Confessions of a geek
Yet another long time lurker and first time poster...

In retrospect I was woefully unprepared for secondary school. I suppose the first signs should have been when some kids in my junior school class started talking about the latest film on at the cinema (Gremlins? Ghostbusters? Something big in the 80's anyway) and I had absolutely no idea what they were on about. Cue the rest of the afternoon being grilled about what I had and hadn't seen, which turned out to be the square root of sweet fuck all. It wasn't that my parents expressly forbade me from watching them... it was just that that their way of bringing up children was very different from everyone elses. Meh.

Contrary to what popular culture and pr0n will teach you, going to an all girls school is not the place you believe it to be. It is instead a veritable nest of vitriol and bitchiness, especially if you're the sort of person who says in their first few weeks "New Kids on the Block? But they're crap!" That pretty much set th tone for the next five years, most of which I tried to escape by hiding in the IT rooms and learning RM Basic...

Changing schools at 16 though was a breath of fresh air. Now I found out that there were people who had the same interests as me, and they were called boys(!).

I was the only girl in the entire year to take Computing as an A Level, and that class provided me with some of the best times and friends I could ever have asked for. Highlights include:

- Our IT teacher Mr Read. 65 years old if he was a day, fondly nicknamed "The Bald Eagle". Ardent Fulham fan. Being a follower of the beautiful game myself, I procured some fanzine cartoons taking the piss out of Fulham, enlarged them on the photocopier and sellotaped them to the whiteboards, after Fulham had suffered a particularly humiliating defeat. As soon as he clapped eyes on them, he turned that shade of red most commonly known as "beetroot" and demanded to know who amongst the class had done it. No matter how many times the lads protested that I was the one, he simply could not believe that a girl could be the culprit, and I sat there smug whilst he ranted at everyone else.

- Mr Read again. His classroom was the end one in a line of three, with stairs coming in from one side. Students used to use them and it to cut through into the middle classroom, much to his eternal frustration, as he bellowed "This is not a corridor!" Us telling new first years that sure, it was fine to go through, probably didn't help matters...

- The whole class enjoyed a good game of Doom over lunch, when it was too cold for playing football. We hid the program on the network, which became a game of cat and mouse with (yet again) Mr Read, as he desperately tried to catch us at it. The IT room suffered a strange number of "power surges" those 2 years, that just happened to coincide with him entering the room unannounced. The mystery remains unexplained.

- Being bodily lifted up by one of my classmates, and tossed into the big wastepaper bin - you know, the big dumpster type ones. Explaining that was fun.

- Booting footballs onto the roof whilst doing impressions of Andy Cole (it was a while back...), then having to steal the caretakers' ladder to fetch them from the roof.

- Last day of 6th form, sitting outside watching the staff v pupil cricket match. Having a water fight, before realising that I was wearing lycra clothes, and that they were rapidly shrinking. One of my more practical friends ran off, and returned 5 minutes later with a pair of jeans for me to wear. Whose they were, he didn't say. Where they had come from was another matter he was strangely silent on. I spent the rest of the day looking for a bloke wandering around trouserless, but I never found him...
(Kitimariana, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 14:33, 5 replies)

I enjoyed reading that, cheers...
And your right about girls schools... I went to an all boys school at one time next to an all girls school. Would love to say there were lots of tales of porn and suspenders and all that, but the girls were hard as fuck and used to beat us up. They were fucking nutjobs.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 14:42, closed)

Agreed. Good Debut...
Spanky - Are you talking about Woodlands / Tile Hill Wood by any chance? I went there for a year you know...

EDIT - Woodlands, the boys school I mean...
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Tue 3 Feb 2009, 14:48, closed)

Certainly am, Pooflake
my good man...

I actually went to just about every school in the midlands... seems that way, anyway... My dad moved about with work alot.

Single sex education is bloody horrible. Its just not natural...
( SpankyHanky, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 15:29, closed)

Seconded...
If anything is going to turn your beloved daughters into hormonal, raging harlots, it's sticking 700 of them together in the same place for 6 hours a day and telling them about "the perils of boys"...
(Kitimariana, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 16:23, closed)

I think I was also the only female in my school who took Computing A level
The only skill it gave me was the ability to awe an office of 80-odd people with "I can do VBA, me!"

Condolences on the single sex school thing: I think mixed sex education was the one thing that kept me sane from 11 to 18...
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 5 Feb 2009, 13:48, closed)