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…

From the time I started primary school in 1963 both parents worked full time. I was given a latch key round my neck on a string. I walked half a mile to school and back on my own, and when I got home about 4pm let myself in and was entirely alone until the first one got home, usually Mum, about 6pm.

@LunaMay I assume the knickers mentioned are similar to what we called 'Runners'? That you put on over your underwear?

No, they are the underwear. What the British call pants and I understand US people call underpants.

When I was in the infants we did a 'red indian' themed nativity play. Same story, but we all had feather headdress and Jesus was born in a 'wigwam'. Norfolk in the 1980s. What on earth were they thinking? Sadly my friend from that school doesn't remember it, but it was definitely real.

We had PE knickers which were worn over our pants (secondary, 1990s). They were very short, only fractionally bigger than actual knickers but made of much thicker material.

We played a game at brownies called 'Chinese laundry'
We were in teams and the leader would call out items of clothing and you'd have to race to put it in the circle in the middle. Loads of kids were practically naked by the end.

You could wear gym knickers over your pants, but most people (afaik) just wore the gym knickers.

Maybe our kids went to the same school or at least same region. Uniform (with shorts for boys) on non PE days and PE kit for the day on PE days. Made much more sense

Link to one sort of gym knickers. Thick, substantial. I don’t think these have the double section at the back, though.

I remember being 8. Catholic primary. We lived near to a car factory. It was the 70’s and lots of dads did overtime on a Sunday morning.
The Headteacher in assembly told anyone whose dad worked on a Sunday to put up their hands. I did, as did many others.
He told us….
Your fathers are all going to hell.
I was so upset but didn’t tell anyone. I started going to Mass every day to pray for my dad. It traumatised me.
I told him years later and he was so angry.
Also: the same Head told us if we went to mass on the nine first Fridays of consecutive months, we got a free pass to Heaven. A bad lad in my class went with me as per these introductions, and after the last one said, ‘I can do what I f&cking want now!’ He was in prison a decade later.
Finally: same Head told us that thinking about doing something ‘sinful’ was just as bad as doing it.
So I spent the whole of my young life worrying. If I saw all the sweets in Woolies and told myself not to nick one, I would go to confession. And then pray for the sin of stealing…. nothing!
All of this and more made me a very watchful child, and it makes me sad now.

We also did pe in pants, which I absolutely hated (mid 90s). I remember primary school just being horrible - being screamed at, the teacher encouraging children to pick on others, being teased. I was the youngest in the year so was still 3 in reception and the teacher would call me a baby and shout at me.

Oh god yes - doing PE in our underwear at primary school and then later in those god awful polyester knicker shorts at secondary.

My WTF moment is related - we had a child in our class who had lost the use of an arm I believe due to a car accident. I remember her wearing a brace type thing. The teacher used to make us race her at getting dressed after PE so that we’d all do it more quickly. This was mid 80s.

I didn’t go on the trip but this definitely happened (1995 I think) students went on a re trip to Russia and ended up going to a wedding of a teacher to a Russian lady he had never met in person before, who then came back with them!

a school in south London famous for its brown uniform and being in the travis driftwood video….

Also wore brown pe knickers 😂

About 1978 1st year in secondary.
Scottish country dancing.
Ballroom dancing because you never know when a waltz may come in handy.
Been better If it was a bit of Northern soul dancing.

My DCs in an RC school in the US wore school PE uniform to school PE days and uniform the other days. Saved so much time and missing uniforms and general bother. Kids in public schools just have to make sure they wear sneakers with whatever else they're wearing that day.

Me too, thank god I went to an all girls’ school and the PE teachers were female. Still barbaric.

1980s drama lessons. Male teacher made the girls pretend to be prostitutes and the boys had to pick them up. In another lesson we had to lie down and pretend to rub suntan lotion into each other. I feel so angry about it now. I had no idea at the time other than feeling extremely uncomfortable. We were 13-14. I dropped out of the school play as he wanted the witches in Macbeth to wear sexy outfits and French kiss Macbeth. No one else seemed bothered about this but I made myself feel sick about it all Summer ( I was one of the witches) and dropped out.

Bloody hell..drama teacher was definitely a pervert.

My 9 year old has to change for swimming with a child who has a penis but was rebranded as a girl at the start of year 1. Today's kids have their own problems.

Ours were like this, very thick black cotton, slightly bigger than normal, over our ordinary knickers. This was mid-70s. And yes, communal changing and showering.

For those who remember playing this (stiff as a feather, light as a board)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightas_afeather,stiffasaboard _

The first reference to the game being played is in Samuel Pepys diaries in the 1600s!
It was played in a scene the in 90s teen witch movie The Craft, which is where I remember it from. In the movie scene special effects are used to make the lifting seem much more dramatic!

My memories of getting changed for PE were less extreme, but they really stuck: at primary, we stripped to vest and pants in the classroom, then put on shoes (always without socks, to save time) to walk to the assembly hall, past the other classrooms, where the children would laugh at us being half naked. When we were learning about time, we timed ourselves getting dressed afterwards, using sand timers. Only a couple of boys managed it in less than a minute.

At secondary, the boys sometimes sometimes did sports in "shirts and skins": one side wore their shirts, and the other were topless. This was sometimes outdoors in winter as well.

At primary school, one of the biggest sins children could commit was doing something without being told. When a teacher (not our usual one) wrote "kitten" on the board, more than half the class wrote it in their books. The teacher then strode round the room, throwing their books on the floor, then made them stand at the front and hold them up, because they had dared to write "kitten" without actually being told to do so. Our usual teacher sounded shocked when she heard about this.

1984-87: The science teacher openly dating a 5th year.

Being picked up by the scruff of my neck and banged against a wall by the male woodwork teacher for talking.

My very pregnant French teacher taking me out for a coffee and her chain smoking silk cut.

My friend having a crush on a male teacher and then him disappearing one day as he was busted for being part of a paedophile ring.

I know a primary school that not only does this,but kids are pulled out to do the office reception work

I've seen kids sorting out post,piling papers into order,cleaning the staff room,making drinks,taking stuff to the bins outside with no teacher in sight and a lot more

I made it very clear that my dc where there to learn and not pick up after the lazy cow of a receptionist and reported them to ofsed

Fuck all happened-its still going on now

Not school,but my parents

I'm going back to the 80's and every year we where dragged on holiday to Bridlington (we didn't want to go,my father didn't want to go but my mother did,so we went)

They'd put us to bed,give it half an hour and fuck off to the pub (which was about 40 minutes away)

No babysitter,didn't bother locking the door,no mobile phone or anyone knowing where they'd gone-nothing,they just vanished

Get plastered,come back and start again the following day,Rinse and repeat for a week

I would have been about 8,my brother 6 and my twin brothers about 2 when they went out as normal (I had my own room and my brothers shared with our parents)

They came back,my father went to the loo at the end of the corridor and my mother walked into the unlocked room to find a 'pissed blonde woman having a fag' in their bed

Apparently my mother asked her to leave and she did

Next morning it was told as an amusing story-she was more pissed off that the woman was smoking rather than she could have been a murderer

Next night,they went out again

Years later,guess who was the most judgemental of them all of maddie mccanns parents for leaving them to to for a meal just outside the apartment?

They went at least 2 miles away rather than just outside the b&b!

Imagine if our kids received this invite now!

Our parents were so naive in the 90s.

There was a fair bit of socialising between teachers and sixth formers at my college too, mainly at the pub!!!