Childhood injustices you can't forget

[TheScurrilousFunge]

Please tell me about your childhood injustices.

I was just reminded of one by something on the TV - I found my classmate's bag strap behind a loo at school. It had clearly been hidden there, but not by me - and yet, I got the blame for it! It rankles TO THIS DAY.

Tell me I'm not alone in not letting this stuff go!

@TheScurrilousFunge I KNOW, did they not realise that Daddy or Grandma might have been equally culpable?

@MrsBDarcy OMG. None of that is okay!

One of the classrooms was off a corridor and you had to go through three doors to get to it. The teacher told us we were going to that room and to wait outside the second door. The teacher actually meant the third door and everyone at the front of the queue (including me) got a roasting for it as we had gone inside the third door.

Drawing on bedroom furniture.

I always got blamed as eldest so stupidly tried to cover it up not to get into trouble.

Got caught - and of course blamed despite my reasons above given.

Again - it still rankles to this day.

But I think it makes people who've been through this nicer is many cases. I've always been more willing to listen and not assume guilt of people and won't accuse anyone without evidence - whatever I believe the truth is!

@Inarightpickleandpreserve Yep. The nativity is such a huge cause of distress

My sister and her best friend stole half my Easter egg and ate it. It was beautiful, plain chocolate with sugar flowers on it and I had it by my bed where I could look at it. They replaced it with some old threepence bits (pre decimal coinage, about one and a half pence for younger MNers). I screamed and cried the house down. My sister went and hid on a nearby park to avoid being told off. Our parents were worried she'd run away from home and when she returned there was no telling off.

This is well over 50 years ago and it still hurts. I remind her of it every Easter.

I think I was 16, younger sister 13. I got new hair straighteners so gave my sister my old ones. She left them on her bed switched on and the bed went on fire! Who got the blame - ME - because I gave her them!

My grandma was babysitting me. My mum had a posh box of chocolates which I really loved and she promised me that I could have one after dinner if I promised I would go to bed and be good (I think I was about 7). My mum told my grandma but my grandma decided she must have been wrong because little girls don't like fancy chocolates and refused to give me one. I was so cross I crept into the kitchen to climb up to get one. She caught me and sent me to bed in disgrace AND told my mum I had been naughty so my mum said I couldn't have any of the fancy chocolates so I'd learn my lesson!

Still annoys me

I was in grade one (in the UK I think this is reception?). I would have been six.

There was a boys' side and a girls' side of the playground. We were playing tag and, technically violating the no mixing rules. The back of a portable annex was boys' side and the front girls'. Being the nerdy and rule-bound kid I was, I was peeking around the corner of the building onto the boys' side.

The principal tapped me on the shoulder. Then several of us were hauled up to his office in the main school. He asked me what we were doing wrong.

I said I was to scared to tell him.

So, so trivial but I still feel an intense sense of injustice.

To this day I am puzzled as to why we couldn't mix.

@itsgettingwierd Yeah A we had similar issues with Sudocrem. It's not FAIR.

I'm the eldest of 3. My younger 2 siblings were regularly naughty or fought each other. They'd get a hiding for it. As the eldest it was my responsibility to make them behave. And as I hadn't, I'd get a hiding too. 'D'M would regularly beat us with shoes, slippers, wooden handled breadboards. This started when I was 6.

I was doing the 11+ as one area in our county still had it. My class teacher not only didn't give me and Joanne extra work while giving extra to the boys, he also told me off for correcting his spelling (and yes, I was right).
Fortunately the head saw sense and moved me and Joanne to the other class with the nice (female) teacher.

I was 8 when my parents decided to move me to a different school. On my first day I was given a PE kit to take home, try on for size and either return or pay for. On the second day the PE teacher asked where the kit/money was. I told her my mum had sorted it with the school office (as my mum had told me she would). The teacher went to check, came back and called me a liar in front of the whole class. I found out later that day my mum had been running late for work so she hadn't gone to the office after she'd dropped me off as planned (but I assumed she had). I can still hear the teacher booming out "we don't like liars at this school". I still hate her! My time at that school didn't get any better, in fact that was probably a good day!!

Through secondary school, endless detentions for "not bothering learning my spellings", I was a high achieving student in most other subjects but English was pretty crap, I just couldn't spell and muddled words in my sentences so they made no sense. You'd thing I'd be assessed for dyslexia? No detention, again!

My brother has SN, my parents totally underestimated his ability to have an original thought and therefore anything naughty he did must have been copied from me

I was accused of writing on the wall at school. I was shouted at in front of the whole year. It wasn’t me. They did find out who did it though. They didn’t apologise and to this day (30 years later) it makes my blood boil when I think about it

Primary one, so age 4.5. We were drawing the number 8- I happily drawing them very neatly. A rather strange girl beside me gently moved my hand and scribbled all over them with a huge, black crayon. The old bitch of a teacher snatched it, screamed at me and when I denied it slapped me across the face. I kid you not. This was 1976.
My mam almost flew into the school the next morning, where bitch face denied it. My mam was dignified but very stern telling them 'My daughter is not a liar' . The HT was very apologetic, but I suppose in those days few people took it further. I moved school at the end of the year.

I imagine she's long gone, but being a teacher myself I want to get right in her face!!!

One really bothers me to this day actually 🙈

I was bullied all through school and didn’t have many friends. One of the kids that picked on me told the deputy head I had grabbed my friend and shaken her really hard in front of everyone. I was dragged up in front of the whole school and given an absolute bollocking - the fat toad really went to town. In front of my mum too (she worked in the school). I never did it. My friend went along with the lie to try and get in with the “in crowd”. I was so so angry. My mum believed me and brought it up, and the deputy head was awful to her too.

Absolute bitch. No idea why she took such a dislike of me.

@Puffalicious I'm so glad your mum stood up for you!

@Honeybobbin the word was batten, she had 1 t in it, I put 2, and she made us all change it so it looked like i was wrong and the rest of the class was right.

My dad as part of his job had to do an inspection of the Mars chocolate factory. He got given two free boxes of all the Mars products, one for me and one for my brother. My mum didn't like us to eat chocolate, so she let us have one thing each and then gave the rest away I blame her now for my chocolate addiction.

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult What a bitch. I hate teachers like that.

Two tales in childhood injustice.

There was a drawing competition for a local parish Christmas card. I carefully drew and coloured my design of a little robin huddled up in his nest on a snowy tree, painstaking detail in the branches and feathers. My friend was in tears because she couldn’t draw a design, she asked me to help her. So I drew one for her. She won the multi-pack of mars bars and didn’t share.

Second injustice was a birthday party I had at home. After the party activities I showed my friends my bedroom. My most prized possession was a light up badge that played the coco pops advert song that I got from saving the tokens off the packets of the cereal.
The next day I slipped into school and a girl who was at my party was proudly showing everyone her coco monkey light up badge that she had “found in her box of coco pops”

Year 7. Mrs macxxxx . School report.
“ you would do better in combined studies if you didn’t spend so much time going off to music lessons “
Oh and the achievement grade was A - it couldn’t be higher 😡😂 so exactly HOW could I have done better?

She was a bit of a cow

This would be outing if any of my family sees it, but oh well. When I was 3 or 4 I had a favourite jumper. It was fleece, pink and purple (my favourite colours) and it had a little dog on the zip. I wore it everywhere, on every occasion I could get away with, until it was well past too small. When I was 6, my mum handed it down to a younger relative without telling me, knowing that I would never knowingly have given it up. I was promised I'd get it back to keep when she'd grown out of it, but I never did. I was so angry, I remember interrogating the poor girl about it and she was totally baffled. Looking back on photos, it's really ugly, but I still want it back! It was my FAVOURITE jumper! In my head it still fits, the sleeves are just a bit short lol