Not the one I knew

In school, we had two boys named John in our class. They were completely different in both looks and personality. One John was tall, stocky, light haired and docile. The other John was small, dark haired and vicious. I did not have much to do with either John, and left them both alone as they did me. There were many other students for me to play with and talk to.

One day, my best friend at the time and I were sitting on the grass hill chatting about whatever young girls talked about in elementary school 30-35 years ago; not boys, not make-up, and not careers. The larger of the two Johns happened to appear suddenly from nowhere and landed right behind us, startling us. He had been rolling down the grass hill and accidentally collided with us, rolling out of line unknowingly. My friend shouted crossly, in anger at his intrusion into our conversation, "Big, bad John!"

This somewhat confused me, for he had always been big and always been John, but he had never been bad before. I was too young to contemplate the reason my friend used such a word, and would have been likely to forget the incident altogether had it not been for my mother. Later that night, my mother was playing music whilst cooking tea. I forget exactly what I had been doing at the time, but I know that I stopped doing it to go and ask her about what we were going to eat. I had not been listening to the music until I approached to request the information, and as I did so I heard this very song playing! Once again, I was confused. That was twice in the same day big John had been called bad. Of course, at the time I had no idea the music was not referring to the larger John in my class, I assumed the music was also calling the boy big and bad instead of just big.