EARLY SCHOOL DAYS

Do you remember your first day at school? Who could forget it? You had been so excited for months at the thought of being a ‘Big Girl’ at ‘Big School’ that, at one point, you thought the day would never arrive.

Well it did, and on that day you got dressed in your smart, new ….. if a little itchy ….. uniform. And then your mother started to ‘tidy’ you up, just as she always did when you dressed yourself! Oh well, you could cope, just as long as she didn’t spit on a tissue and rub your mouth. You often wondered why she did that, but it seemed to be another of life’s eternal mysteries and one which not only you but every other child had to endure. Even at the tender age of five years you vowed that when you grew up and had children of your own you would not subject them to that unhygienic and embarrassing ritual …… although those big words weren’t the exact words you were thinking at that time!

Have you kept that childhood vow? No, of course you haven’t because spitting on tissues and rubbing children’s mouths is all a part of being a mother, after all!

Soon you were at the school gates, then in the playground. School certainly looked much bigger than the last time you saw it. When your mother took you to have a look around, it seemed quite small and was very quiet. But today there were a lot of VERY big children running around and all making a lot of noise. Suddenly, you didn’t feel like a big girl after all, in fact you felt quite small and you wanted to go home! Oh how much you wanted to go back to the safety of your own home and give Tinker, your little dog, a big cuddle. However, it seemed as though that wasn’t an option, just like going back up the birth canal wasn’t an option five years ago. In fact, although you didn’t realise it at the time, you were setting the foundations for a very important part of the female make-up; women cannot reverse!

Your mother reassured you and said that it wouldn’t be as frightening when you went into your very own classroom, because then you would have so much fun.

She lied ….. twice! It was far more frightening in the classroom than in the playground, and you didn’t have any fun at all; so much for mothers never lying to their children. You made another vow right there and then, and that was that you would never lie to your children.

Did you keep this vow? No? So that’s another one you’ve broken. It’s not easy is it when you are trying to reassure a little person that the big world is okay, when all along you know perfectly well that it is not okay. So like every woman before you, when you grew up you had to lie to your children to protect them; white lies, of course, as though the colour makes all the difference!

So there you were …. motherless …. in the classroom. She had deserted you just when you needed her most; time for another vow: ‘Never desert a child in their hour of need.’ And this too would later be broken just as the vows you made earlier!

You looked around. There were a lot of tables and chairs, all tiny ones. That made a nice change, a chair you could sit on and still touch the floor with your feet. There were lots of toys too, and paint and a sand pit. You were just beginning to think that this place might not be so bad after all and, in fact, were about to get stuck in with the task of making as much mess as possible in the shortest time possible when you saw her, this formidable looking woman staring at you; apparently she was called ‘The Teacher.’

You soon learned that this ‘Teacher’ person was not someone to be crossed. When she said ‘Everybody stand up’, then everybody stood up; even those horrible, smelly boys stood up! You had to be quiet when you were told and put your toys away when you were told. Although toys in school seemed to have another name; here they were called equipment!

Do you remember your ‘new best friend’ too? Everyone had one, a new best friend whose hand you held onto tightly whenever the teacher shouted, ‘crocodile file!’ That was the scariest time of all when she marched you along to be fed to the crocodiles; except you never were! As time passed you began to realise that if everyone kept quiet when they were in those dreaded lines, then they wouldn’t be fed to the crocodiles. Hence in schools throughout the country you could see lines of children walking silently, two by two; constantly marching from A to B, each child painfully aware that one tiny peep and they would become lunch for the next crocodile that happened that way.

There were always several children in these lines who were not wearing socks, and everyone knew that they were the children who were most afraid, for they were the ones who had wet their pants out of sheer terror and, just like the rain, wee only went down and never up, down to wet the wearer’s socks! Lesson learned: Never wear socks when you are afraid!

Having survived the daily threat of crocodiles there was then the school lunch to get through, each day with its own threat of miniature crocodiles, ie caterpillars in the lettuce! If the crocodiles didn’t eat you, then you had to eat the caterpillars. It was enough to turn the most ardent carnivore into a vegetarian! And why did everything look exactly the same, with only a slight variation in the colour? In fact, one of the happiest days of your school life had to be when, after your seventh birthday, you ‘came of age.’ That is when you were deemed old enough to take a lunch box to school with bits of your mother’s home cooking. Your mother made such wonderful cakes that over the years you managed to start your own little cottage industry, selling her cakes in return for the odd turn of a skipping rope or kick of a football.

The early days at school seemed never ending didn’t they, and it was a long time before you began to even vaguely enjoy going each day. In fact, once you could read and write you thought that was the end of it and you would be able to stay at home for ever more with your mother, her cakes and the dog. But no, apparently if you were to become important and maybe rule the world one day then you had to keep going to school …. for years and years!.

So exactly what was the final vow you made?

Oh yes …..
‘When I am Prime minister I will abolish school.’

This is, I suppose, one vow you could say you only broke because you never reached that exalted position and not because you were weak!