School Daze

I hated school. I remember being taken there and abandoned by my mum on the first day. We were all herded into classrooms and told to sit, then our new teacher came in and introduced herself as Miss Wilson. A few months later she became Mrs. Wilson, but I was too young at the time to think there was anything odd about that. Miss Wilson told us to shout 'Present,' when we heard our names being called, and I did, but I shouted very quietly. So quietly she didn't hear me. At the end she looked at me and barked, 'What's your name?'. She then checked it against the list and screamed, 'Why didn't you shout out when I called your name?' School just got worse after that.

I hated almost everything except reading and I was afraid of reading. Everyone had a copy of the 'reading book' and once a day, in the afternoon, we would be told to keep quiet and read our books for half an hour or so, until the teacher told us to stop reading, put our books away now, sit up straight, crossed arms on the desk where she could see them, and pay attention. That was the scary bit. I would be lost in the story. I wouldn't hear when she shouted and while every one was sitting up straight, facing the front, dopey Ashy would be oblivious, still reading. The teacher would allow a dramatic silence while the rest of the class followed the bead she had drawn from her eyes to the idiot who didn't hear. She would wait to see how long it took for this retard to realise, while the others, sensing a victim, would begin to bond together, making eye contact with each other and grinning. Eyes would swivel, from classmates to the teacher, to the arsehole on which her eyes were still locked, to another classmate, then more boldly back to the teacher. She would allow the collective stifled snigger to become audible enough for her to object to, which she then did in a sufficiently violent manner, waking me out of my dream and startling the others back into their default state of wary obedience. My early school reports said I was a poor reader who would benefit from remedial help.

I was also afraid of the school toilets. The boys toilet had a picture of Paul drawn on blue paper, pinned to the door. At playtimes, it was a lawless place where anything could happen. The floor was usually flooded and always covered with wads of wet toilet paper or paper towels - the raw material of much mischief. The locks on the cubicle doors were invariably broken. If the lock wasn't broken when you entered the cubicle, it often was while you were sitting there. Fights often erupted in the toilets. Having your head flushed down the pan wasn't unheard of and being hit in the face by a wad of the already mentioned wet paper was a common occurrence. Sometimes it had been dipped in the urinal first. At best you might emerge from the toilets with no more than piss down the front of your trousers. I never knew if the girls' toilet was different. It was next to the boys and their door had a picture of Sally on pink paper, but I never saw inside. There was a drinking fountain between the two doors. It often had blood in it.

I sometimes contrived to go to the toilet during classes when there would be no one else there. I could avoid meeting others but, alone, there was something else to fear. The automatic urinal flush, which came on like a train in a tunnel, getting louder and louder until it smashed me into pieces. Hearing any loud sounds was something I found difficult at that age. Sounds above a certain threshold would cross over my senses and I would see and feel them too. The sound of the urinal flush began as a jarring vibration, rising in pitch and intensity through my jaws into my teeth, jelly-wobbling my stomach down to the soles of my itching and burning feet. The world began to fragment and for a few terrifying seconds there was nothing but glassy vibrating shards of sound-stuff. As everything shattered, I lost all sense of inside and outside. The oscillating fragments became prisms, an infinite pattern of minute, synchronised, shaking and spinning reflections. A pattern which prolonged and intensified the pain of the sound.

If I heard the flush just before I pushed open the door, I knew I could run in, have a really quick pee and get out again with time to spare before the next flush, but I never dared hover around waiting outside, in case a teacher came along and asked who are you, what are you doing, why are you not in class and who's your teacher? If I didn't know when to expect the next flush, my strategy was to hold my dick with one hand and use the other to cover one ear. The ear on the dick-holding side, I could just cover with my shoulder, though with my head contorted at such an angle, I couldn't really see to aim properly. Whichever strategy I employed, I still usually came out of the toilet with piss down the front of my trousers, which meant having to sneak about keeping out of sight until it dried, then getting hassled for taking so long when I returned to the classroom.

Secondary school was less frightening than primary. Strange, really because the imagined horrors of childhood became real there. Boys really did get stabbed and slashed with knives and good kickings happened on an almost daily basis. But by that time I had learned how to hide my fears and be a 'right cheeky wee shite'. Teachers hated me, with justification, and that meant that although I was never violent and was in the swots class, I was held in some respect by my peers, or at least not beaten regularly by them, since I caused the teachers quite a lot of grief. I still hated school but I had lost my fear and I was actually getting good at it. I was in the top class in each year, although I did little work in class and absolutely none, ever, at home. I did homework, when I had to, in the corridor at break time. It wasn't always necessary, as our teachers couldn't care less whether we did it or not. I suppose they thought it hardly worth bothering, since we would all eventually be going to work in factories, going on the dole or getting pregnant before our exams. It is fair to say that, although I was among an unusually high number of pupils who were accepted for university in my final year, an even greater number made it to jail from the same year. Neither number, however, was in double figures and looking back, I think our teachers should have given us a bit more support academically. I sometimes feel ashamed when I think of how I behaved towards particular teachers but then again, the bastards usually deserved it.

So why did I stay on at school and go to university if I hated it all so much? Simple. It was easier than the alternative. When we reached sixteen and most of the other guys pissed off to start as plumbers, electricians or whatever, it just seemed too much like hard work for me. They bragged that they would soon have wages and I would still be on pocket money. 'So what?' I thought. I always had something going to make a bit of cash and I was a good shoplifter. Staying on at school wasn't a decision I made. It meant I didn't have to make a decision, and university was the same. My careers guidance teacher arranged the applications and advised me on everything. The only thing I did myself was choose the university furthest away from where I was at the time.

University was short the first time - about six months - but the student grant was for a year so I didn't complain. I thought university might have been different from school but it wasn't really. The only difference was you had to do some work to stay there, hence my only lasting six months. I went back to a different university a few years later and, as I really didn't want to be chucked out that time and therefore went to lectures instead of the pub, it really was like school and I hated it even more.

When I eventually graduated, I was sure that was it. No more school. Graduating with a degree in philosophy however, it wasn't long before I realised that A, there being no jobs for philosophers plus B, me being a philosopher, pretty much equalled C, there being somewhere between a dog's and a snowball-in-hell's chance of me ever finding a decent job. So I went back to school. And guess what I did? I studied to be a teacher. During my years as a teacher, ever a glutton for punishment, I even took time out to study for further teaching qualifications. Eventually I upgraded my teaching qualifications to such an extent that I was able to escape the profession altogether. I just kept accelerating and shot clean out the top. What a great feeling that was but I was almost forty years old before I finally escaped the education system.

Not so long ago, I returned to my old primary school. The building was being used as a polling station and, although I didn't vote, I took the opportunity to have a look around. I couldn't remember the layout of the place but as luck would have it, the door which was being used for the public to enter and exit was the one next to the toilets I remembered so vividly. Paul and Sally were gone but the drinking fountain was still there. I could have had my first look in the girls' toilet - there was no one around - but I didn't. I pushed open the door to the boys' toilet and crept inside.

I was alone. The place was spotless. There was a faint lingering smell of disinfectant and none of the stale hormonal, animal smell that usually comes from male toilets. The floor was clean and dry. I approached the row of cubicles. The top was just below eye level and I pushed open a cubicle door to see the tiniest porcelain toilet pan, like a foot stool, translucent shiny white, a dolls' house toilet pan. I felt like a four-metre-tall giant looking down on a normal-sized toilet. Nothing of my memories remained in this place. As I turned to leave, I barely noticed the automatic flush start up. The force of the water spraying against the urinals peaked in it's intensity as as I reached the door and then the sound died, smothered as the door swung slowly shut on its spring loaded hinge, shutting me back outside. I bent my knees and stooped to examine the water fountain, clean and polished. I stretched out my index finger and gently pushed the lever, releasing a delicate arc of crystal water which made no sound I could hear. 'Forty years!' I thought.

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