Jump to content

Stuff that happened as a child that really shouldnt have.


IANdrewDiceClay

Recommended Posts

  • Members

Not to keep banging the PE teacher drum but clearly they are a deranged bunch. One of ours used to love it when there were odd numbers for football because he'd jump in to make up the numbers. He used to love trying to get one over on the best players who were about 14 at the time. He was winding up one kid who missed an absolute sitter. Couple of minutes later the kid pulls off a quality turn on the teacher and leaves him standing looking a twat and everyone pops for it massive. Next chance he got the teacher goes in two footed on this lad, studs up and leaves him crying on the ground, standing over him going "Get up you faggot". Nothing ever came of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 103
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Paid Members

I don't have many memories of school, but we definitely had a dodgy shower-fixated PE teacher as well.

Insisted that the boys all take showers after PE, and would stand in the doorway to the showers to make sure, and before the start of the lesson would march around the changing rooms checking that everybody had a towel and a change of pants, because if you didn't that obviously meant you were avoiding taking a shower and he'd have to pay special attention. I can't imagine he never got complaints, but he did it for years, and I think he ended up a Deputy Head or something.

There was a PE teacher at my previous school who seemed to have been there forever. Was full of horror stories about what would happen if you didn't listen to him - stories of a lad not stopping when he was told, throwing a javelin and it spearing another kid through the shoulder, or kids getting run over for not stopping at the road on the way to cross-country. Speaking of cross-country, it was through Beverley Westwood, and there were a ton of shortcuts that pretty much everyone knew about, and he'd take every single one of them to make sure he got a better time than the kids. Either that, or he'd cycle alongside you with a fag in his mouth, barking out insults.

Even the whole cross-country thing seems a bit mental to me now - I got pneumonia from being forced to do it in the snow, in shorts and a flimsy T-shirt, in Year 7 or 8. And the first time we did it, there was no set route, they just let thirty odd kids loose to run about wherever they wanted, with only one teacher for supervision, who just said "alright, all meet back here at the end of the lesson".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

We had a Northern psychopath PE teacher who gave everyone a hard time regardless of ability, though if you were shit at something he'd let everyone know. I remember him going around the changing room pretending to throw a football at each kid in turn, and laughing when they flinched. I got to one of the harder kids who didn't flinch so he threw it full force at his head. Nice guy. 

Another PE teacher we had was Paul Clement. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Thinking of other teachers...

At my first secondary school, we had a woodwork teacher that would routinely throw blocks of wood to just miss a kid's head if they didn't stop talking when asked, or slam a chisel into the table inches away from their hands if they weren't paying attention. Don't remember him ever actually teaching us a fucking thing, but it was years after anyone could have made any kind of argument for that sort of thing being acceptable.

An English teacher at my second school was notorious for throwing blackboard rubbers at kids at the slightest provocation, and was quietly encouraged to retire after smashing up his desk in a fit of a rage. Though, oddly, he was also the teacher that students most wanted to get detention with, as he'd just give them a cup of tea and a chocolate bar.

Then there was the Maths teacher who was always rumoured to have a bottle of vodka in either her desk drawer or the stationery cupboard, depending on who you asked - pretty much every year she ever taught had at least one kid who would swear blind that she got up to go to the cupboard during a lesson just to take a swig of booze, though whether there was ever any truth to it or just one of those persistent rumours, who knows? One of my old teachers is my union boss now, so I might ask him if he has any insight on any of the old rumours.

Aside from the aforementioned PE teacher, I don't really remember any of the teachers being particularly nonce-y, though given I went to school in Jersey, I'd say statistically at least a few of them must have been nonces and/or Nazi collaborators.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members
2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I don't have many memories of school, but we definitely had a dodgy shower-fixated PE teacher as well.

Insisted that the boys all take showers after PE, and would stand in the doorway to the showers to make sure, and before the start of the lesson would march around the changing rooms checking that everybody had a towel and a change of pants, because if you didn't that obviously meant you were avoiding taking a shower and he'd have to pay special attention.

This is exactly what we had, except it was a woman who used to take us all to the swimming pool down the road. You think nothing of it at the time, it's just normal for your teacher to make sure the lads have showered and have dried themselves off properly. She used to help some of the lads pull up their briefs too. This pool was independent of the school so I dunno if a member of staff thought it was odd that she was in a male locker room with a bunch of eight year olds. Fast forward 24 years and she's the principal I hear.

This one isn't bad at all, but I dont think you could get away with now. One day in 5th class, for whatever reason, there's only about six people that have turned up. It might have been the day before we broke up for the summer (in Ireland, summer break is 2 months for primary school, 3 months for secondary). So instead of teaching us anything, he says fuck it, bundles us all into his car and takes us to the local park where we played football all day while he sat on a bench and read the paper. Hero.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members
1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

I'd say statistically at least a few of them must have been nonces and/or Nazi collaborators.

Nonzis?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

This isn't so much a shocking anecdote, but BomberPat's cross country stuff brought it back vividly, so settle in for a rambling story. I hated PE so much. I didn't hit my growth spurt until just before my GCSEs, so was a short, fat, clumsy child, and as such, PE lessons were Lord of the fucking Flies. The teachers were just the bullies but 20 years older, and favoured all the sporty kids/bullies, because obviously the Venn diagram of 'sporty kids' and 'bullies' is a perfect circle. So, for most of school, PE would either see me pissing about in the corner with the other reject kids, with even the teachers knowing it was a waste of time us being there, or forced into some kind of team game, where you'd get yelled at "LEAVE IT!" if the ball came anywhere near you. On some occasions, you might get a kick in and actually connect with the ball and have it go in the right direction, and then you'd spend the next week getting sarcastic cheers of "Weeey! Here's fuckin' Gazza!" every time you entered the room.

So, then came cross country runs. Like Pat said, a truly insane thing when you look back on it. We were made to run all the way round our massive field, out onto an extremely busy main road, then through a bunch of residential streets until we came back in through the rear carpark of the school. Even at a good clip, it was a 40 minute run. Every winter (always fucking winter), we'd go through this Hell, and me and my fat mates would always hobble across the line some 20 minutes after everyone else, limping into the changing room still in our sweaty gear, soaked with rain, clutching at the stitches in our abdomens, while the other kids were already showered and back in their uniforms. Whatever lesson was next, we'd be late for it.

I was always so determined to do well during cross country, talking myself up as I ran to not give up and to keep going, dreaming of the day I'd not be stuck right at the back, finally able to earn a modicum of earnest, unsarcastic respect from my peers, and have the teacher to not look at me like I was human shit. But always, no matter how hard I tried, I was in that last pack of stragglers. But then it got to year 9 or 10, when the hard lads discovered smoking. So, as we all slogged it through the town, the kids who were usually first over the line stopped off at one of their mums' houses along the route for a 20 minute fag break, literally too cool for school. By the time they'd stubbed out and rejoined the race, I'd already gone over the line. Hollow victory, sure, but my name was the highest it'd ever been on the timesheet by a mile. I was so boyed by this; by the feeling of having achieved something with my terrible body; that I tried even harder the following week, actually looking forwards to it.

It was the same story as before, the sporty lads couldn't be arsed, but I gave it everything I had, and got my personal best by some distance, and a genuinely respectable time by anyone's standards. Having been trapped as this clumsy, perennially last-picked mess, and like all boys, always dreaming of sporting glory, I finally felt like I might not be so wretched after all. Look what happens when you apply yourself! The next week, the teams were being picked for county cross country, or whatever it was, and by virtue of my most recent performances, I was eligible to be at the meeting where they'd choose who'd be representing the school. Me and all the usual sporty bully pricks had all given up our lunchbreak to be there. The PE teacher clocked me as soon as he walked in; him of the creepy obsession with boxer shorts. He started off with a speech, during which he never took his eyes off of me. This isn't verbatim, but it was along the lines of "Obviously some people deserve to be here, while others are treating it like a joke and just want to get out of lessons. Some ridiculous faces here today." He picked the team. I didn't run for the school. From then until the day I left, I never put another atom of effort into PE.

Non-PE related, there was a kid who was similarly low on the social totem poll who, I guess, sought to elevate himself by attacking me in ways he'd be arrested for now. During textiles class, he stabbed me right through the palm of my hand with a pair of scissors while I tried to defend myself from being stabbed in the face. I was immediately bleeding everywhere, as he tried to grass me up for having 'a blood capsule' like he was fucking Tommy Boyd. Not long after, in Design and Technology, he bent a nail into a piece of wood, heated it up in the belt sander until it was glowing red hot, and then came up behind me and stamped the whole thing down on the back of my hand. I had a weird 3D-printed bent-nail scar rising out of the back of my hand for about a year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Awards Moderator

Wonderfully written Astro. I’d have nominated that as an ultra relatable POTY contender until the horror Saw stuff at the end! Can totally identify with being a sporting loser, but somehow finding some small victory and then being torn down immediately for it. Mine came during middle school PE when I surprised the sporty kids by actually being half decent at football when given a chance to touch the ball, until one of them hoofed the ball at my face and smashed my glasses into several pieces. I was on the ground trying to gather up bits of frame and the teacher’s response amounted to ‘what are you so upset about, get up, we’re trying to play here’. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Am I the only one here who didn't either have a psychopath or a cunt for a PE teacher?

There was two in my school, one male and one female. The female PE teacher also took me for Geography until I gave it up before my GCSEs. She was a bit aloof, a feeling that at any point she could snap at you and didn't seem to be trying to "get with" any of the boys or girls as mentioned in other posts here but looking back she was simply firm but fair. Might not have helped that a few months before I started at the school her husband, who was a teacher himself at the same school, had died at home in a farming accident so it might have changed her character after that. The male PE teacher however was a gent and although he was locally respected for his Gaelic football talents he always ensured that everyone got involved and was accommodating for all abilities as long as you gave some effort no matter what the activity. He retired from teaching a few years after I left and depression hit him not too long afterwards, the last time I met him was earlier this year and his mental health is better but he's now fighting arthritis and sometimes has to have a walking stick with him.

Not every teacher there was a saint. A couple of years after I left there was a teacher that I once had that got fired after a bunch of her students saw her taking a gulp from a bottle of Vodka she had in her handbag in the middle of class, and another teacher (though never took me for anything) whom not long after retiring spiralled into alcohol abuse and died from it a few years later having been not able to get back on the waggon.

One story from Primary school I have is when the parents of a boy in my primary 7 class burst into the classroom one afternoon and the father went up to the teacher, grabbed him by his jumper with both hands and threatened to knock his head clean off if he laid a hand on his son again. This was back in the early 90's when officially corporal punishment had been outlawed for a few years but many primary schools locally in particular were still using it but not as much as they used to, and it wasn't unusual for bad behaviour to be punished with a slap on the hand from a plastic ruler or worse still one from a wooden ruler or even a smack across the arse from a meter stick. The only time I ever remember getting physically punished was as a six year old when I pulled another boy off a window sill because he was picking away at the fresh putty that was applied to a new window that replaced a smashed one. I got taken to the headmasters office and got a leather strap across the palm of my left hand and I still plead my innocence to this day. He was a school principal right in the authoritarian mould of Catholic (Northern) Ireland of the 70s and 80s and quite simply, if you were called to his office the chances were that it wasn't going to be good for you. He had a heart attack and died whilst I was there and was replaced by a female principal who was much, much less into physically punishing children and willing to engage more with them (at least as was the case for its time). But back to my teacher whom became a whimpering wreck when the boy's father got hold of him, I remember when the parents left the classroom our whole class of 42 boys & girls were in shock including the boy whose parents had just left. The teacher took a few breaths, told us to either talk quietly or do some work while he went out of the classroom. A few minutes later the principal came in and took us for the remainder of the school day. The teacher in question never returned to teach us, I'm not sure if he was given leave or was suspended, and eventually either retired or was dismissed, all I know was that for the next few months we had at least half a dozen temporary teachers (most of them quite young so probably not long out of teacher training college) taking our class for the remainder of the school year before we all left and moved on to post-primary.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Fucking hell, I just remembered Victorian Day. I don't know if they still do it, but my primary school was split into two separate buildings, Infants and Juniors. Infants was a fairly bog-standard '70s breezeblock looking building, whilst Juniors was an old Victorian schoolhouse about ten minutes' walk away, and once a year, the kids at Juniors had to do "Victorian Day" - you'd dress up in "Victorian" dress, which usually meant borrowing Grandad's flat cap, your Mam making you a weird scarf thing out of loose fabric, and a plain white shirt. Only the poshest of twats had an actual fancy dress costume.

The lessons were then supposed to be vaguely Victorian in theme - Maths with old money, that sort of thing. But for one or two teachers in particular, it was an excuse to behave like an absolute screaming cunt with the excuse that it was all part of the fun. They'd line kids up to "inspect" their uniforms, raging against anyone who hadn't met a completely non-existent uniform standard (again, everyone's in fancy dress), checking that their fingernails were trimmed and tidy, and smacking you across the knuckles with a wooden ruler if they felt you weren't paying attention, or made any slight mistake; which, invariably, we all did, because we're primary school kids trying to do Maths with currency that doesn't exist any more, that we know fuck all about, and that will never be useful knowledge for us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Not from my childhood, but from 2013 at my old school - one of my PE teachers shot a kid in the face with a starting pistol. How I had forgotten about this until now is beyond me.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members
4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Frankly, I was most perplexed by why anyone would use a starting pistol for indoor five-a-side.

Whistle gone missing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...