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…

Yep, thanks. Runners are the same thing then. Some girls wore them on their own and some (most) in my experience still put their knickers on underneath. Maybe it made us feel less exposed!

Gosh @TeabySea we could have gone to the same schools!
Our computer 'teacher' smoked a pipe in the classroom 🤮
Language teacher would throw board rubbers and books with great accuracy for a blind person. They would also feel your breasts under the guise of 'checking for your tie'
He also allowed certain pupils to skive lessons in his (locked) classroom with him, smoke and drink coffee.
Showers after PE were a nightmare. Female PE teacher had a habit of whipping a wet towel on bare arses. She also took showers with us pupils occasionally 😳
School trip to a theme park, several of us left the venue and went to the pub (age 14) and got pissed. Nothing was said.....
I joined a teacher one lunchtime in a pub to wet his baby's head.
I could go on, but you get the idea.

The schoolyard rumours that were taken as gospel.
One boy whose family kept chickens was said to only have one ball.

The story goes - he climbed over a fence, ripped his ballsack open, his ball fell out, and a chicken ate it.

Having assembly at the height of the low ride trousers, thong pulled up to your waist days about how uncomfortable the male teachers were, and telling us we would all end up pregnant by 14 if we didn't heed their advice.

I of course didn't heed their advice, and managed a whole 2 extra years before getting pregnant so HA. Proved them wrong 😏

Sorry

I was quiet, well behaved child. One morning in assembly it started to snow. Slow, swirling puffs of snow like cotton wool. I pointed it out to my friend and whack. A young male teacher slapped my face with full force. I've never forgotten, or forgiven.

In the 70s/80s there were various health checks done in schools. One included having to walk down a line on the floor. It was rumoured to be a virginity test 😁

When I was six, I remember going on a trip to Covent Garden in 1986 with my youth group, on a busy Saturday afternoon. There were probably only a couple of adults (and some teenagers) supervising about thirty children, and very loosely at that. I remember being all WTF at some of the things the street entertainers did: riding a unicycle with one of the children on his shoulders, and asking a little girl to hit a man with a long cardboard tube, so that he fell face first into a paper plate of shaving foam (and when he stood up, the plate had "the end" written on the bottom). Also, a passing elderly man told me to stay with my group, so I wouldn't get lost. Fair enough, but my head was full of "never talk to strangers".

As for all the "knickers" posts, there's a fictional moment like that in one of the Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy, which was probably based on something that really happened: the big girl Enid Nightshade wears a pair of vast black knickers pulled up underneath her arms, as he mum buys oversized clothes for her, as she keeps on growing.

My daughter's primary school have introduced this as of September- it's so much easier. On days they have PE they go in wearing a navy hoodie, leggings/joggers and trainers. Nothing gets lost and no time wasted/embarrassment changing.

I was going to say. My daughter’s class is semi-regularly subject to this. My son’s isn’t, but on the other hand every other week he does come home with a story about being hectored in assembly for being male, being white, etc

Let’s see how that stuff holds up in a decade’s time shall we?

My teacher told me to get a pair of scissors. I brought them back. He took his shoes off, put his foot on the desk and began cutting his toe nails. They were pinging across the desk and I remember ducking to avoid them!

Our PE teacher did this too, she'd whip the towel off us, start a stopwatch, watch us all shower and then only hand a towel back when she was ready. Can you IMAGINE this happening now?! She also got suspended for making a girl with a leg in plaster join in with a hockey lesson.

Was also some iffy behaviour among teachers and some of the girls in 6th form, two in particular were sleeping with students.

Also, our assistant head used to chain smoke in his office. The whole corridor stank of fags.

I remember in primary school - perhaps I was ten, a teacher battering me with his fists on each side of my chest 🤷‍♂️

In year 2, the teacher would read to us each day, on the carpet.

Two children would rub her calves (one each), one child would massage her shoulders and the forth would play with her hair.

These are so bizarre, horrid and ghastly. I am at a loss for words, really. 😳🤯😱

My games mistress lining us up and measuring our vital statistics. The closer to 36-24-36 we were, the more praise we got.

Our families children being picked on became the headmistress and many of the teachers didn't like my grandma, more than likely with good reason, but hardly our fault.

Catholic junior school attached to the church we were made to attend.

Long term causal factor in creation of Terf Island = girls being made to do PE in their knickers?

I was at primary school in the 80s, all throughout Primary the boys and girls got changed in the same classroom for PE. And god forbid if you ever forgot your kit and you had to do PE in your knickers and vest!

This happened in my school, the last year of primary for the Christmas concert, and my friend was told to stand at the back and just mouth the words! I felt so bad for her.

At secondary school in a swimming lesson. I had just about learned to swim but was frightened of putting my face in the water. My PE teacher decided that the best way to help me was to force my face into the pool over and over again. I was terrified. Crying. Swallowing water but she didn’t care. Horrible woman. Told my mum and back then it was just a case of teacher knows best. 🙄

At my secondary school a teacher showed the class a video that included a section on a practice in china involving cats being skinned and boiled alive. I still can't get it out of my head. There were actual images of the awful thing. I don't even know what lesson it was in, but the theme was around animal abuse. I think I was about 13. I became vegetarian at around 14 and never looked back!

In Brownies. We sang,
”I wear my pink pjs in the summer when it’s hot,
I wear my flannel nighty in the winter when it’s not,
sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall,
I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all.
that’s the time you ought to see me, that’s the time you ought to see me, that’s the time you ought to see me,
when I jump into my little bed with nothing on at all’

ffs

I think the getting changed for PE thing is because it is part of the curriculum for younger children (EYFS) to be able to do it independently. In our school the reception children get changed for PE but the other years just come to school in their PE kits on PE day.

I can't remember anything too "out there" but I remember in secondary school if you had your period and couldn't do swimming you had to do athletics with the boys instead which I found really embarrassing.

In primary school (late 90’s) we had a may king and queen - voted for by the school, and we were told to vote for who we thought was the best looking 🤷‍♀️ Basically just a popularity contest/beauty pageant.

school trip In upper school for music students (mid 2000’s) to a music festival/convention thing at the NEC in Birmingham. I think it was called music live. Lots of stalls giving out goodie bags of marketing merchandise. We got to go in our own clothes, and we were basically just allowed to roam around the NEC on our own all day, there was also a violent mosh pit, numerous pop-up bars serving very cheap beer (and not asking for I.d) and people smoking weed everywhere. Lots of seedy middle aged men. Passed the teachers whilst we had beer in our hands (as did they) and just a silent agreement to not say anything and move away. I bloody loved it - best school trip ever 😂 I went every year for 4 consecutive years from aged 13.

Year seven made to shower naked in pairs after PE. Early nineties.