What are you still salty about?

[AmberTurnerCo]

Years later

I would not getting a wagon wheel in year 5 over 18 years ago.

@CorvusPurpureus I have never understood why people get so nasty and angry with young children over something like the chocolate coins or school run lateness when they're clearly not of an age to have any influence or say in the matter. It's unfair.

A gentle reprimand - so child comes home and says "miss x says" or a chat which is then followed up with a chat with a parent is one thing. Distressing a child so that they come home still upset, having cried and been frightened or humiliated would just see me straight round the school to complain about and at said staff member, if it were my child!

I was Chair of a group. My friend however wanted to be Chair, so behind my back she spent months telling people I was inadequate and too busy to be Chair, until she convinced enough people to request an election between the two of us. Then she and her cronies started secretly contacting everyone individually to bad mouth me and try to coerce them to vote for her.

On the night of the vote she felt guilty for her underhanded behaviour and withdrew as a candidate so I won by default. Two hours later she made a formal complaint that it was unfair for her to have been permitted to step down as a candidate and I had CHEATED by accepting the role of Chair without a vote. At the next meeting her cronies backed her up, saying yes Glamazoni cheated, we want another election.

So I left and never went back because I felt like I couldn’t enjoy my hobby when several people obviously hated me so much, I didn’t feel I could sit in a room and be friendly with them any more. Friend became Chair by default.

I’m still gutted because my hobby was so important to me, I’m disabled and it was a lifeline. Also I genuinely thought those people were my friends and I’m very isolated due to my disability so I was gutted to find out they weren’t really my friends after all.

I broke my foot at school when I was about 10. Nobody believed me until the next day, by which point I was in absolute agony. No permanent damage done but I'm still annoyed.

@spottygymbag mines similar, i dressed up as Minnie Mouse for a fancy dress competition, i had the ears, the massive gloves and put alot of work into the detail. This little kid had boxing gloves on with his normal clothes and won.....I was not happy

Oh, just thought of a shitty teacher one. In infant class, we had to do a "What I did at the weekend" sort of assignment. I was quite advanced in terms of writing and spelling, but what I had actually done that weekend was go to Rievaulx Abbey with my family, and I had no idea how it was spelt. So, being 6 years old and not familiar with French, I spelt it "Reevo". When the teacher saw what I'd written, she mocked me in front of the whole class. That seems unbelievably mean when I look back on it now.

Taken shopping as a child with my sister...our mum said we could buy a video. The choice was Home Alone or Honey I shrunk the kids. I wanted home alone and my sister wanted honey I shrunk the kids. I was a well behaved child and my sister was a tantrumming terror. She got her way because my mum couldn't face the tantrum if we went with my choice. My sister later admitted Home Alone would have been the better option

Another pencil related one! When I was in about yr 8 I had a bit of time off sick for glandular fever. My 'best' friend got so sick of people asking her why I wasn't in that she eventually started telling people I'd sat on a pencil and it had gone up my bum!!! I was a laughing stock for ages but was never allowed to mention it lest she get upset.

A billion examples of my older brother deliberately getting me into trouble and weaselling his way out of it too but one that stands out was him telling me that granny wanted the front bedroom redecorating and dad was going to do it (he was a decorator so it made total sense to me). So we need to strip the wallpaper off first to help out. He told me to get started and he'd be back to help. He left it about half and hour then brought gran upstairs and she caught me with a half stripped wall. She didn't believe the truth so I was in big trouble the rest of the stay. I was about 6. Just trying to help :(

After a week of remedial swimming lessons with younger kids when I was at top year of primary school and finally achieving a length my certificate went awol! Happened with English project at secondary too! Aldo a longstanding hurt was not being selected for netball team at primary when id been assured I would (yet got in at secondary?) And being told I shouldve applied for athletics team when achieved a particular standard when same teacher had rejected me just months earlier. As an adult I can appreciate that teachers and instructors are only human but I wasnt a very confident child so its a shame those are hurts I cant consign to history.

My GCSE French teacher telling my mum at parent's evening that I was the most arrogant child she had the misfortune to teach because I refused to engage in the lessons.

I was heartbroken - she had got me so wrong. I was a super swot who was just cripplingly shy. Like use to get red and sweaty just answering the register. I completed all the homework to a high standard, never caused trouble etc. was just too shy to volunteer and put my hand up.

How can a teacher be so tone deaf to think a chubby blushing teenager is arrogant rather than shy. Made lessons 10 times harder to face and speaking in class just pure torture.

Got an A, though. And weirdly like public speaking now. But at the time it was such a blow.

Some teachers were horrible weren't they?

I remember being in a lesson and a teacher stormed in and made me stand up in front of the class. She accused me in front of everyone of stealing another girls tights from the changing room. I hadn't. I was so humiliated and she wouldn't believe me. To make this worse, my mum had died a few months previous to this. As an adult now, I often wonder even if I had stolen the sodding tights, wouldn't you as a teacher have the intelligence to link the two incidents and wonder if perhaps I'd stolen the tights because no one was providing these essential items for me?

Witch

After years of lobbying for relighting candles for my birthday cake with no result, my parents finally caved in for my 12th birthday.

Bad timing since I was recovering from a bad lung infection and had the breathing ability of a 90 year old lifelong chainsmoker on oxygen support.

But what stings even more is that they had the audacity to LAUGH TOGETHER.
They were just separated, hated each other 30sec before and for over 25 years after.
Nothing says "good family time" like a choking child, apparently.

@BikeRunSki I always wondered the same
I give them the first 3 letters and then see how they get on, they come back if they’re still stuck and they know I’ll help them find it.

Reading so many stories here about bullying teachers and teachers who accuse children of doing things without hearing them out or on the word of obvious bullies ... it's why I take no shit from my children's teachers when they try to pull similar shit today.

Experienced it myself in school, and I will not allow me children to be treated in this manner.

Oh I thought of another (this is cathartic!) In secondary, school production of Grease. Hugely popular as you can imagine, lots auditioning. Anyway, they marked us with a singing and acting score out of 10. One day the teacher left the scores in the classroom, so of course everyone looked. Me too, a 9 for singing and 10 for acting; highest of all the girls. I was so hopeful for unpopular short old me I'd get Sandy.

Well of course I didn't. I got one of the other pink ladies, the only one without a solo song (all the other pink ladies and tbirds did). Sandy went to one of the popular tall thin girls - this was the 90s when the Kate Moss look was in - who would look good in a catsuit. Couldn't sing good though, we had to go over the last bars of Summer Nights again and again AND again while her and Danny struggled through their harmonies and holding the damned long note at the end while inwardly I was rolling my eyes for all I was worth.

It happened several times that an award that was rightfully mine (for sciency things, quizzes and other nerdy stuff) was given to someone else, because it was not fair that I won so many of them. Yeah OK I get the point and all, but this never happened in any sports competitions, did it? If you lost, you lost - nobody took the medals off the athletic children because they had already gotten several.

Can I add one from a different perspective?

I'm actually the perpetrator and my DSis was the victim.

My DSis loved her barbies, really loved them. I was notallowed to play with them. Which I found highly unfair.

One day, when she was out, I sneaked in to her room and played with them. I was a creative child and thought thier hairstyles could do with a re-style. So i cut it.

In my defence, I really thought it would grow back.

Its been 35 years and my DSis still talks about it.

In year 6, me and my mum spent ages making a cardboard castle and painting it. It was really good.

It was supposed to be a joint effort but my friend was not interested so me and my mum did it.

The castles got on the front page of the local newspaper. BUT i didn't get to be pictured with the castle because my mum was asleep so didn't answer the phone for permission!

I still bring it up now and I'm 27.

When I was about 5 my older sister (5 years older) pushed me down the stairs- top to bottom. Luckily I wasn’t hurt, but my mum just didn’t believe me that she had pushed me. Still annoys me how much my older sister got away with.

Also still a bit miffed that I didn’t get a cupcake doll

We were doing some kind of collage work in year 3 and I was working next to a boy and what was either a parent helper or a TA (it was the mum of some older children who were in other classes in the school).

The boy blew on mine before it had been stuck down, ruining it. So I did the same back to him and the TA told ME off. Stuck with me for years. The boy got off scott free and I was only trying to do my work in peace. Bastards.

Oh yeah if we go there, I woke up my sis when she was 5, just to tell her that Santa didn't exist.

She broke her leg when she was 7 and not only did I play an active role in the accident, I also appropriated her wheelchair and organised the Great Summer Wheelchair Olympics with my friends in the garden.
Poor thing was stuck on the sofa in the living-room, with a massive cast from thigh to toe.

(She's my best friend and I love her to bits, bless her ❤️)

A girl who was my mum's friend's daughter came to my birthday party and blew out my candles. I didn't even know or like her. So I hit her round the head with a toy iron.

1. In lower school, a group of friends and I wrote a little play (we were a bit precocious, and I dare say it was dreadful) which we got to perform to the whole school in a special assembly. We would have been about 8. My best friend J was the narrator and I played the devil and was the star of a single scene in it. Rather than pausing during the narration for me to come on and do my scene, J read right through the narration so everyone else just carried on and my scene was missed entirely. I was all dressed up in a costume with red face paint and was devastated. Her mum made her ring my mum that evening to apologise to me. I said I forgave her and my mum said she was proud I'd forgiven her, but I was actually lying as I really hadn't forgiven her. Though in fairness to J I don't think she deliberately missed me out.
2. in middle school (age maybe 10?) I joined a madrigal choir because a number of my friends were in it and I wanted to be with them. I wasn't a great singer, but I don't think you had to audition for it and in any event they let me join. After going to rehearsals for a number of weeks, I then turned up to assembly with my class one day only to find that the madrigal choir were performing to the whole school, but the music teacher hadn't told me (deliberately I presume), and I just had to sit and watch them and feel very left out.
3. I had a good friend when I was about 7 whose mum never liked me (she was very Christian and I was quite happy to tell everyone that God didn't exist so didn't do much to ingratiate myself with her I suppose). Nonetheless I was invited to friend's birthday tea, during which her mum turned to me suddenly and that she knew what I was doing and that if I didn't stop she would send me right home. I had literally no idea what she thought I had done and I was quite sure I'd done nothing at all, but I could see there was no point trying to answer back as she'd never believe me, so I said nothing. I'm still in touch with the friend and saw her mum at her wedding a few years ago. She's friendly enough to me now but part of me still wants to take her to task for the false accusation!

Sorry for the long post, but this really is like therapy! ;-)

I won the Best Clown Costume competition at Brownies. My Grandma had made the costume for me. There was also second and third place winners. All three of us were told to select one of three prizes on a table. There was one really good prize, one average and one crappy. It was obvious which one was meant for which place. But I held back and let the other girls choose first. They took the good prizes and I was left with the crappy one. I was do salty about it that I didn't want to wear the costume to show my grandma how I looked it it. My mum went in and in about it so in the end I did wear it to my Grandmas house and I felt like a right idiot going through wearing a clown costume aged about 9 for no reason. Oh, and the day I won the Best Dressed Clown competition was some sort of Brownies day out but my DM didn't send me with any packed lunch so other people were forced to give up a bit of sandwich each.

I'm salty about the whole effing clown fiasco nearly 40 years later, but especially the bit about being polite and holding back. I'm not so polite now, so maybe I learnt a valuable lesson!

Oh & another one:

Aged just 18, I had a bar job. I could have caught the bus, but I preferred to walk & save the fare for fags . I'd walk a mile, rendezvous with my mate & we'd walk on another mile to the pub together, reversing this on the way back.

So two things:

1. friend wasn't working one night. I got grabbed & forced into the hedge by a passing middle aged bloke who groped me (broad daylight, busy A road). He only let me go after I screamed & clawed at his eyes. Arrived at pub very shaken up & was allowed to have a cup of tea before going on shift - no suggestion of taking it further.

A few days later, driving down the same road with parents, I spot the bloke & exclaim 'that's the guy who pushed me into the hedge & groped me!' Parents: oh dear. He doesn't look quite 'all there' though does he?! . Lucky nothing bad happened!'

2. mate & I got picked up at the end of our shift by her boyfriend & a buddy in his mum's fancy car. We ended up in local park, sitting on the swings, eating chips & chatting - honestly, that was all we were doing! Couple of police officers wandered over, moved us on, & for some reason took our names & details.

A few days later my dad took a call 'verifying' my details & explaining that I'd been 'hanging around the park till all hours with 2 lads, thought you ought to know, 2 black boys'

FWIW friend's chap was the Cambridge-bound son of our local doctor, & had borrowed his mum's nice car for the evening. Not that that should have been a consideration anyway. He & his mate were both perfectly lovely young men!

Thought of some more.

I was about 7 and my mum hosted an NCT coffee morning with about 6 mums and toddlers. After they’d all gone she got a phone call from the police as someone in the house had dialled 999 and not said anything. She told me she wouldn’t take me and my brother and sister to McDonald’s as we had planned to until we admitted who had done it. It was quite obviously one of the toddlers earlier as we all looked as confused as each other about it. After about 1 hour of being grilled I was fed up and just said it was me so we could go and then my mum said I had been too naughty and took my brother and sister!

Another occasion I was about 6 and was in the living room watching my baby brother, parents nowhere to be seen. He started pulling all the fake coal out of the fireplace, I tried to stop him then my mum walked in the room, bollocked me and said I had made him do it and said I wasn’t allowed new school shoes anymore.

Soo many incidents like this. I generally had a decent childhood but there are just so many occasions of unfairness or not believing me, thinking the worst of me despite me being a very shy and well behaved child. It has made me determined as a parent to always put my children first, listen to them and not just assume they are lying, stealing, being naughty without listening to their side of it.