the used-tos
Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught
- Kindergarten
I was enrolled one year later. My ridiculous father didn't seem to think I needed the civilization that education can bring until I was six. (I was sent to primary school on time, thank god.) Memories? A little classmate, a boy whose name I forget, emptied a tube of glue on my book and self when he witnessed a little snipe I took at my best friend. Chivalrous little thing eh? Predictably enough, the teacher punished me instead of the knight of glue.
- Primary
I went to a hoity toity Anglican girls school where unscrupulous teachers and the mummified headmistress converted innocent young lambs. I've disliked proselytizers ever since.
I was a basketball aficionado until I broke a prefect's spectacles during a match of credible schoolgirl intensity.
I suspect my siblings, being rather predictable, speculated on my sexual orientation for some time since it was common knowledge that same sex schools harbored homosexual influences among other perversities. I didn't take offense although I was quite amused.
- Secondary
The others thought I was droll and that I was a practicing Satanist. Yes, they were a naive lot. A regular rock acolyte, I aspired to rock stardom; smoke cigars and drive fancy old cars.
Once, a teacher termed my temperament morbid, snobbish and that I wanted to take over the god-forsaken school. I couldn't quite fathom her accusatory remarks because 1) I was constantly mistaken for a snob when in reality, my friends knew me for the self-effacing person that I was, and 2) I was merely morbid at a morbid age and found myself trapped in a morbid environment of loud mouthed pop music enthusiasts. Is it any wonder that I read more than was recommended and became one of those "weirdoes"?
I suppose I was assiduous in my favourite subjects - History, English and Art - and punctual for the other lessons, where I promptly fell into reveries of varying degrees of inanity. I think I wanted a rock-and-roll lifestyle and the GCSEs didn't bother me one jot.
- College
Or the years of exile. Nasty business studying at a private institution, but I couldn't go to the national universities that demanded an 'A' for Math even though one might be trying for the English department.
At college, I found a number of kindred souls, but these proved to be nebulous relationships with extinct aftermaths. However, I did enjoy myself.
Those were heady days of scribblings about Shelley, Dostoevsky and a busload of others, obfuscating lecturers with hastily written assignments, contemplating the abstruse writer or two, waxing elegiac over Marlowe, hermetic doctors and homosexuals. I arrived at the conclusion: such is life; I dare not repine for fear of breaking the spell of satisfaction.