School Daze

Found myself thinking about school today - probably after reading Jr's post - and since things are relatively quiet at the mome I thought I might talk a bit about it.

I went to school in two places - Primary at St Mary's Public School, which at that stage (I feel old just saying that) was something like four demountables around one permanent stone building. With fans rather than aircon, so it was usually pretty warm - but we got used to it in the end. We'd have morning classes in our rooms, then when it got hot in the middle of the day we'd all go into the central building and 'nap' (read: lay down and whispered to each other, pretending to be asleep when the teacher wandered past) for an hour, then head outside and have lunch. Afternoon class was outside on the grass - I guess they knew us well enough to know that there'd be no way they'd get us back into stuffy demountables once we'd escaped ;)

Biggest thing in the six years (apart from my friends and I deciding each month or so that a different boy was the cutest alive and we'd just die if he didn't ask us to the end-of-year dance or whatnot) was the end-of-school play. Each year our Year Six (last year in primary here in Oz) put on a production that the rest of the school got to see - in our year it was 'Oliver'. All sixty of us were given one part or another - there were a teeming host of urchins/townspeople/chorus - and only a very few of us wound up helping with lighting and moving such props as we had. I actually wound up playing The Artful Dodger, which was pretty neat. For those of you who haven't seen the musical, Oliver is basically the Dickens story of Oliver Twist (which I'm embarassed to admit I've never read) except with more singing and choreography. Artful Dodger is a boy (yes, I know - wound up having to put my hair up under my top-hat) pickpocket who corrupts Oliver and helps teach him the art of theft.

Hence the name I guess.

Anyway we finished our year, dragged various struggling boys onto the dancefloor and the end-of-year-gig, promised one another faithfully that we'd always keep in touch and then (as primary school kids are wont to do) never spoke to one another again, except in passing.

Other than Lovergirl that is, who came to the same High School (secondary school?) with me. So that was Kingswood High, home of completely different uniforms (grumble grumble). From brown and green to blue and... other blue. Tartan skirt, sky-blue polo shirt with sleeves and white socks. In theory we were meant to wear stockings too, but except for formal things I don't think anyone ever did. Well, most of us didn't, anyway.

High school was definitely a revelation in many ways - we were actually expected to think for ourselves for a change, we moved from room to room, we had more time to hang around and with a small shopping mall just five minutes away from jumping the back fence, the freedom to develop a personality and self-image our very own. Not that we ever cut class. No. No. Of course not ;)

In looking back I have to say that me and mine weren't exactly in the 'coolest' crowd, but we were in the same orbit I guess. Probably because we were a little outspoken at times - which never hurts in school - which meant that while we weren't exactly sycophantic enough to be 'in' with the queens of the school, that attitude tended to help as well. Of course, it didn't hurt that we tended to be friendly enough with anyone - including certain members of several sports teams. I mean, I like sport as much as the next girl (who's laughing at me from the chair in the corner) but what is it about popularity and sports?

Maybe I should be asking Shane Warne? But anyway.

Did the usual thing and started work with McD's when I was fourteen to pick up a little extra cash - that lasted all of a month or two, then I moved onwards and upwards to be a check-out chick on the weekends, swiping an endless line of barcodes for the greater good. Mind-numbing, but at least I didn't get grease all over my fingers. I ditched that job too when I was fifteen, actually did a little bit of modelling for the occasional catalogue (a friend of a friend) but stopped that after a little incident when I was sixteen. Which got even worse a month or two after. Dropping the job and the boyfriend like hot potatos, I put my mind back to school and somehow managed to scrape through the exams that year. Two more years of high school with retail work, then took a year off (well and truly sick of education by then). So this year I'm doing a Bachelor of Communication of all things, and agonizing over a major...

Wow, that took longer than I expected.

Be well.