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Childhood injustices

Started by 23 Daves, January 25, 2013, 01:26:56 PM

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biggytitbo

IT WASN'T ME WHO LEFT THAT POO ON THE FLOOR OF THE BOYS TOILETS.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

I have an almost identical memory of your nursery school recollection, only in my case I got him back by pushing him off a climbing frame later. Unfortunately for me, the teacher(?) saw me and brought my parents in to take me home.

I think the reason why violence is tolerated in most schools is probably the same as why it's tolerated in prisons: the pattern of behaviour is so common after a while it becomes normalised. I've often thought most teachers would benefit from taking a periodical carer course (since that's effectively their primary role) which would remind them to watch out for that sort of thing. Though I'm sure most teachers would kindly tell me to fuck off.

Either way, in the unlikely event I ever have kids, I definitely wont be putting them in a school (either public or private) past the age of 11/12. As institutions, they do seem to bring out the worst in absolutely everyone at that age.

tookish

Quote from: 23 Daves on January 25, 2013, 06:07:34 PM
There was one "troubled youth" in my year who actually created a game out of it with dice. He'd have a list of classmates he'd quite like to punch, roll the dice twice to see which two would be on the receiving end that day, then spend the rest of the class tossing coins for heads and tails and hitting people as hard as he could while the teacher pretended not to notice.

Ugh, fuck. There's something horribly chilling about the calculation behind that.

The Giggling Bean

Oh god I've got a bunch.

When I was in 3rd year junior school my form teacher took a dislike to me. I never misbehaved or was disruptive etc there was just something about me which rubbed her the wrong way. Indeed when we'd line up by her desk to have our work marked she'd blatantly grimace when it was my turn.

Anyway I've never been any good at maths, still not to this day, but was shit hot on spelling. We where all taken downstairs to the cramped Tv room and sat around in a circle. We had a spelling test first, which I did quite well in. However I was accused of cheating and pulled out of the circle and made to sit on my own in the middle. She said something like, if you do badly on the times table test I'll know you cheated on spelling. As you can guess I didn't do so well and she told my mum at parents evening. Although I got a bollocking my mum did acknowledge this claim was probably crap.

On another occasion we were lined up to go into the assembly hall. Somebody in the line broke a hideously stinking fart. The giggles stopped when this teacher storms down the line, grabs my arm and yanks me out yelling, "do you need to go to the toilet?" I didn't as it wasn't me, but such pleas fell on deaf ears.

We got to play rounders on a PE lesson. I was one of the fielders and as such had nothing to do but watch the more popular kids play. One of my friends knocked the ball quite far and managed to run the circuit. Amidst the cheering from my other classmates, I was pulled up for shouting Yo ('twas the 80s) and any more noise from me and games would be cancelled and we'd all go in to do work......yes it was the same teacher.

Mrs Clayton I publicly shame you.

More coming soon.

23 Daves

Quote from: tookish on January 25, 2013, 06:25:00 PM
Ugh, fuck. There's something horribly chilling about the calculation behind that.

There were regular rumours around the school that he was a bona-fide certified psychopath, and I still think there may have been something to that - being hit back or even beaten up just didn't seem to have any effect on him at all.  One one occasion a group of kids beat him up quite severely, but the impact on his attitude and self-esteem seemed to be zero and he got his revenge on them one-by-one.  There was only one boy in the whole year who wasn't afraid of him, and he was even bigger and was noticeably left alone.  That he actually owns a business and isn't part of a sophisticated criminal operation has always been a surprise to me.

Cerys

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on January 25, 2013, 03:24:42 PM
Cerys; "who broke the ornaments?" was the first question that sprang to mind for me too, upon reading your upsetting tale. The punishment does, indeed, seem disproportionately harsh. What had your brother told your mum and dad? That you'd called them both cunts, and you were glad to be having tea at your mates, cos your mum's grub tasted like dogshit, or something? I hope you've found it within your heart to forgive your dad. I know how you feel; my mum tore two of my precious 'Mad' magazines in half, when I refused to take my little sister to the pictures with me. 28, I....Oh, never mind.

To this day I don't know for certain.  What I assume is that he decided I'd put the phone down on him and relayed that to my parents.  I've talked to my mum about it since, and she can't remember what exactly it was that made them react so harshly.  I reckon a kid had been murdered or something, and they reacted out of a combination of relief and fury at being scared.

Inaniloquent

Quote from: Sony Walkman Prophecies on January 25, 2013, 05:35:24 PM
No great injustices spring to mind, though I do remember finding it weird how child-on-child violence was generally treated so casually by teachers and parents alike. What's weird about this is that if we were talking about adults - almost by definition far more resilient than children - we know the situation would be completely reversed. If Tim in HR hit Ian in accounts in a moment of random violence, Tim would almost certainly lose his job, and if there were bystanders, one of them might even call the police.

Absolutely, and I have no problem at all in supporting the idea that the law should affect all humans over the age of responsibility. If you can be sent to jail aged 11 for cold-blooded murder, you should be able to be fined, cautioned, ASBO'd or jailed for common assault. The only time my parents wanted to get the police involved was when a boy shoved me over and I wound up on crutches, but previous beatings and assaults (such as setting my hair on fire) were just written off. I look back and wonder what the fuck the adults around were thinking.

The very idea that a 15 year old kid might one day punch my 15 year old kid in the face repeatedly then throw him down a staircase and the only punishment might be 'detention', just because it happened on some magical lawless land called School, is abhorrent to me. I'm not saying every little brat should be trotting out their list of human rights to avoid being taught maths or fed peas, but yeah, like you say - if you can't do it to Tim from Accounts, you shouldn't be able to do it to Gary from 4B.

Cerys

True; but Tim from Accounts is a cunt who's had it coming for a long time.

copyingdogs

 Reading through this thread has made me realise how lucky I have actually been to avoid significant childhood injustice, I haven't really had it too bad. One situation that does spring to mind though was a rather nasty encounter with my then technology teacher, whose level of sheer distilled unpleasantness only becomes clearer as I get older. He was a rather egotistical chap who evidently thought a great deal of himself despite being a notoriously shit teacher who had trouble grasping the quite basic concepts that he expected his class to understand, and who spent an unreasonably amount of time off school gallivanting around the country with his model girlfriend.
  I was probably about 14 at the time, and during a class where he was trying to teach us about some kind of electrical component, he forgot a really basic configuration and I, I suppose in a slightly puerile way, said to my friend that he should have been setting an example for the class, and he overheard this, and absolutely exploded at me. He kept me in over break and howled at me for a good 10 minutes, tearing apart what he perceived my personality to be and asking me if I really thought I was better than him. I had to write a big apology too. It might not sound like much now but at the time I was really shy and it really effected me at the time, to the point that I would be terrified to go into his class, and would shake any time I heard his name. He did the same thing to my cousin too, who was also quite shy and was very upset about it. It just annoys me that a 40ish year old man would take such serious offence at a flippant remark made by one of the quieter kids in the class, and give them the bollocking of their life as a result.

buttgammon

Quote from: copyingdogs on January 25, 2013, 08:54:54 PM
my then technology teacher, who spent an unreasonably amount of time off school gallivanting around the country with his model girlfriend.

Did he make her himself?

Coat etc etc.

Kishi the Bad Lampshade

There was a lunchlady at our school that got hired when I was in Year 5 or thereabouts. She turned out to be either have some sort of paranoia issues, or was just really sadistic, but I reckon it was the former. A boy in our class was once walking by her in the playground at lunchtime and laughed at some joke his friend made; she shouted at him for laughing at her, told the teacher and got him a detention. I once pretended to hit someone with an empty foam lunchbox as a joke and she started shouting at me, which still makes me burn with injustice to this day. The most infuriating part was that I gave her an incredulous "you're a fucking idiot" look and she said "DON'T LOOK ALL INNOCENT WITH ME!". It clearly wasn't an innocent look, it was a "you're a fucking idiot" look. Fucking idiot. And one day she got the entire class put in detention and having to write apology letters (except me and a few others who were in extracurriculars at the time of the 'incident') because she claimed when she rang the bell for end of lunch break, everyone laughed at her. Though I wasn't there at the time to confirm it myself every kid, even the teacher's pets, insisted that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but no-one would listen. This was the same school that found that the one waist-high bin provided for the whole school's lunch rubbish would unsurprisingly get full and overflow, so rather than get a lunchlady to take the bin out, or buy a new one for a fiver from Woolworths, forbade anyone to use the bin so we all had to take our rubbish home in our bags and get our books all smelly. Anyway, if she was genuinely paranoid I hope she got help. But I also kind of hope she dies.

Also when I was six and we were learning how to tell the time, our teacher (who seemed to have it in for me for the whole year, ever since the first day of term when I cried because I tripped over a chair) told us all to sit down, close our eyes, and stand up when we thought a minute had passed. Loads of kids didn't know what a minute was and stood up after about five seconds, and the two kids who got closest stood up at about forty seconds. They and the teacher then started debating about who stood up first and who was going to get the house points, so much so that they didn't notice when I finally stood up, pretty much bang on time. But I was either hidden behind other kids or the teacher just pretended not to see me, so I didn't get my house points. I found out she was retiring a couple of years back and I was tempted to go to the school and get her to finally give me those points.


Small Man Big Horse

One time when I was about eight or nine my Sister was sitting on the same couch as me, pretending that I was hitting her, despite the fact that I wasn't doing anything of the kind. She kept on crying out for me to stop, whilst looking at me with an evil glint in her eye, until my Step-Father stormed in to the room, and slapped me across the face. Which might not sound much, but he was a huge man (well, 6 foot 4, anyhow) and it hurt like crazy. Even my Sister looked shocked by this, and I occasionally bring it up to this day. To be fair it was the only time my Step Father acted in such a way, but I never forgave him for it.

I've mentioned my school's mis-judged[nb]Due to the fact we had no black kids at our school[/nb] staging of To Kill A Mockingbird before, but whilst we were rehearsing it there was one scene where a friend had to spit in to the face of another friend. He kept on really over-doing it, making disgusting throaty sounds before flobbing all over my friend, and made the whole cast laugh. Yet for some reason the drama school teacher lost it with me, and threw me out of rehearsals. I got my revenge on her though, by being utterly shit in the play.

When I was about six I almost had the chance to answer a question on the radio for some phone-in competition. However, my family convinced me there would be a greater chance of success if we got the oldest of my two brothers (who was 10) to go on the phone pretending to be me when the station called back. Maybe this is where the story should end, but I didn't mind and just wanted the prize.

Anyway, the question he got asked was: "The bull represents which star-sign?" My star-sign is Taurus and I would have easily got it RIGHT. Well my brother - still pretending to be me and using my name on air - said the right answer anyway. The DJ congratulated him and told him what the prize was: Two rolls of camera film!

The shitness of the prize isn't the injustice I want to highlight either. The sad ending is that they didn't even send us the "prize". Fuck you Donegal's Highland Radio. You owe me two blank camera films from 20 years ago.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: thecuriousorange on January 26, 2013, 01:00:47 AM
The shitness of the prize isn't the injustice I want to highlight either. The sad ending is that they didn't even send us the "prize". Fuck you Donegal's Highland Radio. You owe me two blank camera films from 20 years ago.

I know how you feel. I'm still waiting for my joystick to arrive after I won Letter of the Month in Amiga Power back in 1991. If it doesn't arrive by 2016, I'm going to kick some arse, and then some.

Incandenza

The one that springs to mind is an odd one- sat on the bus when I was about fifteen, kid the year below me is being a peen, so I say something unpleasant at him about a girl he fancies, because it's the bus and it's comprehensive school and we've been trained to destroy each other.

He reacts by giving me a nice big open palm slap right on the face (most likely justified). The real injustice here wasn't him doing it, but that although the slap didn't hurt that much, suddenly my eyes were stinging and I was fighting off CRYING LIKE 'A GAY'. At the age of fifteen, on the bus, caused by a younger kid, this wouldn't stand. I spent the whole drive back desperately pretending that the passing scenery of fields and hedges was really interesting, and pretending not to hear "You crying?" being constantly thrown at my head.

I was so weirdly angry with my body for ages. Why did it have to cry? Why?
Bodily injustice.

Hank Venture

Oh God, yes. That's the worst. I hate that - I don't wanted to be sad, I wanted to be angry. Often I was both though.

I feel like I was on the other side of a couple of these. I was a snide little poo, a little weasel who often got away scot free, even though I was being an bottom. A horrible temper and stubborness combined with being well liked by teachers and being a bit of a joker would often land me in trouble with some of the other kids. I always was quite big as well.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

Quote from: Inaniloquent on January 25, 2013, 08:21:47 PM
Absolutely, and I have no problem at all in supporting the idea that the law should affect all humans over the age of responsibility. If you can be sent to jail aged 11 for cold-blooded murder, you should be able to be fined, cautioned, ASBO'd or jailed for common assault. The only time my parents wanted to get the police involved was when a boy shoved me over and I wound up on crutches, but previous beatings and assaults (such as setting my hair on fire) were just written off. I look back and wonder what the fuck the adults around were thinking.

The very idea that a 15 year old kid might one day punch my 15 year old kid in the face repeatedly then throw him down a staircase and the only punishment might be 'detention', just because it happened on some magical lawless land called School, is abhorrent to me. I'm not saying every little brat should be trotting out their list of human rights to avoid being taught maths or fed peas, but yeah, like you say - if you can't do it to Tim from Accounts, you shouldn't be able to do it to Gary from 4B.

In my experience private schools (I went to state as well) are far worse for this. The attitude was always  "what goes on within the school gates stays in the school gates", on other words; they didnt want to lose their reputation from it getting out that a boy had been beaten half to death - which did happen a few times. What they wouldnt tolerate, however, was anything going outside the school grounds, because that had a detrimental effect on the school's image - so I'd be regularly put in detention for smoking outside the school gates, while someone in my year would be given a light ticking off for kicking another boy's teeth in. Nothing particularly unique about this though, the same seems to virtually apply to all large institutions, which I've why I've always had a very grounded and reasonable distrust of them.

Lyfjaberg

Quote from: Sony Walkman Prophecies on January 25, 2013, 05:35:24 PM
My only explanation for this seemingly backwards logic is that most see children as cattle and don't really believe they're capable of the full range of feeling adults are, yet somehow most people simulataneously believe that there's no worse crime than child murder/abduction, so work that one out...

Here are my workings, Sir:

Children are imperfect moulding of their parents, who own them: therefore you must suffer the little children when they play together, but when another adult messes with your child it's as bad as someone stealing your recycling bins.

Lyfjaberg

Two items of school injustice stick out of my past, hobbling the fondness of my childhood memories (along with having an abusive alcoholic father, which makes me sound petty: but school was the place I came to in order to escape home. You could have at least treated me with civility, considering that I clearly presented emotional issues.[nb]I would like to point out that I am a teacher myself now and don't set out to abuse students. I have risen above the inter-generational cycle of 'must do better' violence[/nb]).

1) I think it was Year 8. I was in a prestigious City Technology College. The headmaster, a sad little Napoleonic figure, was mates with John Major. School was a place to mould minds, in the same way a factory moulded toilet seats. I was desperate (probably still am) for approval. I decided I would make an extra effort in Maths.
So I sat down to a test and wrote out important facts I would probably need in the test ahead. A little bit of 'strategic learning' there.
The teacher saw what I had written and assumed I had been cheating. Considering we had been given lined paper this was an impossibility. I have no idea what child-torturing logic she had to employ to figure out this one. Maybe I had a pre-prepared sheet hidden up my sleeve, like some kind of origami ninja[nb]My army of cranes will fly me away, as long as I pull on all their tails simultaneously! Aha![/nb].

2) Year 10. I was being bullied on the bus. I punched one kid back in the face (which was hard to do, it was so chubby it was like getting angry at a basketball) so they stole my ID card and wrote 'Gaylord' on it, even though that name is only common in America. I had to wearily and repeatedly assert I did not deface my own card in order to label myself 'Gaylord'. Before I was eventually believed, a particular little sad-sack of an assistant's assistant manager -- who I fail to have sympathy for now despite being an assistant leader of a dept. myself: I have walked a mile in his shoes to discover that they were winklepickers for a fucking clown -- kept hounding me for payment for a replacement card. I pointed out to him that I had no money on me in one tutorial session. "Like the Queen Mother, are you?" he sneered.
No, you obsequious bully, I come from a vulnerable family where the majority of income is spent on my father's addiction. Perhaps you need to remember that not all people wear shiny ill-fitting suits from Matalan, you lanky Northern bastard.



Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on January 26, 2013, 01:10:54 AM
I know how you feel. I'm still waiting for my joystick to arrive after I won Letter of the Month in Amiga Power back in 1991. If it doesn't arrive by 2016, I'm going to kick some arse, and then some.

You have my respect, if that counts as a gift.
I was published twice in AP, towards the very end of its run. I gave tips for Addam Family and a walkthrough for Robocop 3. The prize is the immense recognition we received from our peers.

NurseNugent

Mine are pretty small-fry but I want to join in.  I was also one of these kids who was way down the pecking order at school, one day when I was about 11 I was in art club making origami  animals when the popular girls came in and starting praising my work "If you make these for us, well stop picking on you" they said "but don't make them here, make them at home."   Well I went home and spent all evening making various animals to take to school the next day, delighted that things may ease up. Next day I proudly show them my work " We don't want any of that crap" say the girls and rip them them up in front of everyone. 
I actually ended up going to university with one of those girls (the same one who thought Martin Luther and Martin Luther King were the same person)[nb][/nb] and was probably a lot happier than I should have been that she struggled to make friends but I did ok.


The second one was a couple of years later, my form tutor (who looked like Desperate Dan) is telling us some rather long-winded story about WW2, my mate is giggling away quietly to herself at nothing, she gets a few mild telling offs. He gets to a part in the story about someone wearing a bobble hat, he says it in quite a jaunty little manner, I think it's supposed to be funny and smile to indicate I'm listening. Well, I get hauled off out of the classroom, get the bollocking of my life and told I'm an ungrateful little scumbag for laughing at a war story and people didn't die in the war for a snooty little twerp like me to have a good giggle about it years later. I wasn't used to getting told off anyway and he was big and loud and I was still shaking at the end of the day.

[nb][/nb] We both studied German and I always used to have a quiet giggle to myself whenever   Martin Luther being the father of modern German was brought up.       

23 Daves

Quote from: Sony Walkman Prophecies on January 26, 2013, 04:20:19 AM
In my experience private schools (I went to state as well) are far worse for this. The attitude was always  "what goes on within the school gates stays in the school gates", on other words; they didnt want to lose their reputation from it getting out that a boy had been beaten half to death - which did happen a few times. What they wouldnt tolerate, however, was anything going outside the school grounds, because that had a detrimental effect on the school's image - so I'd be regularly put in detention for smoking outside the school gates, while someone in my year would be given a light ticking off for kicking another boy's teeth in. Nothing particularly unique about this though, the same seems to virtually apply to all large institutions, which I've why I've always had a very grounded and reasonable distrust of them.

Hmmm.  This is hardly worth mentioning, but the office I work in is based very close to a well-respected and well-known public school.  The kids there are such a braying, bigoted pain in the arse on the outside (two of them were doing hilarious impersonations of Pakistanis the other day, and laughing at homeless people) that I've on occasion had to suppress the urge to slap them.  If they weren't out-and-out poshos I would probably just sigh and shrug, it's the fact that they're bigoted and are probably going to be Conservative politicians/ captains of industry in fifteen years that really gets me genuinely angry.

Anyway, I've often thought about reporting some of them, but I can't be bothered.  What difference would it make?  I'd probably create a childhood injustice myself by failing to correctly identify the right teens, and it won't change their minds about society or stop them from being cunts when they're older. 

Rolf Lundgren

One lunchtime a group of us were sitting at the dinner table waiting to be called up for our turn when out of nowhere a solitary chip flew through the air and landed in the middle of our table. A teacher rushed over to us and began demanding who threw the chip. As we explained that not only did we not have any chips to throw but it was physically impossible for us to have thrown a chip from a distance and have it land on our own table, he led us all away to get a bollocking in a corridor. He then gave us all to the count of 10 to say who did it or we'd all have our names put in the BLACK BOOK, a register of wrong 'uns that we'd assumed was a myth and was only mentioned in whispers. Sure enough nobody said anything because we hadn't done anything and we all had to put our names in to this book with the reason 'throwing a chip'.

It really pissed me off at the time because the teacher was only doing it to enforce his authority. It didn't matter that he was so obviously wrong, he just wanted to punish someone so everyone else would know he wasn't to be messed about with. I never really understood teachers like that who seem to relish the opportunity to yell and have a rant rather than thinking a bit more logically and acting a bit more sensibly but there you go. 

daffs

#52
Quote from: doppelkorn on January 25, 2013, 03:38:06 PM
I've thought of two more.

In my GCSE graphics class we had to make a mock-up model of a room to show off our interior design skills. Most poeple got a shoebox and made furniture out of matchboxes and the like but I made mine out of proper wood and included a dead flashy chaise longue made out of plasticard which I'd moulded into a curvy ergonomic shape by holding it over some kettle steam and bending it while it was pliable. I also made a proper lighting system that actually worked with a proper light bulb and battery and everything.

When we all brought them into school the day after half term everyone said how mine was clearly the best by a mile. I was cock of the walk.

The long and short of this injustice is that everyone in the class got 10/10 pretty mcuh, excpet me who got 9/10. NINE! Fucking Mr. Sharp. Graphics was also my lowest GCSE mark overall. When I came home after picking up my results I told my mum and she goes "that man always was a cunt".

shit, I had a graphics teacher called Mr Sharp, who would probably do something like that! probably the same one. case closed

edit: I supposed I should add some injustices of my own. I had a fairly banal childhood so forgive me if these are a bit rubbish.

firstly, my brother is a couple of years older than me, so when I was about 11ish, he was becoming far stronger, and our fairly routine scuffles started to become a little bit more one-sided. I remember once we had a fight that ended with me being dragged across the kitchen floor on my back, DELIBERATELY so that I would receive burns for about a week. of course, I could have put this in the victories thread because something like that is conspicuous and cracking evidence in the trial of a sibling.

secondly, I've been reminded, by references to toilets and shit and things, of the time a kid called james (who also once accidentally kicked a ball in my face at his birthday party football match thing, but it still fucking hurt) who pissed on my trouser legs one school day in year 1. I think we were all allowed a toilet break or something, because there were about 3 of us in a row at the urinal, and he just turned, like a psychopath, and pissed on me.

anyway, thirdly, in that same year, we were taught hundreds, tens and units, which I just couldnae get my heid aroond. it was baffling. anyway, everyone else did that smug thing where they got it, and went outside to play. I didn't even get my breaktime, then it was assembly, and people had trundled off to that. the whole school. meanwhile, I'm still there, trying to work out what the fuck a remainder is. mrs cunningham, who I would probably still hate if I saw her now, was shouting at me for being an idiot (even though usually I was pretty good at all this) and finally sent me off to assembly late, to walk in in front of the whole school. truly a bitter woman. I remember pathetically asking my mum a couple of months before the school year finished when she would be leaving (she buggered off after only one year of being there) because I hated school so much. also, it later transpired she'd got me down as a problem child because I was having hearing problems, later rectified by gromits, after which I excelled at whatever pointless exercises you have to engage in as a 6 year old. just condemned to 'can't be arsed listening, doesn't respond, write-off' until that point.

23 Daves

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on January 26, 2013, 10:46:16 AM
One lunchtime a group of us were sitting at the dinner table waiting to be called up for our turn when out of nowhere a solitary chip flew through the air and landed in the middle of our table. A teacher rushed over to us and began demanding who threw the chip. As we explained that not only did we not have any chips to throw but it was physically impossible for us to have thrown a chip from a distance and have it land on our own table, he led us all away to get a bollocking in a corridor. He then gave us all to the count of 10 to say who did it or we'd all have our names put in the BLACK BOOK, a register of wrong 'uns that we'd assumed was a myth and was only mentioned in whispers. Sure enough nobody said anything because we hadn't done anything and we all had to put our names in to this book with the reason 'throwing a chip'.

It really pissed me off at the time because the teacher was only doing it to enforce his authority. It didn't matter that he was so obviously wrong, he just wanted to punish someone so everyone else would know he wasn't to be messed about with. I never really understood teachers like that who seem to relish the opportunity to yell and have a rant rather than thinking a bit more logically and acting a bit more sensibly but there you go.

I remember a similar exchange at school, actually!  I was standing at the bottom of some stairs and somebody threw a chair after me, not forcefully and with intent to cause damage, just so that it banged and clattered on the steps as it went down.  In walks the RE teacher, right on cue, and he points to me and says: "Did you just throw that chair?"
I replied: "Well, I couldn't really have, could I? I was at the bottom of the stairs and it came after me".
He just muttered: "You think you're so clever, don't you?" and walked off. 

He really disliked me for various reasons too dull to go into[nb]I come from a family of lapsed Catholics who are more hardcore about atheism than Ricky Gervais, so I expect I was more of a pain in RE than I can remember.[/nb], and I even requested a private meeting with him once to pull him over about it.  I'm still staggered by my own arrogance regarding that now, and obviously it didn't help, it just brought me under his scrutiny even more.  He was also the Head of my year, which didn't help.

Cerys

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on January 26, 2013, 10:46:16 AMa solitary chip flew through the air and landed in the middle of our table.

It should have been a sausage with a fork in it.  I'm all disappointed now.

Cerys

#55
I've remembered another.  Some of you may remember a TV programme called The Adventure Game.  It was set on the planet Arg, which was inhabited by Argonds.  The currency was the Drogna and the chief Argond was the Rangdo.  One year there was a competition.  Not the 'answer this simple question and we'll select one of the millions of correct entries' kind - this was a series of six questions, with the first letter of each answer combining to spell a six letter word - the name of the planet where the Argonds' cousin lived.  The first question was 'if I was on Arg, what point would I see directly above me?' - and the rest were mostly science-based, as I remember.

Anyway, the six episodes having gone by and the six questions having been asked, we were left with A R D and L.  The first and fifth answers evaded us.  And then nine-year-old-me had a sudden brainwave.  'If the first one is a Z and the fifth is I, that would spell Zardil, which is an anagram of lizard - and 'argond' is an anagram of 'dragon' so it fits!'

And indeed it did.  We won the Arg Crystal.  Or rather my brother did.  My mum had said that entering under both our names might make them choose a single entrant instead, so we put my (older) brother's name.  So my brother now has a large crystal that could have been mine.  I got the answer, dammit!  Me, me, me!


(Edited to remove an unnecessary 'instead'.)

Lyfjaberg

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on January 26, 2013, 10:46:16 AM
As we explained that not only did we not have any chips to throw but it was physically impossible for us to have thrown a chip from a distance and have it land on our own table, he led us all away to get a bollocking in a corridor.

No-one subverts the laws of Physics in this fucking school, you bunch of molly-coddled paedo-monkeys. Cause and then effect, Mr. Johnson. Cause and then effect.

Saucer51

School injustice - I was quite a well behaved pupil, rarely in trouble. Aged about 6 or 7, there was a ratty, misbehaved girl in my class who didn't like me. One day, our rather elderly female teacher demanded to know who had vandalised some art and craft work by pouring glue paste all over it and mashing it up. I had no idea who had done such a mean thing but it certainly wasn't me. The girl who didn't like me shouted out my name and the teacher turned to me in fury, ripped off her half-moon spectacles to show she meant business and began to bellow at me. She didn't believe my protests and of course children aren't particularly eloquent at defending themselves. I do remember crying at the injustice of it all. I didn't get into trouble per se about it, just felt a simmering anger from the teacher for a while.

Home injustice - having my older brothers call me all kind of four letter words but one day when I fought back and called one of them a wanker - well deserved - my parents went crazy at me. They weren't interested in my profanities of my brothers. Finally my father reminded me that little girls are apparently made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys are made of slugs, snails and puppy dogs tails. I don't know if he was attempting to regulate my behaviour or excuse theirs.

Buelligan

Perhaps you should have suggested he Fuck off, all the while smiling sweetly.

I borrowed The Hobbit from the school library.  My grandmother took it to read[nb]she didn't ask, just told me she was taking it[/nb] and didn't return it.  I got banned from borrowing books, had to pay the fine and buy a new copy and was called a coward and a liar by my parents and grandmother for "inventing" the tale.  After Grandmother died, we found the book.  I still have it. 

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quotemy father reminded me that little girls are apparently made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys are made of slugs, snails and puppy dogs tails

You suggested something not so far removed from that yourself in a topic relating to gender a month or two ago.

Anyway, Childhood Injustices-

Every Easter at school we had an Egg Decorating competition. I was no artist, but I was always determined to win this competition. Every year my idea would be the best and would get first prize, regardless of the merits of any other entrant. I never got even close. In fairness, I did the whole thing myself and was up against dozens of people who had the Hand of Mummy + Daddy helping them (you see how I'm still bitter about this now), so my efforts were never going to hold up to scrutiny. It still rankles to this day that despite not winning no-one ever came to say 'good effort', or 'I liked that'. I'm fairly sure that's why I've become the wanton karma whore I am today.

If I was able to re-enter today, I would choose Egginafuckinchip, or Egg Within An Egg.