School tradtions and quirks

[Mister Cairo]

I never got involved in playground games much, but I read on Wikipedia that there is a ball game unique to my school called Kingball

unique to the school is the game of kingball. It was first played at Magdalen some time in the 19th Century, and although to some extent the rules are passed down from year to year, every new year that takes up the game usually adopts its own rules as well. The game is played on a court that is very distinctly shaped. The ball is bounced around the court and the players progress up the shaped 'squares' (although in fact none of them are square-shaped) until he is in the 'King' square. Then he serves and so the game progresses until he is eventually knocked off the 'King' square. The game is predominantly played by younger boys, ranging from 8-13 years old. However, whenever boys from this age range vacate the courts and there are no tutors to tell them otherwise, older boys enjoy to play the unique "sport".

The other school tradition was House Singing. The school was divided into Houses and each house had to select two songs to compete with, leading to myself and others having to perfrom a rendition of the Cheeky Girls' Touch My Bum. The houses were named after "Old Boys" killed in the First World War, with sepia photos of them on the wall of te main teaching block as we climed the dirty black stairs to Maths.

What traditions did your school have?

[buttgammon]

What traditions did your school have?

We always used to play a game based on A Clockwork Orange. That's the closest my school had to any traditions!

[mothman]

This pretty much sums up my school:

The Meaning of Life[/i]"]Humphrey (Cleese): All right, settle down. Settle down... Now, before I begin the lesson, will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you're not getting your hair cut, unless you've got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy, in which case, collect his note before lunch, put it in your letter after you've had your hair cut, and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you. Now...
Wymer (Chapman): Sir?
Humphrey: Yes, Wymer?
Wymer: My younger brother's going out with Dibble this weekend, sir, but I'm not having my hair cut today, sir.
Pupils: [chuckling]
Wymer: So, do I move my clothes down, or...
Humphrey: I do wish you'd listen, Wymer. It's perfectly simple. If you're not getting your hair cut, you don't have to move your brother's clothes down to the lower peg. You simply collect his note before lunch, after you've done your scripture prep, when you've written your letter home, before rest, move your own clothes onto the lower peg, greet the visitors, and report to Mr. Viney that you've had your chit signed.

[non capisco]

My school traditions included saying 'Phwoooooooar, Chas 'N' Dave' after someone farted to prove it's not you, which I assumed up until recently was a more common thing but seems to be entirely unique to my school, and fuck knows why it started.

[Toad in the Hole]

I don't think my school was posh enough to have any traditions like that.

You bunch of toffee-nosed ponces.

[Goldentony]

Everyone had a habit of shouting "SIT OFF!!" in Maths class from year 9 til the end of year 11, but somewhere in the middle of year 10 the teacher went from thinking it was really funny and harmless to giving out detentions and forcing people to leave his classroom for the remainder of the lesson and stuff.

'sit off' of course meaning to do no work and relax, iit got on his tits so much it was terrifying, and it only ever happened a couple of times by the time he'd made it clear it was annoying him. The best one i can remember was a guy named Ian getting sent out for saying it while coughing at the very start f the lesson and spent the rest of the lesson in the corridor a good few yards from the door shouting "SIT OFF" for all he was worth, then going outside to the window of the classroom where the shutters were closed shut permanently and doing the same while the teacher just sat there egtting more and more pissed off in complete silence.

This only ever happened in maths though for some reason, before the sit off thing it was the fast show joke of coughing and going "ARSE", but the teacher that time never got onto what we were shouting, the only time she spoke of it was when she shouted "WHAT ARE-A YOU DOIN EH?? ARE YOU A FARM ANIMAL??"

In junior school aswell there was a tradition of no one ever standing on the 3rd step of the stairs at the rear entrance of the building, because a nun would get you if you did, we were all gullible idiots and this wasn't helped by the fact the 6ft 11 caretaker would remind us so often that the nun was coming.

[Banana Woofwoof]

"Jump on Seaneen and Beat the Shit out of Her" was my school's favourite game.

[Deadman97]

NIM. I'm counting nims on you, Seaneen.

[Goldentony]

There was some geography teacher too called Mr Jones who was really skinny so got the nickname Bonesy, he laughed it off for a while but at one point during a lesson the year 1- football team all walked in laughing and shouting and chanting "BONESY!! BONESY!!" someone decided to shout "COME ED LADS LETS BATTER 'IM!!" and they all 'jokingly' started digging him in the ribs and stuff while he pleaded with them to stop because he had a lesson to teach, and it all finished when a guy named Ben ran in from the corridor, screamed "BONESYYYYYYYYYYYYY" and did a head first slide across Mr Jones's desk, knocking all the papers/pencils off, then pulled himself out of the nearby bottom floor window.

That's neither a tradition or quirk but it was really funny to see.

[quadraspazzed]

This was unique to my class. Every so often we'd start shouting "THE MATCH! THE MATCH!" or "THE VIDEO, THE VIDEO", or even "THE VIDEO OF THE MATCH" at teachers. I can't even remember how it got started, but it carried on for five years.

[biniput]

We did have bonafide traditions but one thing pupils would do is talk, just at the right volume, when teacher was writing on the board to se how much of the conversation would be subconsciously written up.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Before I started at middle school an older friend who was already there told me the school had a tradition called "Bog Wash", where any new kids had to be careful when going past (or in) the toilets or an older kid would stick their head down the toilet and flush it.  He'd taunt me with this for weeks before I started, "Bog wash", "Watch out for the bog wash!", etc...

Only it never happened.  I never even witnessed it or even heard the slightest inkling of a rumour that it ever happened, so I don't know if it was an actual tradition, or if he made it up, or maybe the tradition was to tell people about it but not actually do it.

[rudi]

"Jump on Seaneen and Beat the Shit out of Her" was my school's favourite game.

[writes then edits vulgar response]


Not a tradition as such, but we had a rule that you weren't allowed to be found tipsy on school grounds before you were thirteen and I remember clearly being annoyed I was still twelve and waiting impatiently for my birthday.

Seemed normal 'til I left and entered the 'real' world, with all my fifteen year old peers getting excited about sneaking into pubs.

[Labian Quest]

We used to have a tradition known as 'flustering' where you went up to someone and waved your fingers in their face in a particularly annoying way while saying things like 'Don't get flus-tered, pleease don't get flustered, we wouldn't want you to get flustered, now would we?' until they became...flustered

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Well, at primary school, in assembly, we always used to hisssssss the ssssybilants in the ssssongsssss, because we found it funny. And there was an area of the playground - a small patch around a chimney where the surface was a different colour - which had been designated 'Kissing Corner.' Knowledge of this romantic hotspot spread from generation to generation - the general idea being to push people into the corner, because being in the corner meant that two people had kissed, or wanted to kiss, or were actually kissing (depending on the purposes of theirs tormentors). At least that was a mixed-sex school. My secondary school was all boys, and was very, very traditional. Our school song:

All hail to the colours of dark and light blue / Which float in the flag of the school
Where we one and all have a life's work to do / Beneath its beneficient rule.
Long, long may it flourish and always appear / The cradle of honour and truth
Which we through our lifetimes will ever revere / The shrine of our studies in youth.

(To the tune of 'Firestarter.')

Plus we had Latin readings in assembly, a Founders Day, portraits on the wall, etc. And different ties meant different things - there was the common or gardern school tie, superseded by the Sixth Form Tie, although also in the Sixth Form you could earn the privilege of wearing the Prefect's Tie. This in turn was superseded by the Service Tie, for service to the school in Sport or (in my case) Music. Pupils of all ages were also permitted to wear, for one year only, the school's 300-year anniversary, the 'Tercentenary Tie'. Simple, really.

As a class, one of our favourite games was to flick these ties over our left shoulder when the teacher's back was turned. They'd look round again - all our ties out of place. We found it hilarious. Until one teacher shouted 'Don't think I don't know what you're doing with your ties!' which spoiled it a bit. Not long after that, they introduced 'uniform cards,' which had to be kept on you at all times. Any 'uniform abuse' (shirt untucked, tie only one inch long etc.) and your card got signed. Three signatures led to an automatic detention. So our childish hijinks evolved into the (I'm pretty sure universal) thing of all just coughing loudly and at the same time. Can't be told off for coughing! Or so we thought.

Ah, my school was great. One boy actually got put in detention (after school, no less) for producing an especially pungent fart. And of course there was the time Bummer Jenkins got forty lashings for stealing matron's copy of 'Punch' magazine.