Things from secondary school that stayed with you

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.. light-hearted.

So, I was remembering a time at school that instill kid of get opissed off and smug about.

I was in the "lazy" group for PE. I wasn't bad at games , just not interested enough to make any teams. Also the school we're a bit shit, and if you were on one team, you were in them all.

Anyway, fast forward to Year 11 netball. Last ever lesson. And we were left to our own devices, and just so happened that our group were playing against the Senior Netball - A Team.

Anyway, us little bunch of layabouts, decided, quite randomly, that we were going to play properly as it was our last game. We all agreed we'd give it everything and try and win.

And so we did. We were happily beating the A Team. Winning something like ..8-2. the teacher comes along and asks what the score is. We merrily tell her. And she's kind of like "oh... Well...next to score wins the match!"

I was RAGING.

and we scored next

We very happily and smugly sauntered past her when we won.

What a bitch! Mine is also PE teacher related. We had this teacher who was just mean. I was about 13 and we were all standing in the changing rooms receiving instructions on the game or whatever and she got annoyed at general chatter going on....she said
NO TALKING thank you!

So everyone shut up. Then the girl next to me spoke to me in a whisper and the cow of a teacher SMACKED ME across the arm with her clipboard and it really hurt so as a reflex I smacked it back at her and it bounced right off her nose.

She sent me to the head but nothing happened because she'd hit me first!

I didn't even talk! This would have been about 1985.

My DH was made at school to hang clean pants last on the peg in the changing rooms before rugby so the PE teacher could see they had them (whole other thread right there I suspect 😂) and would then be the first thing to put on after the showers. Son ingrained was the practice that He actually found himself doing the same thing as a grown man when he played for his local team before he realised it was a) unnecessary as he didn’t need to be told to pit on clean pants and b) it was very, very weird 😂😂

I know you said light hearted, but unfortunately my secondary days were not light hearted. This event was the last 'big' bullying event the Queen Bee got away with...

It was her birthday. There was 32 in our form. She had carefully made 30 sweet and gift bags, and gave them out in form time, finishing at my table, to loudly announce she had only stuff to make 30, and so had made them for all her close friends in the class...

I ignored her. Used to being the bottom rung after 3 years. But she didn't get her usual laughter. Just uncomfortable silence.

The bit I found out after... her usual buddies told her afterwards she was out of order. Over the years I've had several people tell me they felt guilty for their part in the general behaviour over those three years. But I cut of all contact with everyone except a couple of actual friends when I left at 16.

Two girls in my class had started to bully me. We were all about 14. One day in the library they were whispering and giggling and staring at me. Then they put a folded up note on my desk. And sat there expectantly, just DYING for me to read it and get upset.

I just left it there. Didn't open it, didn't look at it, didn't touch it. When the lesson finished, I walked out and left it on the desk.

I'm still proud of that. 😊

Playing basketball (I was on the school team) we had a ni e little trick going where as soon as my team got the ball into he opposition half I would sprint to our basket someone would lob a long ball to ke and I would score unopposed. We had been doing it with 100% success rate for 10 minutes. The opposition coach was raging that their team wasn't stopping us. So I was running full pelt down the touchline and the coach stuck his foot out and tripped me up.

Not only did nothing get done about it I was told to put a wet paper towel on my clearly deformed arm and stop crying. Mum came to pick me up took me to A&E I had only broken my arm in 3 places!

My elder brother was the most popular boy in school by a long shot with both students and teachers. I was very very shy so I slipped under the radar and very few people realised that I was his sister.

One day when we hadn't long started first year I was in a class with a boy who was going on and on about how my brother was his cousin and how he would beat up anyone who messed with him blah blah the usual kids bragging (my brother couldn't have fought his way out of a paper bag but that was neither here nor there).

It wasn't like me to speak up usually but I couldn't help myself to catch him out and say 'omg are we cousins I didn't know! I've never seen you before! What side of the family?'

Boy turns to me like I am a big turd that has just started speaking and says 'I'm not related to you, weirdo'.

Just then teacher walks in with my pencil case that I had forgotten and goes 'oh Lady I've just seen your brother MasterCleathStuart and he asked me to pass this to you as you left it at home this morning'

Boys face was a picture.

Half the sum of the parallel lines,
Times the distance between them.
That's the way you calculate
The area of a trapezium

X = -b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac, divided by 2a.

And Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I think that's it.

Deep sense of inadequacy! I

'A mistake is only a mistake if you do not learn from it' quite in the wall in my history class - loved that teacher.

And my ds1 who was born in the first term of my last year! 😂

*quote on the wall

I remember a really smug goady girl that used to always put me down and try to make me look stupid. If I was asked a question in class and got it wrong she immediately would snigger and then come out with the right answer. It was like she made it her goal to poke fun at me.
So one day during pe we were playing hockey and I accidentally whacked her in the shin. Felt so good. For me.

My husband

Force equals mass times acceleration.

An involuntary shudder when anyone says "packed lunch".

one mole of any gas at room pressure and temperature measures 24 dm cubed.

I hated school. I have no nice memories unfortunately.

Eating my lunch in the toilets alone because I felt I had nowhere else to go.

I was kicked and tripped daily. Gum in hair, called names.

I wasn’t pretty but I don’t think I was ugly. I was athletic but never picked to be on anyones team.

School play… my teacher told me … I was an ok actress but she didn’t pick me because I didn’t “look” the part. That will always stick with me because she told me that 3 times over the years.

When I went to college I was shocked that people were nice to me! Shows how cruel kids can be I guess.

In physics we had to do a page of graph things that were a circle with a wiggly line across them. I got hold of my friend Jeannie's workbook, and added berries and holly at the top of each one so they looked like Christmas puddings! Both she and the physics teacher found it funny, thankfully!

Oxbow lakes

Cross country running first thing on a Friday morning. Our school was rural but on a major commuter route. We had to do cross country running and the PE teacher buggered off to the staff room for the hour. Gruelling course across county paths. So we all took a short cut to the Little Chef where one of the girl’s brother worked part time. We all had pancakes and ice cream for breakfast every week for a term then we would sprint back, splashing through mud so that we would arrive all flustered and out of breath. Screw you Miss P!

I needed glasses but my dm never bought me any. A few exams were written on the blackboard and I couldn't read the questions. My friend Hazel slyly scrawled every one on my desk so I could do the exam. She was never seen. Unless the teacher saw and let it go (?) .. When I got on a YTS scheme at 16 I bought my own.

@Santahatesbraisedcabbage

I needed glasses but my dm never bought me any. A few exams were written on the blackboard and I couldn't read the questions. My friend Hazel slyly scrawled every one on my desk so I could do the exam. She was never seen. Unless the teacher saw and let it go (?) .. When I got on a YTS scheme at 16 I bought my own.

Isn't it strange? Those weird little (big?) ways some of our parents neglected us? I remember never having proper winter shoes for a part of high school and both parents worked...and my siblings were all a lot older than me and worked too! There was money. I was about 13 and had something like one pair of trousers and two tops for outside school...and was wearing flimsy little shoes through winter one year.

I never had gloves or anything...and we lived in Northern England!

It did affect me. I remember being about 17 on the bus from college and a girl got off the bus before me, she said "bye!" and put on her gloves and it suddenly hit me that I didn't have any despite the snow because nobody had ever got me any since I was in primary school ....I hadn't thought to get any myself despite having a job.

cant wear the colour red (school cardigan)
Hate PE done publicly
Hate my legs, a boy called me, tree trunk legs.
Not much good at maths, useless Teacher, have taught myself since

I never had any wellies. My dm's bf's dd found my hidden birthday present (summer) and it was a pair of wellies (sale item maybe?) and I cried that she had ruined such a great surprise..
My df never paid anything - they divorced when I was a year old.
He won big money when I was about 25..stung really bad he still didn't think of me. My dc didn't even get a bag of sweets..
Wasn't about the money but he had chance to try and make ammends..

So many. I loved secondary school.

The science lab was due to be repainted over the holidays. Our chemistry teacher, who was slightly bonkers and who we all really liked, noted the peeling paint and decided it'd be fun to write on the walls and peel it off, there and then. So a few people wrote on the walls, in biro, then peeled off the paint. Then Mr D took a permanent marker, wrote "Mr D" on the walls and tried to peel it off. That bit of paint wouldn't come off .

Also had a crazy regular supply teacher who toward the end of each lesson would write "Ever at my feet do I hear time's winged chariot" on the board.

PE was generally torturous for me but I shall be forever grateful to the PE teacher who was outraged I'd been 'selected' to run the 1500m on sports day (I wasn't in form for some reason and nobody else volunteered...) and who got me out of it.

There’s a lot relating to PE and research seems to point at bad experiences in PE putting women off exercising in adulthood.

I remember hating showers when I was at middle school. No one wanted one, the PE teacher stood and watched us all and if you had your period she wrote it down on a list . So intrusive.

God so much!

Our secondary school was Not Good and by the time i was half way through it it had really descended right down. No one wore uniform and half the kids didn't turn up for lessons. I hated PE and never did it, i used to slip out and go and catch a bus from outside the school to Ealing Broadway shops instead

Random memories:
A 3rd year lad threw a fire extinguisher through a second floor window in a fit of rage. Missed a couple of kids by inches.

A teacher went potty and rampaged through all the upstairs class rooms throwing things and effing and blinding at everyone. The kids all ran and the teachers stood open mouthed.

Regular organised fights after school on the school field with everyone watching cheering and screaming.

Regular organised fights after school in the high st with the kids from the nearby secondary schools. The EA actually had to stagger the end of school times across the schools in the end so they didn't meet up and try to kill each other while waiting for a bus

We had a 'cheese and wine' party at the school. Bad idea. A male teacher got wind of the fact that a lot of the kids were getting steaming drunk and gathered us all in the foyer of the 6th form to see who needed a telling off and which girls needed a lift home (). My mate sat me on the bench next to her with her elbow in my stomach to hold me upright but i was so so pissed i slid out and straight onto the floor in front of teacher. And then threw up

My mate being madly in love with our science teacher and baking him a birthday cake with hearts and i love you on it and handing it to him in a lesson.

Someone put a cows eyeball in another kids pocket during biology and they screamed and cried and passed out when they found it.

Happy days :)

Secondary school was horrendous for me. Made worse because mother said I was being a snowflake