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stella40 -> RE: Were you cool in school? (6/24/2007 3:54:15 PM)
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I was a good kid and quite popular until my early teens (when my gender issues resurfaced), then I suddenly changed, became very dysfunctional, the 'problem child' who was totally non-conformist and unpredictable. Totally unpredictable. Especially in my final years at school.
In some subjects I was extremely strong, if not the strongest - English, French and Art and Design were my strongest subjects. I spent much of my childhood writing and drawing - the fantasy world of an unhappy childhood. I could hold my own in history, quite good at geography, good at computer studies (learning languages such as BASIC, COBOL).
For a while my paintings were exhibited in the school. There was a painting of mine of a forest scene which the Headmaster decided to hang in the school secretary's office. It became known as the 'Three Penises' (but you had to really stare at it to work out why). But someone let the secret out and it got me a whole month of detention.
I was bottom of the class in Mathematics. I knew that 2 + 2 = 4, also that 2 x 2 = 4. I could even work out complex trigonometry questions, but when it got to x + y = z I lost it. I loved music, but had (and still have) zero musical talent. I always ended up with the tambourine. As for singing lessons, all I could remember was being told to shut up by the Music teacher. I was also weak at physics, Woodwork and... domestic science.
I did things that no other kid did. I was the one with the witty answers, the 'why' questions, and sometimes the practical joker. I was the kid who managed to wedge a chisel in a block of wood so it wouldn't come out. One of my most memorable learning experiences was finding out that a pineapple sized chunk of sodium (if I'm not mistaken - I was crap at chemistry too) thrown into a sink full of water can devastate a chemistry lab. I was once sent to the Headmaster for the strap. I pulled my hand away, so he whacked his leg. Twice. This resulted in a lot of lines being written and detention. I spent a lot of time in detention, more than anyone else. I knew all the cleaners on first name terms. We had interesting conversations. The Headmaster and my father spent so much time in contact with each other they later became firm friends.
Therefore I was cool, but cool in my own original way, and in a way not many others dared to be. I think half my class (as well as half the teachers) secretly thought I was completely mad. I wasn't bullied. I was never part of the in-crowd. My schoolfriends were also pretty strange. There was David the punk and Iqbal, a severely asthmatic Pakistani kid who had the school monopoly on porn and was nicknamed The Accordion.
I missed half my final year when I ran away from home successfully at the age of 15, hitchhiking down to London where I spent 3 months living in a squat and working. My disappearance even made the national newspapers. I was caught at a London railway station and returned home. This changed me. From then on I attended school, studied hard (listening to Hendrix, The Stones, Motorhead and Status Quo) and left school at 16 with decent exam results and went to night school, wanting to study law at Bristol University.
I didn't get in.
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