School days.....
I know that when anyone thinks back on their school days their mind automatically tends to drift towards those cigarettes smoked behind the bicycle sheds; mitching double maths due to never having your homework done (that could have just been me); disco dancing secondary school days and rarely do you think of your primary school days as due to your age at the time, the memories of this period in your life are probably hazy at best.
Not so with me. I mean I do think of secondary school as some of the funniest and best days of my life but when I am feeling particularly nostalgic, I often think of my primary school days as some of the most innocent and good clean fun times that I have ever spent. It is possible that I am looking at these days with rose tinted glasses as this is also the 1980's time frame that I am talking about but I really don't think so.
Very recently a girl who was in my class from junior infants to sixth class got in touch with me as she had started up a reunion page dedicated to all of our class mates on Facebook. It is nearly twenty five years since we all sat together in those freezing cold prefabs (25 years - can you believe it?) and that was what had prompted this sudden trip down memory lane.
I was stunned. My family and I had left the area where I went to school to move to pastures greener as soon as I had finished sixth class so all of my ties and contacts with these children that I had grown up with were completely severed in one go. I was in shock at hearing from one of these people not least because although I have grown up and moved on, in my minds eye everyone I had once knew had froze in time at around the age of twelve and so it was so hard to get my head around the fact that they had all gone grown up too.
My first though was my profile picture. These people had only ever known me with a mullet hair style, teeth that had a slightly Dracula type look to them and a very,very dodgy dress sense (I know that not a whole lot has changed since then but I like to think that with the use of a brace in my teens and the discovery of the GHD in my early twenties, that things have improved slightly. My dress sense still needs to be worked on a little bit but I can live with that). Please God I thought don't let anyone look at my picture and think she hasn't changed a bit. This might sound like that saddest thing in the world but I genuinely considered changing my profile picture to one that was taken five years ago on my honeymoon so everyone could comment on how young I looked (Tsk -vanity, vanity). Thankfully sanity prevailed and I was strong and left my picture as it was. Of course the very first few comments I received were "Oh my God Rachael, you haven't changed a bit from school. You look the exact same," but my own internal struggles about my appearance had come and gone at that stage and to be honest, I actually didn't mind anyone saying that sort of thing a bit when it came to it. In fact, I found that there was something incredibly heart warming and flattering about people who remembered me from so long ago.
The stories on this new facebook page are hilarious (as are the pictures but the less said about that the better. I was NOT ready to be confronted with my old mullet without warning like that). Firstly, I have discovered that every girl in my class fancied the same boy except me. Of course we were so innocent that a relationship in those days consisted of asking someone to 'go' with you. They either said yes or shrieked "No, I hate you" and ran screaming for the hills. This actually happened to me at a disco when I was ten but instead of running for the hills, he ran straight to my younger sister and asked her to dance instead and she said YES! I was NOT impressed I can tell you. We still joke (row - whatever) about this incident and I know that she will probably kill me for putting it in a blog (Sorry Caroline. Ha Ha! I promise that this is last time that I will ever bring it up again. You're right - it's time to let it go). Anyway once the relationship was established, you promptly never spoke to each other again and that was pretty much the general gist of all couplings at that time.
I however did things a little bit differently. I fancied a boy in my class who also used to live on my road and I terrorized him for years by following him around, forcing him to kiss me and telling me that he HAD to marry me or else! Eventually he told me when we were about seven that if I left him alone that he would marry me when he was sixteen but only if his mother gave him permission. I gather that she said no as my sixteenth birthday came and went and I never heard a word.
I did have another boyfriend when I was ten for a very brief time. His name was Mark Newson and he was English which meant that he had an accent. That counted as the height of sophistication in those days and I was just thrilled when he chose me to be his girlfriend. However, I was forced to dump him mercilessly when he committed the terrible act of buying me a packet of peanut M&M's as a present and presenting them to me in the manner of a man proposing to his lover with a diamond ring. It was just too cheesy and cringe worthy for me and to make things worse he then went and completely mortified me by saluting me in front of my entire family after mass one day. I was teased relentlessly by my brother and sisters for weeks afterwards and thought that I would never forgive him. Obviously no-one had told the English the dating rules of Irish children in the 1980's - ignore each other in public no matter what!
We were so innocent.
We walked to and from school and never worried about getting abducted or getting knocked down (fewer cars and less knowledge of weird individuals - people were just considered eccentric or quirky back then).
We went out in the morning and played in fields, trees and built mud huts and never worried about falling or getting hurt or injured.
When we were out our parents had at best, only a very vague idea of where we were or who we were with but only ever worried and came looking for us if we didn't come home for tea. At this stage I feel that I have to point out that the only thing my parents really did seem to be worried about was the plastic bag. We could be getting up to all sorts of mischief unseen and unheard of for hours on end but if my mother saw any of us with a plastic bag she would let out a blood curdling scream and shriek "Take it off her, take it off her. She'll suffocate, SHE'LL SUFFOCATE!" I can only think is that there must have been some sort of add on the telly at the time about these bags to create such hysteria.
At Christmas time, we had very little expectations. Santy brought you a game, an annual (the Beano was my own personal favourite) and a selection box and you felt ten foot high all of Christmas day and for many days to come. Nowadays, you would find more than that in children's stockings alone. The year I got the Lolo ball (I think they might be called Space hoppers now) was the best. I remember everyone who was anyone had one and we all brought them to school. If only mobile phones with cameras had been invented then as I am sure that the shabby, dingy corridors lined with multicoloured Lolo balls would have made a great picture
There was no such thing as a play date. Children just called around to each others houses and managed to play and sort out squabbles amongst themselves without their mothers watching them and refereeing. These days I attend a lot of mother and toddler groups and play dates and each mother is so afraid of offending another mother via their child that at the first sign of raised voices from the children the mothers are in like a shot ready to administer a warning followed by a time out.
There was also no such thing as a time out. If you were being an obnoxious little brat, you got a smack on your bum and you stopped! It was as simple as that and no-one felt as though they were being abused. You could have your children taken off you for less these days.
Children teased one another and it wasn't deemed as bullying (except in extreme circumstances of course). I remember some of the boys in our class calling other boys (the other boys being the particularly clever boys) "The goody, goody boys" except it wasn't said in a casual manner. It was said in a sing song tone of voice with the speed of a funeral procession. "The goooooooooooodyyyyyyyy, gooooooooodyyyyyyy boooooooooooys" and the goody goody boys laughed it off without their mothers needing to come in to the school to save their little darlings from eternal mental scarring.
We all wanted to be detectives of some sort and solve crime due to television programs like "The A-Team, Macgyver, Knight Rider, Dempsey and Makepeace, Cagney and Lacey, etc. being our staple diet of entertainment. Myself and my friends actually started a crime busting gang called 'the Greatest gang' (it's all in the name) with the intention of solving all the local corruption in our area. We put a few handwritten notices on lampposts advertising our services and sat back on the ground of our well designed mud hut waiting for calls from distressed customers on our imaginary telephone and at the time I remember being genuinely confused as to why there were none.
We went to the shop with a pound and never felt embarrassed or guilty about asking for one hundred penny sweets. Do penny sweets even exist now? Mmmmm, wham bars, refreshers, mint crisps, macaroon bars, Mr. Freezes.... Why was it the food with artificial colours and tons of E's tasted so damn good?
I could go on and on...... but my hands are getting tired (old age probably - it is nearly 25 years since primary school you know) so I won't.
Albeit to to say that I am thrilled that I am taking this unexpected trip down memory lane and meeting up with some very familiar, if a little older faces along the way. It's a little ironic that I am taking it through the 2010 world of Facebook but I am a fan a modern technology; I just wish that we didn't have to lose so much of our innocence and freedom for our kids along the way. Imagine a world where the '80's culture mixed with this new century. Now that really would be living the dream.
Not so with me. I mean I do think of secondary school as some of the funniest and best days of my life but when I am feeling particularly nostalgic, I often think of my primary school days as some of the most innocent and good clean fun times that I have ever spent. It is possible that I am looking at these days with rose tinted glasses as this is also the 1980's time frame that I am talking about but I really don't think so.
Very recently a girl who was in my class from junior infants to sixth class got in touch with me as she had started up a reunion page dedicated to all of our class mates on Facebook. It is nearly twenty five years since we all sat together in those freezing cold prefabs (25 years - can you believe it?) and that was what had prompted this sudden trip down memory lane.
I was stunned. My family and I had left the area where I went to school to move to pastures greener as soon as I had finished sixth class so all of my ties and contacts with these children that I had grown up with were completely severed in one go. I was in shock at hearing from one of these people not least because although I have grown up and moved on, in my minds eye everyone I had once knew had froze in time at around the age of twelve and so it was so hard to get my head around the fact that they had all gone grown up too.
My first though was my profile picture. These people had only ever known me with a mullet hair style, teeth that had a slightly Dracula type look to them and a very,very dodgy dress sense (I know that not a whole lot has changed since then but I like to think that with the use of a brace in my teens and the discovery of the GHD in my early twenties, that things have improved slightly. My dress sense still needs to be worked on a little bit but I can live with that). Please God I thought don't let anyone look at my picture and think she hasn't changed a bit. This might sound like that saddest thing in the world but I genuinely considered changing my profile picture to one that was taken five years ago on my honeymoon so everyone could comment on how young I looked (Tsk -vanity, vanity). Thankfully sanity prevailed and I was strong and left my picture as it was. Of course the very first few comments I received were "Oh my God Rachael, you haven't changed a bit from school. You look the exact same," but my own internal struggles about my appearance had come and gone at that stage and to be honest, I actually didn't mind anyone saying that sort of thing a bit when it came to it. In fact, I found that there was something incredibly heart warming and flattering about people who remembered me from so long ago.
The stories on this new facebook page are hilarious (as are the pictures but the less said about that the better. I was NOT ready to be confronted with my old mullet without warning like that). Firstly, I have discovered that every girl in my class fancied the same boy except me. Of course we were so innocent that a relationship in those days consisted of asking someone to 'go' with you. They either said yes or shrieked "No, I hate you" and ran screaming for the hills. This actually happened to me at a disco when I was ten but instead of running for the hills, he ran straight to my younger sister and asked her to dance instead and she said YES! I was NOT impressed I can tell you. We still joke (row - whatever) about this incident and I know that she will probably kill me for putting it in a blog (Sorry Caroline. Ha Ha! I promise that this is last time that I will ever bring it up again. You're right - it's time to let it go). Anyway once the relationship was established, you promptly never spoke to each other again and that was pretty much the general gist of all couplings at that time.
I however did things a little bit differently. I fancied a boy in my class who also used to live on my road and I terrorized him for years by following him around, forcing him to kiss me and telling me that he HAD to marry me or else! Eventually he told me when we were about seven that if I left him alone that he would marry me when he was sixteen but only if his mother gave him permission. I gather that she said no as my sixteenth birthday came and went and I never heard a word.
I did have another boyfriend when I was ten for a very brief time. His name was Mark Newson and he was English which meant that he had an accent. That counted as the height of sophistication in those days and I was just thrilled when he chose me to be his girlfriend. However, I was forced to dump him mercilessly when he committed the terrible act of buying me a packet of peanut M&M's as a present and presenting them to me in the manner of a man proposing to his lover with a diamond ring. It was just too cheesy and cringe worthy for me and to make things worse he then went and completely mortified me by saluting me in front of my entire family after mass one day. I was teased relentlessly by my brother and sisters for weeks afterwards and thought that I would never forgive him. Obviously no-one had told the English the dating rules of Irish children in the 1980's - ignore each other in public no matter what!
We were so innocent.
We walked to and from school and never worried about getting abducted or getting knocked down (fewer cars and less knowledge of weird individuals - people were just considered eccentric or quirky back then).
We went out in the morning and played in fields, trees and built mud huts and never worried about falling or getting hurt or injured.
When we were out our parents had at best, only a very vague idea of where we were or who we were with but only ever worried and came looking for us if we didn't come home for tea. At this stage I feel that I have to point out that the only thing my parents really did seem to be worried about was the plastic bag. We could be getting up to all sorts of mischief unseen and unheard of for hours on end but if my mother saw any of us with a plastic bag she would let out a blood curdling scream and shriek "Take it off her, take it off her. She'll suffocate, SHE'LL SUFFOCATE!" I can only think is that there must have been some sort of add on the telly at the time about these bags to create such hysteria.
At Christmas time, we had very little expectations. Santy brought you a game, an annual (the Beano was my own personal favourite) and a selection box and you felt ten foot high all of Christmas day and for many days to come. Nowadays, you would find more than that in children's stockings alone. The year I got the Lolo ball (I think they might be called Space hoppers now) was the best. I remember everyone who was anyone had one and we all brought them to school. If only mobile phones with cameras had been invented then as I am sure that the shabby, dingy corridors lined with multicoloured Lolo balls would have made a great picture
There was no such thing as a play date. Children just called around to each others houses and managed to play and sort out squabbles amongst themselves without their mothers watching them and refereeing. These days I attend a lot of mother and toddler groups and play dates and each mother is so afraid of offending another mother via their child that at the first sign of raised voices from the children the mothers are in like a shot ready to administer a warning followed by a time out.
There was also no such thing as a time out. If you were being an obnoxious little brat, you got a smack on your bum and you stopped! It was as simple as that and no-one felt as though they were being abused. You could have your children taken off you for less these days.
Children teased one another and it wasn't deemed as bullying (except in extreme circumstances of course). I remember some of the boys in our class calling other boys (the other boys being the particularly clever boys) "The goody, goody boys" except it wasn't said in a casual manner. It was said in a sing song tone of voice with the speed of a funeral procession. "The goooooooooooodyyyyyyyy, gooooooooodyyyyyyy boooooooooooys" and the goody goody boys laughed it off without their mothers needing to come in to the school to save their little darlings from eternal mental scarring.
We all wanted to be detectives of some sort and solve crime due to television programs like "The A-Team, Macgyver, Knight Rider, Dempsey and Makepeace, Cagney and Lacey, etc. being our staple diet of entertainment. Myself and my friends actually started a crime busting gang called 'the Greatest gang' (it's all in the name) with the intention of solving all the local corruption in our area. We put a few handwritten notices on lampposts advertising our services and sat back on the ground of our well designed mud hut waiting for calls from distressed customers on our imaginary telephone and at the time I remember being genuinely confused as to why there were none.
We went to the shop with a pound and never felt embarrassed or guilty about asking for one hundred penny sweets. Do penny sweets even exist now? Mmmmm, wham bars, refreshers, mint crisps, macaroon bars, Mr. Freezes.... Why was it the food with artificial colours and tons of E's tasted so damn good?
I could go on and on...... but my hands are getting tired (old age probably - it is nearly 25 years since primary school you know) so I won't.
Albeit to to say that I am thrilled that I am taking this unexpected trip down memory lane and meeting up with some very familiar, if a little older faces along the way. It's a little ironic that I am taking it through the 2010 world of Facebook but I am a fan a modern technology; I just wish that we didn't have to lose so much of our innocence and freedom for our kids along the way. Imagine a world where the '80's culture mixed with this new century. Now that really would be living the dream.
Thanks for the memories! Funny!!!
ReplyDeleteYou can still get all of those bars and sweets! including penny sweets! Get yourself down to the shop!
ReplyDeleteAh, they don't put the same level of E's into them these days. Where's the danger I ask you....?
ReplyDeleteOh my God!! I had a lolo ball - and I was on it every waking hour. I actually found some in a shop in Galway and nearly bought one the other day. In fact I must go back and get one for Louise.....she'll love it! Thanks for bringing back all those fab memories!
ReplyDelete