It’s well over fifty years since the beginning of my own high school experience. I have to say that, at the time, I didn’t see it as pleasant!
My parents earnestly believed that a good education was essential for me. Like many parents of their generation, they had left school early and had no formal qualifications. They enrolled me into an examination at the age of eleven that, if successful, would send me to an elite Grammar School at no cost. I was successful and thus began seven years of horror! You have to understand that my family was extremely poor. My dad was a basic farm hand. Whilst we ate well with lots of farm produce, there was no spare cash for any of life’s extras.
So, on day one of school, I was the shy young boy wearing a second-hand uniform amongst the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers and successful businesspeople in their brand-new clothes. I was an instant target for ridicule.
My journey to and from school was lengthy. It was good from the point of view that I lived so far from the school, that other students were never likely to visit and therefore I would be spared embarrassment concerning our modest home and depressed neighborhood.
The negative point was that I arrived three minutes before the staring bell and had to leave five minutes after the end of school in order to catch buses.
My day started at 6am and I reached home most days at 6.30pm. All of this meant that after school activities were simply not an option for me; a further isolating factor. The more horrifying memory though is that whilst I was never part of the students’ “in-crowd”, neither did any teacher take an interest in my life. We were addressed by our family name which hardly encouraged intimacy.
So, I lived a lonely, introverted life made worse by the fact that I could never speak with my parents about how sad, lonely and heartbreaking my school life was. They were sacrificing everything they had to give me a “good education” and I hated every moment and every day. On some occasions my life was so bone-numbingly miserable that I feigned illness rather than attend school.
More next week.
Blessings
Brian