School days

Inner Smile

Inner Smile

Moopy Diamond
Joined
Feb 14, 2021
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5,166
Location
North East England
Did you enjoy your school days? Some good memories and some bad here

Sometimes I think back and smirk at certain moments. I left school in 2005 but it doesn't feel that long ago. How time flies
 
I left school in 1985. I hated every single minute of being there. I was an incredibly shy late-bloomer and was bullied throughout my time in senior school (aged 11 - 16). Corporal punishment was still a thing in those days as were psychotic teachers who got their kicks from bullying students. One cookery teacher used to throw things at us for the slightest reason, usually it was something easy to duck like a board rubber or a tea-towel but once, when the boys had been forced to do a lesson with us because the woodwork teacher was off, she launched a saucepan at one lad and chased another out of the room with a rolling pin. We were forced to have naked communal showers after PE and the PE teachers would stand at either end of the showers leching although they said it was to make sure we all showered properly. When it came time to choose options girls weren't allowed to do woodwork, technical drawing or metalwork, we had to do typing or home economics (cookery, dressmaking from patterns, using a sewing machine etc.).

I was an expert at writing notes in my mum's handwriting by third year, they never checked with her because I was so quiet they probably didn't expect me to wag it as often as I could.
 
I loved school. I went to the largest school in the city which was ROUGH. I was an effeminate child, utterly useless at sport or PE and having no interest at all in getting any better at it. I'm quite sure I would have been bullied relentlessly (many children were), but for the fact that I had a brother in the year above who everyone knew would smack the shit out of them if they touched me.

I stayed at school for sixth form and hadn't really figured out I was gay; I was aware of being different and had what clearly were crushes, but I think I was just sexually immature and clueless and hadn't joined the dots in terms of what it all meant. But even as I was facing that while I was 16 to 18, I was left unquestioned rather than that singling me out for abuse. And it very much did for others - Section 28 was introduced while I was in sixth form, and my generation went through our teenage years in the shadow of AIDS hysteria and DON'T DIE OF IGNORANCE. But even then, there was one other guy in sixth form who was so unapologetically and defiantly gay that all the hate and hostility went directly to him, and I was allowed to wander around left blissfully alone. I had a small but constant friendship group (four of which are good friends to this day), and I was academically gifted enough that I could float through without an awful lot of effort, which was both a blessing and a curse, retrospectively.

I remember my Dad and other other family members always saying things like 'school days are the best days of your life' and my brother and friends scoffing. But I think even at the time I kind of knew it.
 
OMG! To me when they say those will be remembered as the best days of your life I certainly see why. Although I have had many fantastic if not better moments since I had a ball being young and care free at school.

I was never academic, and didn’t ever want to be. I loved school for the social aspect, and got on with most. I am not in contact with many having moved away from home 30 years ago but I have so many happy memories with people that meant a lot to me at that time. My best school friend actually died in a car crash on my 18th birthday, and was the main reason that I left home to see the World as it made me realise life really is far too short and I have moved on many times more forever remembering her.
 
My head teacher is still alive, and calls in to see my mum now and again at 96. She is a nun, and used to often go to the pub my parents owned and we lived above and got blind drunk.
 
32 years ago for me. @Soldi I could be your GRANDMA! Although you are the same age as my eldest and older than my youngest.
 
MIXED.

I found my people and especially after I came out my bullies left me alone and I had a great time with friends. But that was the last two years and the four years of high school before that were much more of a nightmare.
 
I wasn’t bullied a lot as a kid but I was never popular.

I was a bit of a bully in middle school then was bullied again in high school cause we switched to another one, it ended when I nearly broke the guy’s arm after he threw a ball at my head and they decided to pick on easier targets.
 
School was fine. I was friendly with the cool kids and the geeks but not besties with any of them. I found school cliques stressful (teenagers are just awful humans) and was much more comfortable with a closer one or two friends and looking down on everyone else :) they all seemed so miserable to be honest, she’s not speaking to him, they’re not speaking to her, who needs that pressure at 15?

Adult life is way more fun though. School was fun and I have some good memories but I don’t look back.
 
Hated it. I won a scholarship to a private school full of privileged little shits who bullied me throughout. Yeah I was geeky but I am absolutely sure that not being rich was a large part of it too.

Best days of your life MY CUNT! Even if I hadn’t been picked on, I’m sure I’d still much prefer being an adult and being in charge of my own life.
 
All these bad experiences at school :( I absolutely despise bullying. Looking back it was rampant in our school but it was so normal you were numb to it. All I knew was that it made me uncomfortable and I never partook.

I remember being cornered by my so called mates one time because they were all using the n word to describe a mate of mine who was brown (he was half Indian for fucks sake) and they were trying to get me to say it but I refused to back down. I was known as a stubborn bastard even back then, peer pressure was a waste of time with me. Funny thing was said Indian kid was a hard bastard and would have knocked them all out, but he was above it all too.
 
Let's just say that going to a comprehensive school in Luton would have been even bleaker if not for Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)
 
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I feel like I quite liked school. I had a nice group of friends throughout my years there. We weren't in the cool gang, we weren't in the nerdy gang, we were just in the middle and so got on with everyone.

I think for a few months I had issues with 2 of the posh yachty girls I was friends with when we fell out. No bullying as such but they were bitchy.

Then when I got my hair cut and it looked like I had a curly wig on, some of the older kids called me wiggy :(

But otherwise, thanks to my older and younger brothers being at the same school, i kind of knew all the years so was fine with everyone.

I'm still friends with my school friends from 30 years ago and see loads of the others around the island and we all still chat which is nice, although Mandy thinks it's a strange island thing.

Also did other moopers have Primary, Middle and high schools or is that an island thing?
 
Rachey said:
Also did other moopers have Primary, Middle and high schools or is that an island thing?
Click to expand...
What age was middle school for you?

I had primary and secondary, although the secondary school was split into lower and upper school, on different sites.
 
lolly said:
What age was middle school for you?

I had primary and secondary, although the secondary school was split into lower and upper school, on different sites.
Click to expand...
Well I remember moving from the mainland and I had to go back to primary school for a year. So I was 9 when we moved, so 10? I think I was at middle school until I was about 13, then went to high school until I was 18.
 
I rarely think of the school days cause I didn't like it. I know I didn't attend most of the kindergarten cause I had insecure attachment issues and most of the time I would cry and they'd have to call my grandpa come pick me up. During primary school, teachers were still allowed to physically discipline us, I mean they had a stick which was meant to be to hit our palms, but they would mostly go for punishments that wouldn't leave any physical marks, for example, if you were being naughty they would ask you to go to the corner of the class and stand on one foot like a pelican for an hour. The rest of the class would occasionally point and giggle at you. Once I had the principal grabbing me from my sideburns and lifting me up for laughing at a poem. By the time I was at middle school physical punishments were abolished. And then we've had massive name-calling and bullying, I was bullied from the stronger kids, I bullied kids who were weaker than me, and the weakest teachers were massively bullied by the entire class. There was a teacher lady who had a dwarfism condition who was bullied and tortured the most. For example teachers were meant to sit on a higher surface than us so the school had provided her a little ramp to help her reach her desk and most of the days the pupils would steal and hide her ramp, or place the chalk box and the sponge on top of the blackboard where she couldn't reach it. There was a time she broke into tears. High school was a little better because that level of inhumane cruelty had toned down, mostly because there were some extremely important examinations by the end of it that would determine if you can go to university or not for free so most of the kids were studying for insane hours. My private schooling experience was a little better mostly because it was meant to be for just a few subjects that weren't offered in-depth or at all in public schools, such as English, art and pcs, so I didn't have to spend so many hours there.
 
Mixed too. I had incidents of being bullied throughout but never in the sense of being targeted by one person/group in the long term, just individual moments. I came out at 17 and aside from THE INCIDENT it was received fairly well and I didn't get much grief for it.

I haven't retained any close friends from that period though. All these coming of age gay shows at the moment have made me quite reflective about why I ended up having so many hang-ups in my late teens and beyond that prevented me from really enjoying it to the extent that I should have. But that's probably another topic :D
 
I do think in many ways it's probably much worse now. I have a friend who's a teacher and she's literally having to deal with 13 year old girls getting nudes shared on the internet, revenge porn, online bullying etc. It sounds absolutely nightmarish.
 
Proper mixed bag tbh. I had a lot of fun, but I also found it quite emotionally tumultuous. I was smart enough to never really be challenged, so put a lot of my energy into dicking about. I got a lot of praise for my intelligence which led to me being cocky about the effort I had to put in. My parents both had broken educations, for various reasons, so there was a LOT of pressure on me, but not really any focus on emotional learning. Eventually, I rebelled against everything.

I didn't hate school/college, but I had a lot more fun in my 20s, and didn't really start to feel comfortable in my own skin until my 30s. I spent most of my adolescence living in the shadow of other people's expectations of who I should be, and no one ever really stopped to encourage me to be who I wanted to be, or even bother to ask.
 
I went to an all boys school and it was better than it may sound at first instance (sixth form was mixed) - I had friends, I was good academically and could hold my own in non-team sports (I ran cross-country) but looking back now there are moments and events which make me sad, and even a little angry, at the inability of a school to make it a positive experience for everybody. Obviously it was super heteronormative, which isn't easy when you have more than an inclination of which way your bread is buttered, but it wasn't just about being gay, it was anybody who was vaguely different. To some extent I can excuse the actions of children, but the failure of the school to do anything about the clear discomfort of some children, or even acknowledge it, is not something I can forget.
 
My school was OBSESSED with sport. You could be a fucking academic genius, but if you weren't on the hockey team they wouldn't give a flying shit about your existence.
 
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