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…

I think having a shit home and school life was the issue. You own some of that. You may also want to look at your own issues. It was messed up what you as a child did to another child.

OMG! We did this for height and in the first year at secondary I was tiny and so short, I was way below 5ft when everyone else was taller, and we did a bell curve to show the distribution. 1975.

Not quite as awful as looking at weight - but I still felt humiliated and singled out. Luckily I grew a bit over the years and ended up 5 ft 3 so not abnormally short, but I'll never forget that lesson. How NOT to make new kids feel settled in at school....😁!

We also wore navy blues throughout school - but at least it was an all girls school. There were male gardeners and teachers etc walking past the glass sided gym though.......

Happened at my son secondary too! Ranked for the whole year group

My school do this now since Covid As a teacher it is sooo much easier and gives the lesson at least an extra 20 minutes. Also, less missing jumpers, shirts etc. kids just wear PE kit to school on the days they do PE

This.

When we were about 10/11 my DF took my sister and me for a weekend away. He left us to stay in a youth hostel and himself went and stayed in a hotel (coming back the next day). We didn't question it.

I remember the " you're floating on a cloud " thing

I had forgotten those hideous sanitary incinerators - the smell and fug they created

We had to do PE in navy blue pants even when you had a big waggly sanitary towel on

Our French teacher used to give us an irregular verb to learn conjugation - when you got to class he would point to someone to do it. If person was wrong they had to remain standing. He kept going until someone got it right then he gave the belt/strap to anyone standing.

@Sarah28x @Plastictrees as I said I wouldn't get involved and join in with bullies now. I know better. But I get what you're saying . It's in the past now thank God and I'm determined to heal from it all. I've decided to see a therapist to talk about it because I'm still affected by it. I can't trust men, don't like people creeping up behind me, loud noises make me jump out of my skin, I have horrible flashbacks. That could have been due to what my father and grandfather was doing to me as a child, rather than what I did to that girl but I guess I was taking my own trauma out on her. Which isn't right . This lady so never know that I knew how she was feeling as a child because of I told her she would wonder how I went through the same kind of stuff but did nothing to defend her or help her. 😭😭😭😭😭

We had to do our 'cross country' run each Friday morning down a busy high street on market day in the 1970s. We were 14-16 year old girls from the high school wearing skimpy t-shirts & gym skirts. The men would line the side of the road wolf-whistling- horrendous!

Same here. It was acutely embarrassing and I remember loathing the teacher who insisted on me taking part.

I don't remember doing that in science but I remember we had to be weighed and measured for first 3 years at secondary school and the school nurse and PE teacher writing it down in a book. They would say it out loud. I was tall and becoming very chubby for my age and my face would burn when my details were called out!

I remember in home ec having to do the sewing bit, and the teacher who didn't like me saying to the class about buying dress patterns "it's important to check the size of your patterns, most of you will be in the size 8 to 12 range. I don't think any of you would be 14. " The bitch. She knew I was that size. She must have known. I was the biggest girl in my year. Easily.

Oh yes, that bloody Homemaker badge - nothing more than an excuse for women who were too lazy to clean their cupboards to get some slave labour in.

No wonder I took to riding a motorcycle when I got older - I was obviously rebelling!

I was about 14 & went to a summer fayre with my much older sister and her husband. Her husband bought me pints of beer with Pernod and then asked a friend of his who was about 20 to walk me home through the woods. The friend tried to molest me and I ran back to my sister and her husband. They thought it was hilarious.

That's awful. I'm sorry you went through that. The police aren't much help either with this sort of thing, I find.

Secondary school trip to the large city. When we got off the bus we were told we were free to do what we wanted, while the teachers went on a demo and then to the pub. We were first year of secondary. Although we did have a great day out. Even back then my parents would not have allowed me to wander around a city I hardly knew without an adult.

I would call it profound trauma rather than just issues but I get what you're saying and thanks.

I was born in 1980, so this would have been about 1985.
on my first day at school, which was a normal, council run, non church school, during assembly the headmaster said "let us pray" and because, as a non Christian child, I didn't know that was code for bow your head, close your eyes and put your hands together, the headmaster hauled me up in front of the whole school and hit me.
then I had to sit at the front on the floor next to him as if I'd done something wrong.

funnily enough, hitting me never made me convert to Christianity, and I'm sure that hitting someone for not praying to a God they don't believe in, in front of the whole school, can't have still been legal then.

I was stubborn though, so they never did get me to even pretend to pray to their God. I would stubbornly sit with my back straight and glaring them down until they gave up hitting me for it.

this was a sixth form rag week thing, rather than younger, but it always made me laugh. there was this thing where several teams had to compete to get as far as they could on a budget. can't remember what it was, but we were in Surrey. one group got to Wales. another somewhere like Birmingham. one team got to the pub at the end of the road and spent the budget there. they were the real winners.

reoh, and another bad one. we had a school trip to France.
my head of year didn't want to allow me to go, because I was bullied.
he wanted to stop ME going. not the people that bullied me. because, apparently, it was my fault. (that was very much his attitude towards me being bullied "why don't you just try and fit in?" and so on. nobody was EVER punished for bullying me)
and my deputy head of year stepped up and basically said, if a problem came up. I could stay in her room and she would personally take responsibility of any disruption caused by my bullies. and because of her I was able to go and I had a nice time. thankfully I was paired with people in the shared room I was in that didn't bully me, and she absolutely shut down anyone that started on me. (I didn't know the arrangement at the time, but my mum later told me)
I'm just absolutely disgusted that the school would rather ban the bullied child from a school trip than the bullies.
surely that's the wrong person to punish in that situation?

That's outrageous of your head of year. I'm glad your deputy head stepped up for you. I wish more teachers were like her!

I knew the author back in the day, through family. all of the sisters were a bit odd, and they had reason to be.

Why did they have reason to be a bit odd?

is there any possibility he was picking children that maybe didn't have as much, so they could get more to eat? I can see how it could look very bad, but it might also have been an act of kindness to help people with less without singling them out as poor.

One of the male PE teachers at my school worked as a bouncer in a local bar and would let me and my friend in, aged 15. He’d buy us alcoholic drinks if he saw us while on his break.
If he saw us in school after the weekend he’d ask if we’d had a good time, sometimes shouting down a corridor to ask.

that's awful that it was just you, but I remember at my Primary, when they started the choir group at lunchtime, there were a LOT of us, that they considered too many for one lunchtime group, so it went from everyone who wanted to join in could, to having to do an audition to get in. I wouldn't say I'm a particularly good singer, but I could project, which a lot of people didn't really. so I think I was in more for volume than quality.

but if there is just one person that's not as good, they shouldn't have singled you out to be excluded.