What petty resentment are you holding on to years later?

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Mine is that I was put in for Foundation level GCSE Double Science despite having good grades on my coursework, only found out when I got into my exam and saw the Foundation paper in front of me, and was therefore capped at a CC. Twenty years ago 😂

What's yours?

When they stopped making Pink Panther chocolate.

@Nc123, omg that's awful!!

[quote missingeu]@Nc123, omg that's awful!![/quote]
It was. It’s really shaped the way I parent as my mum (who in almost every other respect is a brilliant and devoted mum) just didn’t understand what a terrible thing it was to do to me at the worst and lowest time of my life. It made me resolve to always listen to my children and not to minimise genuine distress.

I’ve got a petty one. We were in primary school. My brother wanted to borrow a fossil I’d found, to show his class. I said no because it was a really good one and he loses everything. My parents overruled me and he took it, as I predicted I never saw it again.

Similar to you:

I resented being put in for foundation GCSE Maths - were the highest mark you could get was a D!

I seen no point in studying for an exam I failed even before I sat it. The only grades that mattered to any education institution & employers were grades A-C and I resented the teachers trying to tell me otherwise!

Joined the school bird watching club in year 3, used to meet at lunch times and see what birds we could see on the school grounds and note them down.

We saw and heard a really (apparently) rare bird - the teacher heard it to.

I chattered excitedly about how I’d heard the bird before at home.

Got absolutely shot down and told not to be so ridiculous as the bird was only found in certain habitats and that definitely wasn’t someone’s back garden (said with a sneer) then got made to do lines for lying.

Thing is, at 7 I was living on a farm, my back garden was 500 acres of arable land that was absolutely perfect habitat for this bird, I just wasn’t given the chance to explain it.

So petty but I still rage when I think of it decades later

@Alicesweewonders

Similar to you:

I resented being put in for foundation GCSE Maths - were the highest mark you could get was a D!

I seen no point in studying for an exam I failed even before I sat it. The only grades that mattered to any education institution & employers were grades A-C and I resented the teachers trying to tell me otherwise!

Yeah, I can see how that would've been really discouraging. I mean, on the one hand, I can kind of see why teachers might have wanted to put you through for foundation to give you a chance of getting some kind of maths qualification if they really didn't think intermediate was feasible. But yeah from the point of view of the pupil looking at what's actually demanded by employers/colleges etc., it just feels like a waste of effort.

I'm not sure if that's less or more frustrating than what happened to me — I was a real nerd so I'm fairly sure it must've been either a simple administrative error or something to do with the fact I switched schools (and exam boards) halfway through GCSE and it got a bit complicated with coursework and modules. Either way, I only found out I was sitting the foundation paper when it was plonked in front of me 😂

But yeah you'd think that by age 15/16 they'd let teenagers have some responsibility, and go for the damn intermediate/higher paper if that's what they want to do.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

There was a similar standard path but they forgot about me because I was quiet and brought someone in from another Six. They offered me Sixer of the Gnomes as a consolation prize but I wasn’t having it.

The Gnomes were a crappy Six. Elves were much better. Sorry dude

I’ve got another!
As a kid I entered a competition in a magazine to win a toy horse (like a barbie horse). The prize horse was particularly beautiful and had some kind of special feature which I can’t quite remember. I didn’t have any toy horses because they were too expensive so this would’ve been a big deal. Anyway I won! But the magazine sent me a letter saying sorry we can’t give you the horse any more- they sent me something else instead which was nowhere near as good.

I know my first post might not seem petty but Im also petty on behalf of my mum's bestie for something that happened decades ago. My mum's friend is just 🤷🏼

Its the 1960s, they go to a gig at the Orrel Park Ballroom, get invited to an after party at a friend of a friend's house. All the band are there too - it's John, Paul, George and Ringo. The Beatles. Mum's friend gets all their autographs, on one page (I think it may have been a Cain's bermat, it's been 40 odd years since I first heard this story). Mum's friend's sister borrows autographed beer mat to show her friends. Loses beer mat. Isn't apologetic. Mum's bestie never meets the fab four again. I'm still fuming on her behalf.

When I was in low babies the Big Girls (10 or 11) who were minding us at break time accused ME of throwing jam sandwiches in the bin. They reached this conclusion because all the other children denied it and I was the last one left to ask.

I never even got jam sandwiches! I'm pretty sure it was Siobhán McKenna.

I'm still outraged.

It was totally Siobhán McKenna.

Got the hiccups during a lesson at school. My friend who sat next to me found it hilarious and kept laughing.
I got detention for making her laugh!

We were having a second hand book sale at primary school and there was a beautiful hard backed book on ballet dancing with photos of ballerinas. I fell in love with it and told my best friend (we’d been bf all our young lives) I was going home for lunch and would get my money to buy it - I’d forgotten to bring my pennies into school.
She stayed for school lunches and when I got back from my home lunch with my money clutched in my hand I found she’d only gone and bloody bought MY book for herself

This was in 1974 - I can hold a grudge.

@Plumtree391

Torque: "I never even got given any dinner money....".

How were you supposed to eat?

That's something that was never addressed. I never had lunch at school.

As a special treat, my parents were taking me out for breakfast to a local restaurant, something we did only once or twice a year and it was something I really looked forward to. I was about 13. On the way there, we had some minor argument in the car (can't remember what it was about) and just as we were pulling into the restaurant I exclaimed "Flicking Hell!" Out of frustration. I intentionally said "Flick" not "Fuck" as I knew the latter would get me into trouble. Despite this, my parents misheard me and demanded I apologised for swearing. I argued that I had purposely said "Flick" not "Fuck" and they must have misheard me but they didn't believe me and accused me of lying. They threatened to turn around and go home unless I would just admit I'd sworn and say sorry but I wouldn't back down. They even said that "You have obviously now lied so much you've made yourself believe in your own lies". Anyway I didn't give in and so let them turn around and drive all the way home, losing the special meal out. Still haven't forgotten 20 years later. Bet they still think I was lying too.

I encouraged my new best friend at junior school to join the netball team so we could hang out together more.
She stole my place on the team and I ended up on the subs bench.
I still haven't forgiven her.

Oh, so many!

I was never allowed riding lessons because an old neighbour smashed her front teeth out in a fall. Took me til I was 36 to eventually buy my own. My dm had the cheek to say she didn’t know where to get me lessons (and had no intention of getting them) despite there being a yard 2 miles away.

My dm failed to get me braces, which cost me £2K as an adult-I had a huge overbite. She says she didn’t have time. She was a teacher with 3 months off a year.

In 6th form, I wrote to the local MP to ask if he’d do a talk at school. I got into school one morning and the head of year and another girl with the same surname as me had opened his response on the official Houses of Parliament paper. My first name was on the envelope. I was destroyed. They could have waited for me to arrive. They all knew I’d been working really hard to get him in.

Just remembered another one.

I'm an only child. We got a cat and that Christmas, and every Christmas since, my parents stopped buying me a present each (so I'd usually get two presents) and instead got me one joint present whereas the cat got a separate present from each of them. Yes I'm jealous of the cat.

My dance teaching exam with the RAD- the first part I got 78% which at the time I took the exam, was a Distinction as the minimum mark for a distinction was 75%. The examination report form clearly says passed with distinction. I had to do the second part to my teaching exam a few years later as I had a baby and was on maternity leave, and I passed the second and final part of the exam with 95%. My final examination grading?? Merit. Somewhere between me passing parts 1 & 2 they changed the distinction grading to 80%. If I had taken part 2 before they decided to change the exam marking they would have honoured the 78% as distinction, but because I only managed to do part 1 because I was pregnant/ had a newborn they down graded my mark. I was supposed to contact head office to have my final certificate sent out and never did as that Merit would have annoyed me no end. I worked bloody hard for that distinction grade.

Just to add, I took the exam 22 years ago and still annoyed about it!

So many! Too many to mention in fact

Getting a D in year 9 or 10 PE.
It's the only subject I'd ever got a D in so it stung a bit- I wasn't great at PE though so didn't think too much of it at first.

When I looked at the breakdown, she had scored me a D across the board. Including in badminton- which I actually played and was half decent at!

When I raised this she just looked at me blankly and had absolutely nothing to say other than mentioning my weight.
Because I was overweight and wasn't in top set PE, she clearly didn't care and had put no thought whatsoever into the grades.

Miss Holland/Baldwin, if you're reading this- I forged a note basically every week after that because you made me think, what's the point in PE and exercising when nobody is ACTUALLY grading what I'm doing and I'm just going to be judged by my weight and not what I can actually do. It's taken me until now, at 30 years of age, to start to enjoy going to the gym.

I had a Miss Holland/Baldwin too — after being told off for laziness for lying down after running the 800m (in reality: passing out because I had exercise-induced asthma and had run the last few hundred metres without air) I thought fuck it, what's even the point in trying 🙄