WTF moments from childhood

[Lyannaa]

I vividly remember sitting in a circle at primary school and playing a game (facilitated by teachers). It was a variation on ‘spin the bottle’ and this boy named the girl he wanted to kiss. The feeling was not mutual from her end and she began running around and around the circle, trying to evade both the boy and the disgraceful teachers trying to hold her down. Vile. How was this a thing? All I remember was sitting there thinking ‘thank goodness this isn’t me’.

This was 1989…

That really is WTF? Op.

My abiding , and very common practice, memory is doing PE, in a games hall with the boys, in my navy knickers. While the boys, of course wore shorts.
I am not sure at what age I was aware of discomfort in this, but I do remember hating it at some point in my primary school years.

Cannot imagine having that now.

I think many teachers from my childhood would be struck off now or worse!

I went to a girls' school. Our fire muster point was the church carpark across the road and round the corner. The Y7s did PE in Aertex shirt, navy knickers and bare feet.

There was a local competition how many people can you fit into a particular car model. It was small, like a mini. Children were piled onto each other, literally compressed. There were faces flattened against windows and bodies wrapped around each other. So dangerous! I was annoyed I wasn't chosen as they picked the smaller skinnier kids of a particular age.

I never understood why they sent us girls to the cloakroom to get changed for pe but then happily encouraged us to actually do pe (with the boys) wearing nothing but pants and vests.

My very catholic school did end of year plays. Each class year had to do one. Last year of primary school, the teachers decided we would do a play based on the film Cocktail. It was very uncomfortable as there were a few dance scenes that wouldn't have looked out of place at a strip club.

In sixth form in the mid nineties my form tutor had a party for us at his house! There was alcohol and cigarettes, and a couple of other (male) teachers. Our parents knew all about it and dropped us off! We were 16/17 😱

Being weighed in science class and everyone being put in a chart from heaviest to lightest. Of course being 5ft 5 at age 10 I was the heaviest (even heavier than the boys)

45 years later, I still remember the embarrassment

Went to an art exhibition, two of us aged approx 16, in our art tutors sports car 🙄

No parents were informed, he insisted on us taking turns sitting in the front. Looking back as an adult, he was definitely getting a kick out of it based on his conversation. Gross.

We had to wear PE knickers, not shorts, up until we left at 16!

When I was five, the school dinner on Fridays was boiled fish and parsley sauce, which I hated and couldn't eat. One of the dinner ladies once held my nose to make me swallow it, bit by bit. Cold fish like wet cotton wool!

@ANonEMouseYouSir We also had to do the public weighing thing , probably in year eight or nine! So, about 20 odd years ago for me. So humiliating. It included crazy things like measuring wrists and comparing everyone.

When I was 15 my parents happily let me date a 27 year old. He was a fireman and so I can only assume they thought he was in some way trustworthy!

In our school the girls rebelled and campaigned for an end to cross country running. They were granted their wish and it was replaced with mixed rugby, (for 14 year olds). I never did fully understand what the school were thinking there. In all other respects it was really a wonderful place and I was happy there.

Oh and a non-school one. Aged under 10, a man quietly took my hand and led me away in a dense crowd of people. My dad and step mum noticed him doing it eventually (I was oblivious and presumed it was my dad's hand I was holding). But my dad and stepmum didn't say a single word to the man!!! They merely called me back to them and he walked off. They definitely saw what he did.

If that happened to my kid I would grab my child, scream and raise hell, draw people's attention to the man, call the police etc.

Catholic school in 90s: after pe we had to line up in towels and walk through a shower area. The teacher, often male, would take our towels from us going in one end and hand them back to us coming out at the other end. This was age 11-16.

also, while on holiday in Africa in the 90s my parents made me and my brother climb down steps into a crocodile pit to have a picture and a stroke of “Charlie” the friendly crocodile. I still have a photo of me smiling merrily while trapped in this concrete pit that had a giant pond in the middle of it and about 50 crocodiles basking around the edge. My brother is crouching further back, closer to the steps, he clearly had more sense than me. We were 7 and 8. I still have no idea what my parents were thinking or where my survival instinct disappeared to that day.

1970s primary
-children holding down other children and having their sunburn slapped
-fights after school
-a period pad incinerator in the senior girls toilets
-teachers randomly belting groups of children when they lost control of the class

When I was around ten we did Madonna songs in a dance show. Our class got hanky panky and wore red leotards with fishnets and garters. And for the chorus spanked ourselves 😮

In a school assembly a teacher told us he would do the elephant joke, he pulled his pockets out of his trousers to look like elephant ears and pretended to start to pull his zip down.

I find it ridiculous that primary children still get changed for PE. All that faff for passing beanbags to each other or hoopla. Bonkers…..they run around more at playtime.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5100452-batshittery-that-was-normal-back-in-the-day?flipped=1&page=18

I do remember the big knickers, aertex shirt and having to strip naked in public for a communal shower after a PE lesson. It was all terribly degrading.

When i was 16, at a private international school in Brazil, I went drinking in a bar with other students and teachers. I then sat in the front passenger seat of one of the teacher's cars driving around the city at speed changing the gears for him.

In primary school: sitting on a seesaw to compare weights. I was by far the lightest child, so I just ended up sitting on the seesaw forever. I was bullied for my weight throughout school, right up to leaving secondary school.

In primary school: listening to other kids read because I was a free reader. Not being allowed to do maths because I was ahead in the workbook. Not being allowed to do times tables tests because I got them all right.

In secondary school: maths teacher used to throw a blackboard rubber across the classroom.

PE teacher used to watch us all shower. I made my Osgood Schlatter disease last a whole lot longer than it should have done!

1980s-1990s

We were "allowed" to stay in at lunchtime and brush the teacher's hair or fill a bowl with warm water and bubble bath for her to soak her feet. In return she showed us how to make pom poms and do cross stitch. This was a very normal, down at heel school in the late 1990s. I loved it, loved her, but I know how weird it was (and knew it even at the time, I think!)

I've got a photograph of a school trip and my teacher has a fag in his hand. Tunbridge Wells, 1977.