, as I call it. That impulse that pops up when you're young, when you're still figuring out boundaries, when you haven't yet learned to fully control the worst parts of yourself.

I think there was something about the power of it. The secrecy. The fact that I could do something so bizarre and get away with it. It wasn't about him at all; it was about me. About testing what I could do, about seeing if there were consequences, about feeling the thrill of transgression.

The Aftermath

He never said anything. He complained, but never to a teacher. He got angry, but never enough to confront me. Maybe he thought it was accidental. Maybe he thought it was too ridiculous to be intentional. Or maybe he knew and just didn't want to escalate.

Either way, I got away with it. The trip ended, we went back to our normal lives, and I never spoke of it again. Until now.

The Reflection

I'm older now, and I don't do things like that anymore. But I still think about that guy sometimes. The poor gobshite on the bottom bunk. I wonder if he remembers it. I wonder if he knows it was deliberate. I wonder if he has any idea why I did it.

I don't have a good answer. The devil in me, I guess. That's the best I can offer. It's not an excuse, and it's not a justification. It's just an explanation. Sometimes we do things that don't make sense, that we can't fully explain, that we wouldn't do now.

I'm not proud of it. I'm not ashamed of it either. It just is.

If you're out there, bottom-bunk guy, I'm sorry. Not because I feel guilty I don't, not really but because I recognize that what I did was weird and unfair. You didn't deserve it, and I had no right. But I was young, I was stupid, and I got the devil in me sometimes.

If it makes you feel any better, I've never done it since.