It’s the last weekend before my kids go back to school. When I was a kid, this was the most dreaded weekend of the year. I loathed school, and that loathing was never more acute than after six weeks of summer holidays.
They say you can’t remember pain, but I very clearly remember the fear I felt the day before I started secondary school as a physical pain. I remember sitting at my nan’s house, spending the last few hours of freedom watching He-Man, dipping garibaldis in milky tea, and feeling my own time slipping away, knowing that soon it would belong to someone else.
For me, the absolute best thing about being an adult is that you don’t have to go back to school at the end of the summer holidays. Although, saying that, a part of me is still afraid that one day I will wake up and my whole adult life will have been a dream and that it will be a Tuesday and I will have double German followed by double maths.
There’s one redeeming thing about going back to school though: new stationery. Oh the pleasure of a new pencil case.
My 11-year-old starts at a new school this week, and he has a brand new orange pencil case stuffed with freshly sharpened pencils. It’s a thing of beauty. I am just a little bit envious of that pencil case.
I hope it gives him comfort over the first few days of his new school. The inside of a pencil case is like a little bit of home on your desk. Whatever trials and humiliations you endure in the classroom, there’s always the inside of your pencil case for safety.
My kid doesn’t seem nervous at all about starting, but maybe he holds everything inside the way I did. Do. Or maybe school just isn’t so scary anymore. At my school, you had to choose whether you got slaps on the bum with a plimsole or thwacks on the palm with a ruler when you were naughty. That’s unimaginable now. My kid will be in a brilliantly equipped special needs unit in a mainstream school, and all the students in it get their lessons on their iPads. It’ll be like lessons in Star Trek.
Maybe school is a much brighter, kinder place now than it was when I was a kid.
But then, maybe that means kids don’t enjoy summers the way I used to enjoy them.
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Oh! You reminded me of things I’d forgotten – that little bit of home represented by a pencil case. So true. I think I hid a wee toy koala in mine. I do have anxiety dreams even now that I am due to sit an A’level that I haven’t studied for. That stress goes deep.
I still get to experience the utter dread at the end of summer as my twins (14) suffer a huge amount of anxiety around school. I’m not sure they’ve found it a kinder place, sadly. (My boys are also in special needs unit’s in mainstream schools and we have to provide a netbook for them to use. The idea of working on iPads is wonderful! It sounds as if your son will be going to an ace school and his lack of nervousness does bode well. Hurrah!) However, no physical punishments now can only be a good thing. No standing in bins either (a favourite reprimand of my science teacher.)
Thanks Sara. You’re so right, I think it takes a lifetime to recover from our schooldays (ie never). I get the same nightmares about sitting exams and not having revised. I get similar dreams about readings sometimes too, where I arrive at the venue and then realise I’ve not yet finished the story – do you get those too?
Sorry to hear your boys get anxious about going back to school. That sucks 🙁 I hope they get on okay this week.
Your science teacher made you stand in a bin?! Do you ever wish you could track him/her down now and pay them a visit with a wheelie bin?
Theoretically it’d be cool to track the science teacher down but the reality would be very different: “Crazed woman dumps pensioner in wheelie bin” – remember the cat lady? Yikes!
It’s frightening to think what an enormous impact school had. I don’t have anxiety dreams about doing readings but that’s probably because if I’m doing one I fill every waking moment with anxiety about it 😉
Let’s hope back to school week goes well for all.
Hahaha, yes, I guess it would be frowned upon.
Hi Adam. I was clearing our my garage a few days ago and found my old pencil case from still full of pens, pencils and memories from my school days. Inside I had written my name and underneath someone (I think it was you) had written ‘…is a casual’. I’m pretty sure that was not a complement given our like of heavy metal! It made me laugh (again).
Take a look: http://bit.ly/OrXdNv and here http://bit.ly/RLh8au
Brilliant! Chris, that’s provoked a flood of memories – thank you. I’d forgotten all about ‘casuals’, hahaha. That definitely looks like my handwriting. My old pencil case is sadly long gone, so I can’t check if you wrote any insults in mine. I remember being very jealous of your ink eradicating pen, and the way you double-underlined all your headings so neatly. We’ll have to get together soon for a full-on nostalgia-thon.