Presentation Effort
Tonight was that event I thought four and a bit years ago I would never be old enough to take part in.
You know the feeling. You're eleven years old, you've moved to a new 'big' school. Sixteen and seventeen year olds seem the epitome of scary coolness and maturity. They are the 'big' people you watch from afar with pure awe and a jot of resentment. Teachers are still people without lives, who crawl from the woodwork only to teach and shout and set pointless poster-drawing exercises. You imagine with youthful naivity that they hibernate underneath small wooden desks during the summer holidays, and (forgive me, oh teacher) that they were born old and bitter. Nay, hatched old and bitter.
When you're that old, getting GCSEs, leaving school and then coming back some months later sporting new haircuts, wearing new sexy jeans and cavorting a skinnier (or indeed the opposite) frame is something you imagine will never ever happen. Like you'll remain eleven years old for ever. You don't think differently when you're twelve, thirteen or fourteen. One step closer to something which will never happen. Even at fifteen, even whilst dragging yourself through the turmoil of inner-emo and hiding arms and legs from fellow bitchy fifteen year olds in the P.E. changing rooms, you think it will never happen. Time drags on (and on and on and on). Being fifteen feels like three years rolled into one.
But then, all of a sudden, it's there. Last year at school. Stress and coursework and revision and exams speed things up, and before you know it, you're finished. Done. Never again. That is, until you return for Presentation Evening (or the 'presentation effort', as it was coined by one unenthused ex-pupil). So you return, and then finally, finally it sinks in. You've spent five years at this place, and the prevailing memories are ones of donning scarves and freezing your hands to a hockey stick whilst suffering from exercise-related asthma attacks. For a whole day you suffer; a day which is designed to encourage feelings of teamwork but instead kindles sparks of sport-induced cruelty. So this is what you remember the most - seasonal 'interforms'. (In summer, this memory takes the form of being hit in the eye by a leather rounders ball.)
After that, you remember supply teachers preaching cactus plants and behaviour strategies to a class of youth who could not care less. Eating cheese strings in an abandoned, teacher-less classroom. Making friends and breaking friends and crying with laughter at in-jokes. School trips. Fire alarms. Freezing on the astroturf. Bleep-test in P.E. Exams. More exams. Assemblies.
None of that changes when you return one final time. You end up thinking a little less of the place you spent five years travelling to and from every day. You end up remembering things you thought had been lost to the abyss of not-important memories, and you realise everything is a lot smaller than it seemed. You realise your headtacher is in fact not witty or at all amusing; you try hard to look past the talk of how many Spanish villas your parents could spend their money on if you had never been born, but really, you can't see beyond the cruelty of wishing away over a hundred teenagers when they are there to be rewarded. At the same time, you remember he did not hatch like that, and that he travels an hour home every evening to a family of grown-up kids. He's been there and done that, dreamt of Spanish villas. He sleeps at night, brushes his teeth with his eyes glued half-shut like the rest of us.
Most importantly, you end up realising the big thing you'd expected never to happen has come and gone, and now you have to find some other remote place in time to look towards with awe and resentment.
And he never did eat the bobble of his bobble hat.
You know the feeling. You're eleven years old, you've moved to a new 'big' school. Sixteen and seventeen year olds seem the epitome of scary coolness and maturity. They are the 'big' people you watch from afar with pure awe and a jot of resentment. Teachers are still people without lives, who crawl from the woodwork only to teach and shout and set pointless poster-drawing exercises. You imagine with youthful naivity that they hibernate underneath small wooden desks during the summer holidays, and (forgive me, oh teacher) that they were born old and bitter. Nay, hatched old and bitter.
When you're that old, getting GCSEs, leaving school and then coming back some months later sporting new haircuts, wearing new sexy jeans and cavorting a skinnier (or indeed the opposite) frame is something you imagine will never ever happen. Like you'll remain eleven years old for ever. You don't think differently when you're twelve, thirteen or fourteen. One step closer to something which will never happen. Even at fifteen, even whilst dragging yourself through the turmoil of inner-emo and hiding arms and legs from fellow bitchy fifteen year olds in the P.E. changing rooms, you think it will never happen. Time drags on (and on and on and on). Being fifteen feels like three years rolled into one.
But then, all of a sudden, it's there. Last year at school. Stress and coursework and revision and exams speed things up, and before you know it, you're finished. Done. Never again. That is, until you return for Presentation Evening (or the 'presentation effort', as it was coined by one unenthused ex-pupil). So you return, and then finally, finally it sinks in. You've spent five years at this place, and the prevailing memories are ones of donning scarves and freezing your hands to a hockey stick whilst suffering from exercise-related asthma attacks. For a whole day you suffer; a day which is designed to encourage feelings of teamwork but instead kindles sparks of sport-induced cruelty. So this is what you remember the most - seasonal 'interforms'. (In summer, this memory takes the form of being hit in the eye by a leather rounders ball.)
After that, you remember supply teachers preaching cactus plants and behaviour strategies to a class of youth who could not care less. Eating cheese strings in an abandoned, teacher-less classroom. Making friends and breaking friends and crying with laughter at in-jokes. School trips. Fire alarms. Freezing on the astroturf. Bleep-test in P.E. Exams. More exams. Assemblies.
None of that changes when you return one final time. You end up thinking a little less of the place you spent five years travelling to and from every day. You end up remembering things you thought had been lost to the abyss of not-important memories, and you realise everything is a lot smaller than it seemed. You realise your headtacher is in fact not witty or at all amusing; you try hard to look past the talk of how many Spanish villas your parents could spend their money on if you had never been born, but really, you can't see beyond the cruelty of wishing away over a hundred teenagers when they are there to be rewarded. At the same time, you remember he did not hatch like that, and that he travels an hour home every evening to a family of grown-up kids. He's been there and done that, dreamt of Spanish villas. He sleeps at night, brushes his teeth with his eyes glued half-shut like the rest of us.
Most importantly, you end up realising the big thing you'd expected never to happen has come and gone, and now you have to find some other remote place in time to look towards with awe and resentment.
And he never did eat the bobble of his bobble hat.
kiwiqueen - 7. Dec, 22:39
However, not all teachers were hatched old and bitter. Some teachers insist on being (and staying at) a middling sort of age. I like to see it as young enough to observe and ridicule the passing fads and fashions of teenage life, while old enough to stay up late, drive cars, ruin my health with the habits and poisons of my choice, and certainly old enough to wear many layers of clothing (and bedding, and hot water bottles) in winter, while the trendy young coatless flibbertigibbets freeze to death.
So there : P