Playground Politics: How Did School Affect Who I Am Today?
School…awful place for most of us. Are you one of those rare people I hardly ever meet who enjoyed it? It wasn’t all bad; school plays, drama and art were my hiding places. But mostly it was like being on Salisbury Plain with landmines, target practice and a lot of being shouted at.
THE START
At first school was just an extension of home with plenty of painting and mucking about in water and sand. I was oblivious to the worries of the world. And then up a notch to primary school; a sort of magical fairyland where we’d have lots of power cuts and occasional bomb scares. We had to gather in the playground and have our names read out. I can’t remember if any of them were actual bomb scares or not, I just remember being excited to get out of class. It’s very likely these early experiences of potentially frightening events as well as being a kid in the cold war went some way towards my gathering anxiety. There was an old steam roller in the garden we were allowed to play on. Once I followed the dinner lady, the one on playground duty, holding her hand and walking backwards for maybe 3 times round the perimeter…and I was sick. I think tapioca pudding was involved. I would spend a fair bit of time on my own in the “quiet corner”; a little walled garden that nobody else bothered with. I did ok there and have fond memories, though extremely faded now. I do remember not being allowed to play in the wendy house with the girls, an early clue perhaps, but I preferred to play marbles and cars with the boys anyway. I was boss at marbles!
Junior school was where things got a little trickier. My Dad died during my time there and I was a pretty shy kid and certainly not very good at dealing with conflict or bullying. This is where it started, though fairly mild at this stage. I became quite introverted, hard to believe now if you know me. We were also routinely threatened with physical discipline by the teachers. We would be “given the slipper” which is a strange concept isn’t it. Being pelted on the backside with a soft indoor shoe is obviously a more suitable form of corporal punishment than a cane I suppose. I got the slipper a couple of times, no idea what for, possibly talking in class.
We had some highly vigorous and violent fun too playing British Bulldog and Charge out on the playing fields. They were soon after banned, hardly surprising what with the blood and tooth loss and general bruising and possible concussion! Some mean kids used to routinely shove me into the lavender bush all along the edge of the playground. I was a soft target, I’d never fight back. To this day the smell of lavender makes me feel a bit sick and weird.
I desperately wanted to do wood and metal work but was told “That’s just for the boys dear, it’s not for girls, you do cooking and sewing next door”. They didn’t seem to be taking much notice of the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act! These models of womanhood and what it is to be female persisted through my school years with Home Economics and Parentcraft later on, although I did opt for doing the latter as I had lofty dreams of being a Norland Nanny!
So much of school life was being denied access! This fostered a huge urge in me to always defy what was considered feminine or appropriate. To this day I still feel a knee jerk trigger to do traditionally male things. The lines are thankfully being blurred. Slowly, over the years I got myself a really good toolkit, learned woodworking skills at last and became one of those people who can put up their own shelves! Although these days I’d much rather be able to pay a professional.
Despite all this I was doing really well with spelling and was at least 2 years up in my abilities. We had the incredible Mrs Smith who drove an orange Capri and had the most amazing Halloween parties EVER! And the headmaster, Mr Collins, such a kind and thoughtful man who took great care to help me through my confusing grief. These two people still influence my nature.
BIG SCHOOL!
Section of 3rd year secondary school report. Note ”Yvonne is very unpredictable.”
At secondary school I was quickly taken down a peg or two and I was put in remedial (yep, it was called that) classes for maths and English. Maths makes sense, I’m fairly certain I have dyscalculia to some degree. But I am to this day dumbfounded by their choice to put me in the English class with the naughty kids and SEN group. I can still vividly remember the room and how the other girls in school would peer in and make faces. Bullying happened inside that room too. It was a big kick in the guts for me after such a glowing report in my previous school. This perception of me continues to shame me into believing I’m not good enough, not clever enough, not ALLOWED!
When I first joined big school we had the best drama teacher, Miss Polatajko. She insisted we call her Miss Polly which unnerved the headmistress no end. She was colourful and fun, encouraging and clever. She picked me to play Tiny Tim in a school production of A Christmas Carol called Humbug! It was the most amazing time. I felt part of something important. I’ve got happy memories of this little bubble Miss Polly carved out for us. I still think of her as a beacon of light. I was the golden child for a bit because of that, but it was slipping by the time I reached 2nd year. As the bullies came in harder, I seemed to get into more trouble.
These dents in my confidence, which was already pretty fragile, were made deeper over the years by how it made others think of me and how I thought of myself. It seemed an open invitation to all the “mean girls”; I went to a single sex school. It had very high and exacting standards having been a grammar school a few years before I started there. It was run by the same practically Victorian headmistress. She was a strange fish alright. We also frequently had things thrown at us by the teachers; books, board rubbers, chalk, pens. It was definitely quite an “old school” school.
By the end of the 2nd year the bullies were growing in number and imagination and I was fearful most of the time. I was threatened frequently with “I’ll get you after school” and I’d spend the whole day in a state of exponential panic. I was followed from the last class to the local shop and beaten up, including being smashed repeatedly against the wire glass and breaking it. I was made to apologise to her the next day in school. Me, stood there shaking with a black eye and cuts, her with a shit eating grin. I was cornered and spat at, flushed, cold shouldered, gossiped about, threatened. The scuffles went beyond school hours too, nowhere felt safe. When I fell over and broke my nose in a non school incident, my Mum exclaimed as I walked in the door “Oh my god, what have they done to you now?” The physical and emotional stuff continued beyond the school gates and years. I was frightened most of the time.
One of the girls who bullied me was also my friend a lot of the time adding to my confusion and trust issues. We met years later and she trembled and cried as she apologised and explained to me that she was being bullied to bully me. My best friend was “stolen” by my worst enemy for a few years and that really broke my heart. We’ve also reconnected and healed. Such a complex mess, but after we spoke I felt the weight of decades of hurt fall away from me.
During the big exam phase there were two amazing English teachers who recognised some skill for writing in me, Mrs Grimshaw and Mrs Underwood pushed me hard with daily detentions and loads of encouragement to get my coursework done. I barely pulled a pass but they gave me a kernel of hope that I might be good at something other than farting about in drama! I’m grateful to them for taking so much time out of their lives to give me a chance. And here I am Mrs G and Mrs U…writing!
It’s fair to say these experiences have had a pretty big impact on me. Now I’m in my 50’s I do seem to finally be coming out of it though. I no longer feel a well of fear build up in my stomach when I see groups of schoolkids. I do still get the paranoia when people whisper in my company though, not sure I’ll ever shift that, but I don’t care as much now. That’s their shit, not mine.
To research for this article I checked in on a reunion page I joined a few years ago. I poured through the photos but didn’t find me in a single one of them. That's rather telling don’t you think? I was never part of the gang. Those huddles of uniformed girls in heaps on spring grass and summer meadows all laughing and aping about. I was never invited. It hurts still to see my absence. The skiing trips I never went on because we were skint. The sports events I was never part of because I was clumsy and frankly not interested. The day trip to Boulogne that I definitely did go to…I’m not in any of the shared snaps. I went off by myself and looked for a present for my Mum and bought “une baguette s'il vous plais”. I can feel that old bad habit of bitterness creep in and I’m batting it away. Those young girls are all grown as well and probably have bad memories too.
I’m a great defender of anyone being bullied, harassed or treated badly, I’ve been known to step into many a fight over the years to try to diffuse it, with a pretty good success rate too I’m glad to say. I’m like an angry lioness or something! I know a lot of this is down to those schooldays. My son had some trouble with bullying at school too and though the staff took it a little more seriously, it was still pretty crappy for him. He is a lot like me. We’ll use up a lot of energy protecting others, making sure they’re ok and often be the one to get into bother for it. I wouldn’t swap us though.
THE END
My school experience had a very big impact on me. It definitely had a lot to do with how wayward I became, always searching for a group that would accept me, invite me in and love me. It took me a while to find them but I did, many times over. I wonder if we all feel this way, desperate to escape the bonds of those dark and noisy institutions; where walking down the corridor between classes was like a game of tag, only if they got you, they really got you. And going to the loo was fraught with danger and brimming with fear. Where you’d join the Christian Fellowship or Computer Club lunchtime groups just to have a safe haven. I did, despite not having any belief or aptitude. Humiliation was a daily ritual. I seldom meet people who genuinely enjoyed their school years. Maybe even those who had a good time are still haunted by it in some way, it’s such a difficult period in life with so many changes physically, emotionally and academically. Our soft little brains were in the hands of some fairly pissed off, worn down adults and we were at the mercy of some really mean kids! I don’t know about you but I couldn’t wait to leave the place. I hated most of it and found it hard to recall many redeeming features as I grew further away. But these days I do half remember some nice times…if I squint!
Written by Vonalina Cake
My name is Von, I’ve lived in Bristol since 1992 and I’ve lived a lot of lives since then.
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