Intimations of Mortality - 4
Being a series of random but loosely connected musings on my life, the world I have lived in and what the future - what's left of it - may hold.
My academic career - even using those words now makes me want to cringe - was one of unalloyed triumph. It is unseemly to boast of such things but I achieved higher ratings in my specialist subjects, at a younger age, than any girl in the history of the school. One or two of the boys outstripped me, but they were special cases.
In each year, from the age of eleven, when I entered my Secondary school, to the age of sixteen, when I left, I was top of the school for demerits, detentions, class exclusions, bad reports, canings. I was every teacher's nightmare - the bright kid who really didn't give a fuck. I was a total brat. As I said before, disrespectful, disruptive, disobedient.
This wasn't my life. I refused to take part in it. My dreams were elsewhere.
In a more enlightened age, I would probably have been diagnosed with Special Educational Needs. Referred to child psychologists. My home life dissected by social workers. Back then, I was beaten. In school. At home.
And this, too, was not my life so, no matter how much it hurt me, I refused to be beaten by it.
I entered the secondary education system with only one ambition - to get out of it at the earliest opportunity and try to find my real life. My real self. The system offered people like me no route to higher education. "College" was for clever people, posh people. We were the ones who used to become maids, wash rich people's dirty underwear. Now, we went into factories and made washing machines.
Not my life. I wanted glamour, style, fun. I wanted to party, to wear fashionable clothes, to hang out in swanky bars and clubs with swanky people.
Yes, I was shallow. But I was also determined. Because I knew that was my destiny. My real life.
At the age of sixteen, I left school. The only qualifications I had for a future career were long legs, a round arse, tits. And a smile that went from cheeky to "Fuck you!" in a flash.
It was time to begin my education.
My academic career - even using those words now makes me want to cringe - was one of unalloyed triumph. It is unseemly to boast of such things but I achieved higher ratings in my specialist subjects, at a younger age, than any girl in the history of the school. One or two of the boys outstripped me, but they were special cases.
In each year, from the age of eleven, when I entered my Secondary school, to the age of sixteen, when I left, I was top of the school for demerits, detentions, class exclusions, bad reports, canings. I was every teacher's nightmare - the bright kid who really didn't give a fuck. I was a total brat. As I said before, disrespectful, disruptive, disobedient.
This wasn't my life. I refused to take part in it. My dreams were elsewhere.
In a more enlightened age, I would probably have been diagnosed with Special Educational Needs. Referred to child psychologists. My home life dissected by social workers. Back then, I was beaten. In school. At home.
And this, too, was not my life so, no matter how much it hurt me, I refused to be beaten by it.
I entered the secondary education system with only one ambition - to get out of it at the earliest opportunity and try to find my real life. My real self. The system offered people like me no route to higher education. "College" was for clever people, posh people. We were the ones who used to become maids, wash rich people's dirty underwear. Now, we went into factories and made washing machines.
Not my life. I wanted glamour, style, fun. I wanted to party, to wear fashionable clothes, to hang out in swanky bars and clubs with swanky people.
Yes, I was shallow. But I was also determined. Because I knew that was my destiny. My real life.
At the age of sixteen, I left school. The only qualifications I had for a future career were long legs, a round arse, tits. And a smile that went from cheeky to "Fuck you!" in a flash.
It was time to begin my education.
61-69, F
