Daily Archives: January 2, 2011

Dreams of childhood (Part 3)

Dreams of childhood (Part 3)

As a child I was horribly, painfully shy. I was scared of everything, including my own shadow. Especially my own shadow. I must have given my poor mother hell because I was one of those children that doesn’t have the confidence to do anything, wants to do it but is too scared and is inevitably regretful because they didn’t. Man, I was rubbish. Luckily starting school is one of those things you have no choice about so, scared or not, I had to go. I probably cried. Actually there’s no probably about it.

School started, unsurprisingly, with Class 1. Mrs Brown was the teacher, a thoroughly lovely and exuberant lady with a shock of thick white hair. I thought she must be about 100 but now I suspect she was 40ish, if that. I remember very little of my classmates at the time although I know a large number of them were in my class with me until we all moved up to senior school. There is one girl I do remember, though, right from day 1. This girl, let’s call her Jenny (because that actually is what her name was), was very memorable for a few reasons: her red hair, her freckles, her loud voice, her authoritative manner. But she was most memorable for her broken leg and its full cast. Now, I’d seen a full cast or two before, my older sister has cerebral palsy and had operations on her legs to straighten them (or something) when I was young, but I’d never seen one on a child so young and to Jenny it was something of a status symbol.

“How did you do that?” I imagine I whispered the question.

“I was running round and round the table and I wondered what would happen if I stuck my leg out,” she told me. Impressive.

Hopefully she’s not reading but it has to be said that Jenny was incredibly annoying all the way through school. I’d like to say it wasn’t her fault. I’d like to. With her supreme self-confidence she couldn’t have been more different to me if she’d tried. In small doses she was fine, though, and she must have already been at the school when I started because I remember her showing me around the classroom on my first day, pointing out the Playmobil and Sticklebricks. It seemed huge, but I expect if I saw it today it would be tiny. Like most reception age classrooms there were little groups of tiny tables and chairs, a separate area where all the toys were kept and an enormous teacher’s desk in front of a blackboard at the front of the room. Every day we were forced to have a “nap” where we had to sit at our tables with our heads in our hands. I hated that because I was never sleepy and time stood still. I don’t remember doing any “real” work in Class 1 but I do remember drawing lots of pictures and making a sheep from cotton wool. All of our sheep were stuck up on the wall to make a huge farming scene that went from floor to ceiling and when everyone had finished they got to climb up the step-ladder themselves and stick it on the wall. Everyone except me, that is. I wanted to but I was far too scared.