What I did in the bit before the holidays...
Good lord... this was 1981! A time (for young Sparkie) of Iron Maiden, Hawkwind and Motorhead, big hair.. (hoooj Hair) and T shirts with carefully removed sleeves..

...and a young Sparkie was sitting at the back in the maths lesson, with three other "lively" girls. This was 2nd set, so we did work, we just arsed about a bit.. We were prone, however, to fits of the giggles at the best of times. One of our number, lets call her Wendy, produced a small brown paper envelope from her huge pink furry pencil case (calm down at the back... this one had a zip, and sat on the desk!!)and showed the envelope to me, smiling "I got this in the joke shop at dinner, you wanna try some?" I inspected the envelope, it looked fairly innocuous, apart from the writing on one side. There it bore the legend "Passion Powder" in Victorian Fairground-style writing, I looked at the teacher who was head down over her desk marking work.."What the hey, go on then!" Jo and Debbie who were sitting either side of us leaned over to look at the packet.. "Can we try as well?" they asked.. and so pretty soon the four of us teenage girls, sitting at the back of the classroom were passing a paper package back and forth, wetting fingers and dabbing white powder, then scooping the powder into our mouths. Wendy put the envelope back. We sat and looked at each other for a moment.. then the giggles started, and before long we were helpless with laughter at the stupidity of expecting anything to happen because we'd taken stuff from the joke shop..

After a while we dried our tears of mirth and settled back into some lovely maths.. and thought this was the end of the matter...Until the Friday of that week (The maths lesson happened on a Monday)I was sitting in my tutor room, when my tutor read a slip of paper that was in the register. Her face was a picture of concern as she told me to report immediately to the deputy heads office. "As in NOW".. so bearing in mind I'd pretty much forgotten what happened in Monday afternoon's maths class, I walked down the corridor with an increasing sense of foreboding. I knew, I'd not been seen smoking for a while, it'd been ages since I last got caught skiving.. I had no idea what was waiting for me in the deputy head's office, apart from the deputy head, of course.

So I knocked politely, entered when asked to do so and sat down, at the invitation of the Deputy Head. She also had a concerned face on, unusually, as she was known for enthusiastic PE classes, and enjoying a laugh the rest of the time.. I was seriously worried now... what on earth could it be? had there been an accident involving my parents? murders?... then she dropped the penny herself..

"Sparkie, are you in any trouble?"

"Not that I know of" I replied

"You're sure? Not with, say your parents, or drugs or anything?"

"Noooo.." I was still nonplussed

"Its just that you, Wendy, Jo and Debbie were seen taking drugs in Maths on Monday!"

OOOh shit...The blood raced to my face as I tried to come up with an explanation that would both sound plausible, not drop anyone in it, and not be embarrassing.. there wasn't one, so I had to explain to an exuberantly healthy, happy, PE teacher and deputy head who was a bit innocent that I wasn't taking class A drugs, I really wasn't, I had no intention of taking them, no not ever, and everything was fine at home. It was for sale at the joke shop. and yes, it was called "Passion Powder"..whilst my face reddened like a tomato in the sun..

I'm sure I could hear her laughing as I closed the door behind me...
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 14:14, 2 replies)

*click!!!*
Passion powder sounds ace! (We only had amphetamines at my school... which is probably why we did so well in sports, thinking about it...)
( SpankyHanky, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 14:33, closed)

hehehehe
They never tested your wee at sportsdays back then...
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 13:11, closed)