I'm Loving It ... Not!
My first memory of school is looking out into a beautiful, old-style, Maltese garden, where children as small as I was were eating their Maltese-bread-and-strawberry-jam-sandwiches and either teasing each other or crying their hearts out and trying to swallow whole boluses of sickly-sweet sandwich between the heart-broken snivelling ...
I don't know why the children all seemed to know each other, whilst I didn't know them. Maybe I started school late, as I was born rather late in the year, which always made me the youngest child in class. Anyhow, there I stood, clutching my new school case to my chest, as if it would protect me against the onslaught, and looking at the tear-, strawberry jam- and snot-bedecked gore as it unfolded before me.
I don't know if this was my first day at school or not. This is just my first memory, and it is followed by more memories of tearful grand-entrances into school, swollen noses and tingling eyes - and lots and lots of coercing and cajoling in order to get me into class. At some point I must have gotten used to it and stopped crying because I started noticing the head teacher every morning: the details about her as she sat under the staircase with coiffed, grey-purplish hair (she must have been in the habit of giving it a regular rinse) immaculately tucked under a hair net, bidding "good morning" to us as we were dragged unwillingly into the class room. My mother says I never stopped crying to go to school during that first year - I beg to differ.
My first teachers were a set of identical twins, and at three, it was confusing - who on earth was who? I'd look into the next room and there was my teacher all over again, looking just like the girl who was writing numbers or drawing stick people on the board, in coloured chalk, in front of me. Wherever I looked it was the same face and the same voice - but they didn't have the same name!
And on it went, day in day out - the old school mistress under the stairs, the twin teachers, some letters and numbers, and more stick-people, the teasing and crying - and the strawberry jam sandwiches which I've hated ever since.
The next year I graduated to another school, and this time it wasn't close to home. No, I had to go there using the school bus. So every gray morning saw me waiting for the blessed bus with my satchel held tightly in my hands, together with a couple of equally bedraggled, whining school-mates. Mummies said good-bye profusely every day, making it a point to say "see you soon" as loudly and as clearly as possible, as the bus spouted fumes and back-fired loudly ... and off we went. It was a long way to school and the sun never shone on that route. Again, all around me were wailing kids, snivels and sodden hankies - and I'm sure I wailed louder than anyone there.
The new school was bigger - it was a place of large corridors, screaming teachers and children sitting over little puddles of their own making while trying to learn their ABCs. I was always impressed by the puddles, but I never produced one. That, it seemed, was something to be happy about, although I could not really understand why.
This year there was also something new - we all wore the same clothes, which they called a uniform, and which was all covered by a little pinny whilst we were doing our work.
Our breaks were held downstairs in the garden, and now there was also some fun to be had playingRing a Ring of Roses, Oranges and Lemons and jumping between lengths of elastic stretched between legs - but it was also a time when the boys started showing just what made them tick, flaunting their newly-learnt tricks like pulling up skirts and pushing girls in the soil just for the fun of it. The ultimate retaliation to get back at such cheekiness, and meant to strike fear into the hearts of the wayward, little school-yard nuisances was holding out one's hand with the palm of the hand facing the culprit and crying, "I'll 'cuse you", which we all did with such frequency that whoever was in charge of supervising play-time, and receiving these "accusations", must have been half silly by the time she set off for home.
The school-yard was also a place of "education". This was a small yard and the toilets were close by - a muddle of boys and girls, all pushing to get in as fast as they could and not miss a minute of play-time if they could help it. The toilets at school is where I (and doubtlessly many others) discovered that boys were vastly different to girls, and that they were almost nothing short of another species altogether.
Off, finally went the bell, and back to the boring job of learning letters and numbers and listening to our teacher telling us how bad, naughty and disappointing we were. Punishments flew about all over the place in a desperate attempt to keep us all quiet and concentrating on what we had to do. One girl I knew must have spent half the year tied to her chair with a skipping rope, and there was always someone in the corner or showing off a freshly-spanked, red hand to the lucky ones who had escaped the teacher's wrath. Lessons were regularly punctuated by parents calling for the little, puddle-children, who called for them and took them back home, wet and in red-faced disgrace.
Once a week we ate lunch at school - or at least I did. There we sat at the huge tables in the refectory, our feet swinging in the air, waiting for our plate of convent fare. Foul was the word to describe the food. It usually took the shape of watery soup, lumps of black meat splashing around for dear life in a quagmire of brown sauce - which most of us left untouched - and custard desserts in dark pink and green, strewn with coconut and a cherry or two. The nuns cajoled and told us to eat and not to waste food, but it was like asking ... Sometimes we had spaghetti in tomato sauce, and we loved that, although we invariably ended up looking as if our pinnies had eaten more of it than we had.
After lunch it was back on the bus and the long ride home, clutching the satchel which reminded me that I had a home somewhere, and that soon I would be there - in familiar surroundings - and not out here, alone, in a strange world. The trip home was a brighter trip all round, and sometimes song actually broke out amongst us. This must have been a great relief from the point of view of the teachers on the bus. Here, at last, was the end of yet another day full of tears, strife and the gnashing of little milk teeth.
Along the years, there were two further schools to get used to, each one drearier than the one before it. The tears and red eyes and noses made their way out of my school days somewhere along the way, however I can never say I ever really loved school and always attended with a heavy heart. In fact, I hated it with a passion although somehow, and by some miracle, it did its job and I actually learnt something, passed my exams and finally got out the other end in one piece.
Finally, please spare a thought for the hundreds of little sweet-hearts who will be going to school for the first time this year, with very heavy, little hearts cradled in their chests. It's a big, big step for these little mites, and they need all the love, help and understanding they can get.
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