unusual schooling

My education was entirely normal. Well, apart from…

barn break

In years seven and eight my day was split into four quarters:

┌ Period 1
└ Period 2
15 minute break
┌ Period 3
└ Period 4
Lunch
┌ Period 5
└ Period 6
10 minute “barn break”
┌ Period 7
└ Period 8

Being young and obnoxious, it was important to exercise us at regular intervals to prevent classes from becoming too rowdy. As such, we were strongly encouraged to go outside during our precious breaks. Hence the naming of the enigmatic afternoon break: we were sent out to kick a ball about in The Barn.

At this point, friends are already laughing that we had a barn, and laughing harder still when I reveal that the football nets were simply painted onto the walls. However, some of my class didn't particularly care for football so we took a different approach.

We invented Fight Club.

Every barn break, our tutor room would be a mob of wrestling fools. Woe to he who hadn't prepared his books beforehand and had to brave the onslaught to reach his locker.

Many people see this as unpleasant male behaviour, which the school had plenty of, but for us it was a great leveler: everyone fought everyone and everyone fought in a gentlemanly manner. It was also a good way to settle grievances.

suitcases

Boys weren't allowed their bags during the day. Instead, we stored our notes, exercises and textbooks in box folders and carried stacks of them between classes. All the doors had metal plates on the bottom and swung both ways so that we could get through while cradling our folders. You'd best look ahead through the window though, in case someone vigorously kicked the door at you from the other side.

That was fine during the day when you were only carrying two periods at a time. It became a problem when loading up your bag again to go home.

These folders were heavy but, with no easy way to sort through them and take only what we needed, we often needed to cart them back and forth for homework’s sake. Students are known for carrying absurdly heavy backpacks. Not us. We used suitcases.

Every morning and evening hundreds of students would trundle back and forth from the car park and school gates, deafening everything in their path. We looked like a suit of miniscule businessmen returning from their meetings abroad.

I once left my case outside the music school and caused a bomb scare. Thankfully, it was during holidays so few students were around and I was able to intercept a worried teacher before the situation got out of hand.

play

Facilities were limited in variety but ample in sufficiency. We had the barn for football, the playing fields for wide games and walls for fives. Amongst the games we played were sports like football, American football and four-square; running games including the oft-banned bulldog, it and dodge – a variant of it where a tennis ball does the tagging, and smaller games like wine or cheese and blind bench tag.

Blind bench tag was played outside the changing rooms. There, two double-length, backless benches were close enough to jump between. One player would be the tagger and, wearing a blindfold, would stumble about in between the benches, desperately trying to find their opponents. Everyone else would stand on the benches, jumpin over the sweeping arm of the tagger and running between the benches. Miraculously, no one was ever injured.

Wine or cheese was a more sophisticated game, based on Dungeons and Dragons. Every game had a narrator, who opened play by asking a player, “Wine or cheese?” from which answer an entire narrative would spool out. Much like D&D, characters would have stats cards and outcomes would be decided by a roll of the die and an inflated amount of narrator discretion. We found charisma the most important.

We also played a violent variant of wall-ball. Each player must smack the ball at the wall in turn. If the ball is volleyed at the wall, it may bounce before striking the wall. If the ball bounces before being hit, it must strike the wall directly. If the ball bounces twice, it must be kicked at the wall directly. A failure removes the player from the game and they stand against the wall, in the firing line. Their object is now to avoid being struck by the ball. Hitting a player counts as hitting the wall and is encouraged since the ball’s trajectory will be less predictable for the next player.

There's more to tell, and this draft is rather messy, but if don’t post this now I never will. Stay tuned for more stories.