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!

1st year home ec class, so I was probably 11. We were doing our cooking lesson. The teacher was a fairly angry woman. I can't remember what we were making but the set up was 2 people to a counter, the other pupil on mine had additional needs and had a 1:1 support. Said 1:1 support decided to take it upon herself to tell me crossly that I was doing something wrong. I knew I wasn't, I was following the instructions to the letter so I thanked her and explained the instruction. This made her very annoyed and she insisted I was wrong and I must do as she said. Cue teacher coming over and berating me for doing it wrong. I was a bit upset by this point and explained that 'she' (I did not know her name) had told me to do it that way and that I had thought it was wrong but was made to do so. 1:1 decided to divert the situation by taking huge exception to being called 'she' I politely apologised and explained i did not know her name but that wasn't acceptable. I was made wrote a letter of apology both for calling her 'she' and for lying a lot her telling me to do it the wrong way. Still furious about that one now 😆

I was asked by a lad in primary (i was about 7) to pass a sandwich to a lad on another table.
I did it.
I then got sent to the headmasters office for stealing the sandwich

My folks generally had a good marriage but as so often when they’d had a disagreement or she was put out about something, my DM had that ‘face’ on, and the voice to go with the ‘face’ - it made a horrible atmosphere and we’d all tiptoe about so as not to upset her.

So once (when whatever had caused the ‘face’ was nothing to do with us kids) at maybe 12, I walked into town - maybe 2 miles - and spent all my pocket money on some flowers for her. When I gave them to her she just said in the same grumpy ‘face’ voice, ‘I don’t want them.’

I was so cross and upset, so I went straightaway next door and gave them to their old granny, pretending I’d bought them specially for her.

Later my DM (probably after my DF had had a go) asked me where the flowers were and I retorted, ‘Well, you didn’t want them so I gave them to Mrs X.’

Whereupon she was cross with me! And I dare say seriously mortified in case I’d said I’d bought them for her first, but she’d spurned them. (I hadn’t.).

Although I generally got on pretty well with her, I often think how I could never, ever have behaved like that to one of my own dds.

I’d written a lovely story at primary school and they have it to one of the boys in my class to read out in assembly. I literally never understand why 🤷‍♀️ He got loads of applause and all the glory without doing anything whilst I was sat at the back doing sod all.

Oh and another one. We went to the pantomime and they asked for 4 kids on stage and I was 5th in the queue. The kid in front of me clearly didn’t want to go on and was blocking my way. Their mother was trying to force them saying things like ‘go on, you’ll love it once you’re there’ etc. All the time I’m thinking ‘he doesn’t want to go, I DO MOVE!!’ She finally got the message and the two of them moved and the kid behind me bolted on stage and I lost my chance 😢😢 I was so gutted.

In class 1 (reception), a little shit who was a regular tyrant smashed my clay birds nest! I was crying but the teacher was all, 'aww well you know what he's like'.
Then at the end of the day she beckoned my mum into the class and I thought she was going to tell her I'd been upset over the terrible injustice of the day but instead she told her I had been on the rampage with another girl, stamping on jigsaw boxes 😂 I have no idea why she said that. Mistaken identity or revenge because I cried for all of 10 seconds over my destroyed artwork who knows. But my mum was fuming over the shame of it and confiscated my Walkman. My Walkman!

I had one teacher who was my year 5 form tutor who enjoyed humiliating me and it seemed to be a game.

I looked her up and she's one of the only teachers who still teaches at that school.

I was dyslexic and really struggled with following instructions. I was bottom of my class and she missed no opportunity to remind me.

Once a year the year 5 students would get to go and use the labs in the big schools. We were all very excited.

The lab teacher and my form tutor were in the lab with me and instead of putting the liquid solution in a test-tube I put it in a tray.

My form tutor screamed at me "no no no no no!"

I was so embarrassed. She then made a big fuss of rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath as she corrected my mistake. "I knew it would be you who would get it all wrong"

There was another boy in my class who then made the same mistake 5 minutes later and he was approached kindly by my form tutor who triumphantly told him "don't worry George you're not the stupid one BessieBenjamin is the stupid one."

From that point onwards I wholeheartedly believed I was stupid and the other kids would bring it up.

I also wanted to hold a charity bake sales so I wrote a speech for the whole school to read out. It was my first speech and I was very nervous. That same teacher asked to see my speech as I was going into the assembly and shouted as loudly as possible in front of the whole assembly "this is all wrong, everything is wrong. Why do you always find these things so hard."

She then positioned herself in a place where all the kids could see as they filed into the assembly and would periodically say while aggressively scribbling on my notes "wrong, BessieBanjamin wrong again...NO Bessie Banjamin you cannot spell anything"

I was so embarrassed

It would have made zero difference to my speech to just let me be, I knew how to read my writing.

Ditto to whoever said there were (probably still are!) some awful teachers!
I can’t help thinking of the poisonous little cow who was queen bee of bullies at my senior school - who went on to be a primary teacher....😱

I carved my brother's name into the bathroom wall to get him in trouble and DM correctly realised my brother would never have done that himself and blamed me how dare she.

The first and only time I got into trouble at school. I was a quiet, academic and clever child. It was the fashion then in prep school to have a clever child said next to a less academic one and I was teamed with this boy who tormented me. I eventually snapped and hit him with my ruler. Yes this was wrong but it was in the days of the cane.

I was given 100 lines to do to explain it. I couldnt so my DF said what to write. That was wrong and I got into further trouble. My DF went into the school and went mad. I was 8 years old.

I still think of that teacher. What on earth did she think was going on and why blame me?

I was about 16 or so and for reasons I can no longer remember I took my schools shoes off and left them in the bathroom.

The next day they were gone. Couldn't find them anywhere. I got into huge trouble for losing my shoes and had to wear my mum's cheap black ballet pump style shoes. Given that we were halfway through the school year my parents couldn't afford to buy me another pair of expensive shoes for the few remaining months and so the pumps became my school shoes. I didn't mind necessarily but teachers didn't like it and they began to fall apart quite quickly.

A year or so later I found my original school shoes hidden amongst the laundry in the airing cupboard. Turns out my 13yr old sister had hidden them for a joke but was scared to own up when she saw the trouble I was in.

My parents thought this hilarious and I never did get an apology for not having my shoes nor for the amount of trouble I got into because of it.

@Deadringer

I have so, so many, but the first one i can recall was when i was about 5 and my sister was about 3. We were colouring in pictures and my mum was to judge which was best. anyway i did mine so carefully, taking care to keep inside the lines, while my sister, in typical 3 year old style, just scribbled on the page. My mum picked my sister's as the best as it was more 'colourful'. I was so hurt, silly really that i still remember it so many years later.

@Deadringer - I God I hated it when my kids did that to me when they were younger and I had to judge who’s was best! I could never choose and always used to point out the merits of both. I hope I haven’t psychologically damaged them and they’ll be writing about me on a thread like this one day 😅

I was 7 years old and got cramp when sitting in assembly. I cried as it hurt. A teacher took me out of the hall and slapped me for making a fuss. This was on the 80’s. I was such a good girl too. The teacher said sorry later.

I was rubbish at all sports apart from swimming and swam for my county and was a qualified life guard. PE teacher wrote in my report that I needed to work on my swimming as I wasn't very good at it this was after she had made me demonstrate life saving skills because I was better at it than her. DM complained about report but she refused to accept I could be good at swimming if I was so rubbish at all other sports 🙄

Some horrible teachers described on this thread! And plenty of poor parenting.

I remember my younger sister's birthday party when I was about 6 and we were playing spin the bottle. Why my parents thought that game was a good idea I'll never know. I think they thought it was cute and funny that we were a group of girls an boys and we gave each other little pecks on the cheek. The older girl from next door was put in charge of spinning the bottle but I was desperate for one go of spinning it. My parents just kept saying no, no reason given, or fobbing me off "in a minute". Then they announced the end of the game and I didn't get to do it. It was such a simple thing to let me do and wouldn't have mattered at all, but no, I wasn't allowed because i "wasn't old enough". Just the feeling of being let down and disappointed but more the feeling of unfairness at being denied something so simple, and I just got very upset and miserable and couldn't stop crying.

My mum told my dad to take me upstairs to calm down but I was just so sad. Then a friend was brought up to try and take my mind off it but it just made me feel worse as it brought attention to my upset and I felt embarrassed. Then my mum decided to ask her friend over the road who was a nurse for advice on how to make me stop crying as I was hysterical and she told them to smack me across the face to snap me out of it. Which they did!!!! No, it didn't help, just made me feel more upset and rejected.

Why they didn't think of just cuddling me quietly for a bit I'll never know. I couldn't ever contemplate treating my own kids like that when they were upset. They didn't really understand how children thought was it was around 1980 and in those days parents just threw their kids out to play in the morning and didn't spend a lot of time really getting to know their personalities and characters.

Possibly that was the same year that I didn't get a "sibling gift". My parents had a thing where to stop any jealousy at birthdays they would also buy the other child a small gift. On my sister's birthday I was told I was too old for that now and got nothing, but because my sister was younger, when it had been my birthday she still got a sibling gift. I was so hurt. Their excuse was "she's too young to understand, but you are old enough to understand."

I was also never allowed to win any prizes at either my own or my sister's birthday party.

I've always hated parties. Makes me wonder if childhood upset is the reason!

My parents are lovely and have been great grandparents and always worry about being fair to all of them. It's like they had personality transplants between parenting us and being grandparents.

One if my sisters wrote a load of crap on the back of the bathroom door with soap and put my name at the bottom. I got in big trouble so I stole £20 from my parents (dad blamed my mother and they had a massive row) I bought the Bad album (M Jackson) and a pair of baseball boots, said they were my friends. Fate had other ideas as I put on boot on and it ripped. Because I got away with it I stole my parents bank card thought I knew the pin and the card got eaten. I was horrible

When I was about to leave primary school (it would have been the Christmas before) the school had organised a massive pantomime that we had spent months practicing for.

We were given a few days to hand in money to buy tickets for our parents, but I was off school on those days.

When I went back, my mum went to the office to ask if there was any chance she could get a ticket. The head teacher told her that they were sold out and she couldn't get a ticket. It was a very small school so she asked if she could just stand at the back - again no.

So I had to do the whole performance knowing there was no one there to watch me - I was only a paparazzi lady but still. My mum was furious and still mentions it to this day - she'd spent 7 years as head of the parent council, she'd done so much for that school, but they wouldn't even put out a spair seat for her or let her stand at the back.

We went on a primary school trip to dig for fossils. I found a fantastic ammonite which the teacher took from me on the way back to 'have a proper look at'. He never returned it.

Yes Mr Hoad you stole my precious fossil.

Many school related ones. The three that stand out though are being told off for inattentiveness one day in what is now year 2. That morning I'd got up at 6am and gone to the requiem mass for my recently deceased dad. I was 6 years old and generally tired and emotional but the advice was to send me to school as normal and that "pandering or spoiling" would hinder me "getting over" what had happened. In year 8 when my cookery shouted at me till I was in tears for not having my book and ingredients. She wouldn't let me speak to explain. My mum has been taken into hospital as an emergency a few days earlier and I had had a few minutes after school to grab some clothes before being taken to stay with a family from the church community who were going to look after me. I had no access to the house or money and even if I'd remembered about the ingredients among the stress I would never have dared ask the people I was with to buy them. The only redeeming feature in this one was my form teacher. He was very strict and traditional in a lot of ways but I found him fair and compassionate. He gave you a chance to speak if you were in trouble and listened. He tore a strip off the cookery teacher when he found me outside the head teacher's office in the queue for bollocking. Then in year 9 the horrible girls who bullied me wrote the nasty rumour they were spreading (it was sexual in nature and I found it very distressing as we were a really religious family where that was considered sinful) on a wall. They said I'd done it myself because I was an attention seeker and wanted to get them into trouble. The deputy head believed them and they stood and laughed as I was made to clean the wall.

Bear in mind I was pretty much a perfect pupil all through school, so any kind of telling off hurt me massively!

1. When I was 6, another kid pushed me into a metal bookcase for no reason (he did this kind of thing a lot) and it made a massive racket. I got told to stand in the corner for break time. Even though it wasn't my fault.

2. I was accused of copying someone's work when I was 7 and missed a lunchtime to do it again. We had worked together but interpreted the questions wrong so we both got the same wrong answers. I wasn't aware we weren't allowed to work together as we often did, as did everyone else. The teacher spoke to the other girl once, who told her I was always copying her work. She didn't even bother getting my side of the story.

3. I was in a brass band when I was in high school, and played the part next to the main solo player. This girl was incredibly nervous and never actually wanted to sit there (the band leader did it to try and up her confidence but it never really worked), and in one piece she had a big solo line and at the concert just before the piece she said she couldn't do it and absolutely begged me to play it for her. I said okay, and did it (quite well to be honest considering I hadn't played it before), and got the biggest glare ever from the band leader. After the concert she sat the band down backstage and said she expected her solo players to play their solos, and she didn't need attention seekers like me stepping in to get all the glory. She made me stand up and asked me why I felt I was better equipped to play the solo, and the other girl was shaking her head at me not wanting me to tell her - so I didn't. I just said sorry.

I'm working on my MSc today, so far I have been out doing some gardening, done the washing up, put the laundry on, made 3 paltry pages of notes and had a cup of tea.

I can't do the MSc because all that is in my head is how I don't belong on an MSc as I never did well at school, failed most of my exams and wasn't clever enough fo 6th form or FE college so went on the dole.

The teachers knew it was a waste of time trying to teach me as I wasn't clever enough. That was at a secondary modern which I was sent to because the selective prep school my parents chose for me told them I wasn't clever enough to go on to the senior school and I had to leave. I'm on the verge of proving them right and quitting because who the hell am I to think I was capable, I'm starting to realise how right they were because my English is terrible, I can't even join in the debates on MN because I read them and everybody is so clever and I couldn't write messages like that.

I wanted to be an angel in the nursery class nativity- they got to wear tinsel in their hair and net curtain wings. The bossy lady in charge said no way was I to be an angel- angels have long hair not short hair like mine was. So I was a shepherd. A very pissed off shepherd. My mum still laughs at the memory of me scowling in the direction of the angels while dressed in a collection of tea towels.

My older brother punched me in the mouth, chipping my front tooth, and then told my mum I'd 'run into his fist' and she believed him! He was a horrible bully and I have nothing to do with him now funnily enough.