Here lie my memories of school
Howayiz?

My Dad was a teacher. He gave it up when I was born as he couldn’t live on the money. It was the 70’s. It was Ireland. I ruined his life.

1 - Barrington bunny – Cowardice? Apathy? Laziness?

I must have been 10 years old or so. I was a, no, THE star pupil. Best marks, homework always done, way ahead in workbooks, I even had a half-decent reputation in the school yard as a result of helping bigger, stupider, sportier boys with their homework in return for not beating the shit out of me. I was capable, if not prodigious in PE (sports) class. I had the lead in the school play and was singing lead in the school choir and church on a Sunday.

Life was okay.

It had been remarked upon that I was spreading myself a little thin. My understudy in the school play had been filling in for me when I was running late due to particularly rigorous bouts of angelic boy soprano solos.

One day, whilst perched on a gym horse masquerading as a hilly mound, I was sweltering in a nylon rabbit outfit. I was Barrington Bunny. I have no idea what the story was about.

I just said, “Fair enough – let Gordon do it”.

The teachers were shocked.
My schoolmates were ambivalent.
I don’t remember how my parents reacted.
I don’t know how I felt.

I suspect it’s one of my abiding memories as I am a master at shirking responsibility.


2 - Jocking

Gym day was hell. If you had forgotten to wear shorts under your tracksuit bottoms and you got ‘jocked’, ie, someone wrenched them down when you weren’t looking, your ‘Scooby Doo’ or ‘The A-Team’ or worse, generic shop-bought underpants would be on display for the world.

Being poor sucked.

I once acquired a pair of sky blue Nike trainers made from some man-made material which eventually wore a hole in the toe. I had a pair of socks the exact same colour which if I wore then, you couldn’t see the hole in the trainer. If those socks were unavailable, it was back to the shop-bought ones.

Being poor sucked.

I had a cotton canary yellow ‘The A-Team’ tracksuit which I loved though.

That was ghey.

That’s about everything I remember from small school (ages 5-12).

Oh, I love you, Miss Sweeney.
Thanks for helping me with my ‘up’s and down’s’ on my first day of school.


Secondary school:

1 - Will you go out with me?

I think I have told this story before:

I went to a mixed school.
There were girls there.
This was my ruin.

A common practical joke was to tell a lunchbox-toting, parka-wearing geek that the object of his desires had reciprocated his longing only moments prior and was all set to receive his rampaging hormonal lust if only he were to approach her.

Once I fell for that one.

Cue baz tapping the prettiest girl in our year on the shoulder, parka hanging off one shoulder to all the more enable the lunchbox-toting arm and proposing before all and sundry that as was her express desire, we should go out with one another.

That was neither the first nor last time a girl told me to fuck off but it was certainly one of the most memorable.

Being mocked as you realise you have been deceived is one of life’s more cruel duets.


Fortunately we had a whole crew of parka and lunchbox heads and we all grew into long-haired rockers and metallers who wore big boots and black clothes a lot so the persecution didn’t last too long.

Humiliation though is another story.


2 - Poetry/facebook

She recently facebook-ed me this girl - the (most consistent) object of my teenage lust.

A woman I had barely spoken to whom I idolised as the most lovely, the most serene, an angel with a voice which spoke only in truths and wisdom.

We were studying the sonnet in English literature class.

I loved the form of the Shakespearian.

I wrote her poetry.

Flawless Shakespearian sonnets.

Ten of them.

In my best handwriting.

Bound in a folder with individual plastic sleeves I had scavenged from somewhere.

She received them via the next woman I plan to tell you about who relayed to me that the subject of my sonnets thought I was such a nice guy but just didn’t think of me ‘that’ way.

Devastation.

In her Facebook message she revealed she’s married and has recently had a baby.

Why contact me now though?

Maybe a year or so after the sonnet fiasco, she was my dance partner in a school production of Grease and wondered if I knew anyone who had kept a copy of the video. I said I’d look into it and joked about poetry.


3 - The debutantes ball.

The kind lady who conveyed my poetic entreaties had been a friend of mine since the beginning of secondary school (12-18) as her parents knew mine in their youth and she lived nearby so took the same bus.

We had common interests in music and film and black clothes, long hair and big boots and eventually alcohol and drugs as we remain friends (albeit tentative ones) to this day.

We were out one night in a bar that seemed to mistake long hair for valid proof of age getting locked on cider as usual when I took her to one side and with tears streaming down my face asked her to accompany me to the end of year ball as my lady partner with no added pressure to perform erotic feats whilst drunk at the end of the evening or otherwise and that maybe a dance or two would be nice but she didn’t have to hang out with me for the night or anything.

I was a confident youngster as you can see.

She said, “Yes”!

Naturally, I propositioned her on the night and oddly enough she also didn’t feel ‘that’ way about me either.

We drifted apart for a bit and then reconciled and drifted and reconciled. We’ve not spoken for a bit but it’s not out of rancour. We just don’t agree as much as we used to and don’t have that much in common anymore but I still care for her etc.


My best mates are the lads I went to school with. We chat often and email in a group every day talking the same shit we’ve been talking for 20 odd years now. It idles the day away.



This has been cathartic.

There’s a word I learned in school.

Not fucking ‘closure’,

Rafter
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 14:25, Reply)