Little things from the past that still piss you off

[Jinxdoesit]

I split from my EXH a couple of years ago. There wasn't too much animosity and we divided our things without too much hassle when selling the house except for one item. There was a stunning Laura Ashley dining table that I had bought at a really good price in a sale, we debated over who should get it as we both really wanted it. Eventually I backed down and let him take it. I didn't think too much about it at the time, I was moving back in with my parents temporarily and didn't know where I'd end up or if I'd even have space for it so I thought fine, he could have it.

Now I'm buying a new place that it would look perfect in. I know his place isn't big enough for it and that he has stuff in storage so I assumed it was in there. I called and asked if he happened to still have it and if so and he wasn't going to be using it could I have it. Turns out, when we left our old house he gave it to the new buyers for free because they liked it!! This was just after we'd been arguing over it and he knew how much I wanted it, yet he then just turned around and gave it to someone else that he didn't even know!

I found this out a couple of months ago and now every time I'm looking at tables for my new place it pisses me right off! My EXH had this thing about being a 'nice guy' and wanted everyone to see him that way, but was worse with people he didn't really know so I know this will have just been a way of being 'such a nice guy' to the buyers of our old house rather than a spiteful act against me but it still sticks in my craw!

What small things has someone done to you that still pisses you off ages later?

I thought of one my ex told me about. His parents were very well off, he did have very nice clothes and toys. He had a big collection of a certain kind of toy he was very proud of. One day when he got back from School, this large collection had been given away by his Mother, as a friend of his had suffered a family tragedy, and his Mother was trying to cheer him up. My ex was devastated. It really upset him, I did think it was a horrible thing to do.

When I was about 7/8 I was coming out of a gymnastics lesson. I always walked out to the car park and mum would do a drive-by pick up to get me as the car park was generally super busy. She had pulled in in an disabled space then got out to chat to another mum who was just paused in her car in the middle of the car park. I came out and hopped in the car to wait for mum. Now I know you shouldn't park in disabled spaces and there are people that really need them but there were about 10 spaces at this leisure centre and maybe 6 of them, some closer to the door than we were, were empty so in this case she wasn't actually inconveniencing anyone. An older couple (I though elderly at the time but thinking back on it they were probably 60s) parked in one of the closer spaces with I assume their grandchild. The woman came over to me, I had the door open to cool off, and started absolutely shouting at me how disgraceful it was that I was parked in a disabled bay and how people had a real need for those. I was crying and just said " I didn't park it" and she then had an absolute go at me about how rude I was. He husband was looking at me very apologetically so I think even though being annoyed someone was using a disabled bay wasn't unreasonable the way she was talking to me was. It felt to go on forever and I felt so ashamed and naughty but obviously I hadn't parked there and couldn't move the car so there was nothing I could do to make amends. When mum got back in the car I was so upset I could barely tell her what happened. I can still feel that flood of shame and total helplessness when I think back to it now.

I was never allowed to have my bedroom decorated. We moved when I was 10, my brother got his room decorated and carpeted.

I wasn’t allowed as I had put posters up on my wall and my DM said I’d ruined the walls. I was stuck with the paint the builders had used (magnolia) and a horrible carpet. Even when I was older I was still never allowed to have it painted. 20 years after I left home my parents have never decorated that room, it’s still got the same shitty carpet and paint. I was always desperate for it to be painted and feel like mine, and I think I would have looked after it.

Both my DC’s rooms are decorated and really thought about, and made to feel like they’re really theirs. As mine never did.

I worked for years with a group of women ranging from mid twenties to mid fifties. Antony who had a birthday with a zero got a collection for a gift. I always gave and once or twice went shopping for the actual gift.
When my thirtieth came around it was decided that thirty wasn't a special birthday. I was a bit miffed but shrugged it off. Two years later the oldest and longest member of staff brought her daughter in law to work with us. A few months later DIL was turning thirty and a collection was started. I refused loudly and told them why? Proper bitchy environment to work in so glad I left soon after.

My mum made a lovely party dress for my daughter. It was really something special but when my daughter outgrew it my sister begged to borrow it for her daughter. When I had my second child not long afterwards I asked for the dress back but my sister had already donated it to a charity shop. I think her daughter had worn it once. I was so upset and disappointed.

I know you don't give to receive, but I've always put in to collections at various jobs when people have left. I've never received a 'leaving gift' from any company I've worked for. Proper pisses me off when I think about it. I never left on bad terms.

I have another one reminded by@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop . I started seeing the guy I'm with now who had a little girl around 7years old , now my beautiful 18 year old step daughter .
His female friends invited me out to a restaurant for a girls night , I dressed up and off I went , I drove as it was quite far away . I got the restaurant only to find that the girls night included all their kids too , it was too far away to go back and get my step daughter so I thought I'd make the best of it .
The "girls" had drink after drink as they had hired a mini coach to take them home so after loads of meals and bottles of wine I didn't even have one glass as I was driving the bill came and I stupidly agreed to split the bill , it cost a bloody fortune and I never went out with them again

We were messy children. In our defence my mum is also messy so we didn't really understand about tidying because wasn't something we saw being done very often. Even so, she used to go ballistic about how messy our rooms were.

One day we came home from school and my mum had taken every toy, book, board game, ball, colouring pencil, board game, craft kit, Lego, doll, every single thing we owned and put them in the spare bedroom with a padlock on the door. They stayed in there for months right over the long summer holiday and beyond. Our sole entertainment for about 6 months was tv and 3 books a week from the library. That's so unhealthy.

At the time we were upset but accepted that this was their chosen form of discipline but looking back I think it was actually an insane and cruel thing to do.

My mum is old and frail now and I am her main carer. She's constantly saying how lucky she is and she doesn't deserve my kindness. She is so right, she bloody doesn't. She was a horrible mother in many, many ways .

@the80sweregreat

Teachers are not coming out of this well at all :( So nasty.

All in all, teachers in the 80s were fucking dreadful, there were a few decent ones but overall, my memories of my senior school teachers still make me shudder, there was the unhinged French teacher who used to get students by the throat and have terrifying fits of temper where she screamed at the whole class, the maths teacher who used to throw the wooden chalk board cleaner at any poor students who couldn’t work out his difficult equations, the English teacher put his hand up your skirt. So many teachers with very obvious mental health issues that really, really shouldn’t have been working with children. I’m still quite affected by some negative teacher related experiences

All in all, teachers in the 80s were fucking dreadful

I started teaching in the 80s and don't recognise this at all - unless my then colleagues were up to all sort of shenanigans behind closed doors.

@VexedofVirginiaWater

All in all, teachers in the 80s were fucking dreadful

I started teaching in the 80s and don't recognise this at all - unless my then colleagues were up to all sort of shenanigans behind closed doors.

I was born early 70's so at school throughout the 80's.

I had some bloody awesome teachers, most were good and few were absolutely awful and horrible. The ones I remembers were the awesome ones and the horrible ones!

My art teacher at secondary school still expected us to produce the homework when we were off sick.

One time I was off (can’t remember why I was sick), my friends told me what the homework was. I bought it in when I was back and the teacher told me I had done it all wrong and made me do it again.

@ProbablyLate

When I was about 7/8 I was coming out of a gymnastics lesson. I always walked out to the car park and mum would do a drive-by pick up to get me as the car park was generally super busy. She had pulled in in an disabled space then got out to chat to another mum who was just paused in her car in the middle of the car park. I came out and hopped in the car to wait for mum. Now I know you shouldn't park in disabled spaces and there are people that really need them but there were about 10 spaces at this leisure centre and maybe 6 of them, some closer to the door than we were, were empty so in this case she wasn't actually inconveniencing anyone. An older couple (I though elderly at the time but thinking back on it they were probably 60s) parked in one of the closer spaces with I assume their grandchild. The woman came over to me, I had the door open to cool off, and started absolutely shouting at me how disgraceful it was that I was parked in a disabled bay and how people had a real need for those. I was crying and just said " I didn't park it" and she then had an absolute go at me about how rude I was. He husband was looking at me very apologetically so I think even though being annoyed someone was using a disabled bay wasn't unreasonable the way she was talking to me was. It felt to go on forever and I felt so ashamed and naughty but obviously I hadn't parked there and couldn't move the car so there was nothing I could do to make amends. When mum got back in the car I was so upset I could barely tell her what happened. I can still feel that flood of shame and total helplessness when I think back to it now.

What a absolute bitch to shout at a child , even if she did have a point about the disabled parking clearly you haven’t parked the car . Her dh should be bloody ashamed that he didn’t step in to tell her to wind her neck in . The thing is I bet she wouldn’t shout at your mum like that but rather a child what a bully .

I left school in 1983 and went to VI form 83-85

I remember - being forced to eat school dinners even if I didn't like them, at primary there was never a choice.

Corporal punishment, one teacher had a special wooden metre rule she kept for punishment and she used it a lot.

One time she decided a boy had written in a text book, he denied it so she got out the ruler. That child was asked every day for a week if he'd done the writing and every day he said 'no' and was rulered again.

After a week the child who had written in the book owned up and got a single rulering.

Secondary English teacher. It was lunchtime, I was chatting to two friends, they were both sat at desks and I was sort of crouched down between them so my head was the same height.

I smelled the English teacher and then next thing was feelin his legs round me and his dick pressing into me.

And no it wasn't reported, all three of us were in shock but you didn't report teachers then.

The same teacher had been at my brother's school were he was well liked, he transferred to my school to be head of English.

He decided that the teacher of et 1 wasn't good enough and as she wa explaining to her class that he would be teaching them he apparently (I was in set 2) laid in to the other teacher about why she was still talking to the class and demanded her class join mine.

Another time he went to slap a girl across the face and she put her hand up and stopped him, he was furious and sent her out.

He decided set 1 hadn't been taught properly so they had to attend extra lessons pre and post school day.

The school was an RC girls school, some girls came from the next town on the school bus but if they were in set 1 for English they had to use public transport pre and post school to get to his extra lessons.

Did I mention he stunk?

Same school we had a homework timetable so homework was spread out across the week. But the chemistry teacher didn't believe in it so if you had a lesson with him you got homework that had to be done that night and handed in in the morning.

All the teachers had a pigeon hole outside the staff room where we left completed homework. Unless you had chemistry ' science with this teacher, you had to go to his class room and leave your book open to where your homework started.

One of the nuns there were rumours about, and you did not go into the cupboard with her. I never saw or experienced anything about her, but others said things had happened and she did often ask girls to help her get things out of the cupboard.

One teacher who worked at the school but never taught me and left has recently been prosecuted for having sex with a women who was a 14 year old pupil at the time.

At VI form my form tutor was married to an ex student, and there wasn't a lot of time between her leaving VI form and them marrying.

Physics teacher - gave homework but had a policy of not marking it. Ever.

Biology teacher put me in detention to complete work that I had not done because I'd been off sick.

And yes the girl with patent shoes was forced to stand on a desk for an entire day because patent shoes meant someone would look at your knickers (we had to wear a knee length skirt).

The music teacher would put people in the cupboard as punishment, it was a large cupboard. I never experienced this but I knew a couple of people who did and for some reason there was a ladder up to the science rooms above so you could actually get out.

There were one or two good teachers.

My school had a reputation for being a good school so what went on in the less good schools is anyone's guess.

My best friend got pregnant first. Had a girl. Called her by the name I had told her many times I loved and wanted to use. Something broke inside me. I remember telling my mum and she just said - well she can call her daughter anything she likes. Yep she can. But something still broke inside me.

@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop Sean Burke is a naughty boy's name? Racist, much? Not appreciated.

When I was at primary school a dinner lady forced me to eat cheese and onion flan even though I told her I couldn’t eat cheese. She sat beside me and physically made me eat it. I then threw up all over her and she sent me to the headmasters office for being naughty. He phoned my Mum to tell her how naughty I had been. Mum gave him an earful and told him I was never to be forced to eat anything again!

@OoglyMoogly oh that was so mean of the teacher, you must have felt devastated :(

@JimLaheysWhiskeyBottle that was really crap of your parents and such a loss for you to miss out on a special opportunity. I too was offered the cello by the school when I was very young and it's sad that your parents denied you something so special.

When we were 11, we were rostered to prepare morning tea for the teachers and to clean up afterwards. There was a staff member there to show us what to do. She said, "Who would like to put out the biscuits?" and I put my hand up and said, "Ooh I will!" She got very angry and said, "No! How dare you?!" and made me wait on my own until after the break then clean out all the ashtrays. I had no idea what I had done wrong - and still don't - but I've always remembered the feeling of shock by her response to what I thought was a polite offer of mine, and also just feeling so bewildered! Madness.

@Blessex

My best friend got pregnant first. Had a girl. Called her by the name I had told her many times I loved and wanted to use. Something broke inside me. I remember telling my mum and she just said - well she can call her daughter anything she likes. Yep she can. But something still broke inside me.

Did your friendship survive it?

My sister asked my exh if we were free on a certain date as she wanted to get us tickets to see a musical for Christmas. She didn't know, but he did, that I absolutely hate musicals. He gave her the date and she gave us the tickets which obviously I had to pretend to be excited about.
Our favourite band then announced a gig on the same date. Him and all our friends got tickets for that and I had to go and see bloody Chicago. To make matters worse I had a miscarriage about two weeks before and was really low and he still pissed off to see the band and had a great time whilst I sat and cried during 'all that jazz'.
It still really upsets me now and it was 17 years ago!

My parents dressed me in predominantly brown and sludgy green baby clothes. Would be nice to have at least one photo where you can't tell I'm a 70s baby girl

Sitting crying at primary school as the dinner lady sat next to me forcing me to drink my strawberry milkshake.

I hate strawberry or banana milkshake. The only time I’ve eaten strawberry Angel delight or had a strawberry McDonald’s milkshake I’ve vomited.

Equally gutted when I ordered a chocolate McDonald’s milkshake and when I got home found that it was banana. I almost cried.

I won an art competition at 12 for under 16s…the prize was a trip. The organisers decided I was too young to go in the trip so said they’d give me a book instead. I never got the book.

I feel sad about all the teacher stories on here, could add some corkers of my own. Unfortunately it's not just the 80s, this stuff still goes on - kids concerns are still disbelieved or belittled. DDs friend complained of a bad stomach ache at school one day. TA repeatedly refused to let her go to the office, and kept telling her that if she drank some water it would go away. Friend had appendicitis.