If we could go back in time and live those days over again we probably wouldn’t.
The schoolyard was a terrifying place. That sea of black tarmac was home to vicious games of elastics and kiss chasing where no preteen was safe. It was a jungle with behaviours that would now fill us with anxiety and fear.
Sure it was fun at the time but we’re lucky to have gotten out alive.
Here are the occurrences we endured.
Snapbacks from elastics games
The game of elastics was as fun as it was dangerous. Whatever supervisor decided it was an okay idea to let children play with ropes fashioned from elastic bands was probably drunk.
Hetero-normative kiss chasing
The boys would run and hide while all the girls hunted them out like prey.
You wouldn’t get one of these bad boys for 20c these days
The entrepreneurial child selling lunch for money
That kid standing at a pillar exchanging squashed cheese sandwiches and Yops for cold hard cash is probably sitting pretty in a leather recliner somewhere heading up a multinational hedge fund.
Getting booked for running
Fuck the black book. It was a permanent record of any and all of your mistakes. Thank Christ that’s gone.
The shunning of the child with head lice
Look Micháel I’m really sorry if this had a lasting effect on your social skills. It wasn’t your fault, they liked clean hair.
Being counted in line like sheep
You were literally forced to stand in line next to some dweeb with your finger pursed on your lips while a substitute teacher obnoxiously rang the bell and another teacher counted you to make sure none of your more adventurous classmates had run away. Surely better security measures should have been implemented.
Hating your line partner
Following on from the above occurrence, it was inevitable that you despised your line partner in every way.
I’m not afraid of you anymore
Getting booked for talking in the line
And yet if you still managed to get yourself in that black book AGAIN.
The sneaky first shift behind a wall of coats
You got your first kiss as your classmates counted down from ten and hid you and your lucky mate/prey under a marquee of puffa jackets.
Puberty chat
If you’d gotten your period you were a queen and you dished out advice to the peasants below RE sanitary pads and cramps.
Swapping lunch with your siblings
Your flustered Ma was just dying to get you and your brother out the door and in her haste she gave ye the wrong lunch boxes. Unless your teacher was sound and let you walk to their classroom and do a swapsies, the yard was the only time to rectify her heinous error.
*Immortalised*Slyly trying to ring the bell
The bell was left on a lonely pillar and if you were brazen enough to go and ring it you were immortalised as a hero. And booked, of course.
