MEMOIRS:
CHAPTER 9 THE START OF SCHOOL
It was the year of the first 747 Jumbo, the break-up of the Beatles, Apollo 13, Cleese’s silly walk, the death of Jimmi and Janis, Greer’s Female Eunech, Butch and Sundance, the West Gate Bridge disaster, the Jackson Five’s ABC and Peter Downey’s entrance into the New South Wales education system.
I was paralytic with excitement in the final weeks of the holidays. Then the countdown reached zero and the day finally came when my drink bottle, lunch box and floppy back pack were finally put to use. I can still remember the smooth plastic of the lunch box and the smell of warm peanut butter when I opened it. The frosted drink bottle had not only a cap but a green ovuloid cup as its lid. Mum froze the drink bottle so it swelled and distorted like a… like a… well… like a plastic drink bottle filled with red cordial that had been in the freezer all night.
On the car trip to school, I was filled with anticipation, and could hardly speak with the excitement. These warm and fuzzy feelings lasted right up to the approximate moment when I got out of the car.
On my mental view-screen (as I had fantasized in my pre-sleep moments under the blankets over the previous weeks) I had envisioned school as a vast warehouse of Lego supervised by a maternal woman who told stories and handed out bowls of custard.
On getting out of the car, I saw hundreds of children - some crying - a vast ocean of asphalt and enormous and foreboding buildings reminiscent of a Dickensian poorhouse as filmed by Tim Burton.
I let my feelings be known by grabbing on to the school fence - a long run of vertical steel bars – and refusing to let go. My parents responded by getting a leg each and pulling me along the length of the fence parallel with the ground, my hands slapping from bar to bar and causing reverberations from the fence like a deep metallic xylophone. I must have looked like someone dropping from rung to rung down a ladder on a horizontal plane.
Eventually the fence ran out and I dropped to the ground, but all hope was not lost. My fingers found purchase on the grass driveway as my parents dragged me on undaunted. Any new Kindy children arriving at school through the gate could find their way to the classroom simply by following the trough left behind as I ploughed across the playground with my claw-like hands.
My teacher was Mrs Lowe, an enormously birds-nested woman who had graduated from the College for Kindy Teachers with Sing-song Voices. Even when she gave instructions to sit in a circle, it was an aria.
After a somewhat hesitant beginning, I took to school like a fish takes to bait. I loved my little wooden chair and desk and folder full of colouring in. I loved sitting up straight and marching and lining up and I looked forward to story time and news time and singing.
One of the best parts of the day was when the music box came out and we each got an instrument. There were triangles, tambourines, cymbals, sleigh bells, shakers and weird wooden fish with rippled backs that you clacked a stick down. My instrument of choice was the castanet, which delivered a satisfyingly sharp cracking noise like a machine gun when shaken back and forth with just the right oscillation.
Mrs Lowe would perch herself over the piano and belt out something about leaving a little girl in Kingston Town while the class exploded into a frenzy of arhythmic percussion. I was horrified at the blatant inability of most of the class to clack, shake, hit and tap in any way that even vaguely complemented the song in question.
I soon became a thorn in Mrs Lowe’s ample side with my constant attempts to get those around me to play on the beat – a feat attempted by grabbing their instruments from them and trying to play several of them myself along with kind words of encouragement like, “That’s not how you do it, this is how you do it…”
Their musical skills did not improve in the slightest but I managed to make lots of children cry on a semi-regular basis. Within weeks I was castanetting about daddy taking me to the zoo tomorrow up the back of the classroom by myself where I couldn’t bother the others as they sat there clumsily hammering away like neanderthals beating yak bones.
My misadventures soon spread out to other academic areas. Living out at Corrinyah, my father had filled in my spare hours between tree climbing and lolly theft in teaching me to read. He had a kit sent out from Sweden or somewhere equally nordic which was made up of stacks of flashcards of words like mother, dog, happy and Volvo. It didn’t taken me long to graduate to a book about Sam and his various body parts and almost as fast as my parents could buy them I was churning through Dr Suess books about a cat with a hat, some bloke who didn’t like green eggs and a dog that liked to dig ditches. I spent hours behind the piano with a stash of books poring over the intricate rhymes and even more intricate illustrations of disturbingly unstable buildings, bridges and machines.
The end result was that while my new-found friends were learning that “a” is for “apple”, I was throwing up my hand and calling out that it also stood for “archipelago” and “alabaster”.
Mrs Lowe was quick to point out that “p” stood for “Pain in the bum” and sent me to the “b” which stood for “Back of the Classroom”.
Toward the end of first term, we put on a short play one night for the parents. It is probable that our play lasted just a few minutes and we were the cute-value warm-up for the older kids who came on later with a more substantial dramatic offering. But in my mind, it was a production matched in scale and grandeur only by Aida.
With the typical egocentricity of the small child, I was amazed that so many families had turned out to see me play the part of the Scarlet Pirate. My role as lead in the show was cleverly disguised by my position at the back of the stage and the fact that I had no lines. But I sang and strutted as if every eye was on me.
My already shaky relationship with Mrs Lowe was not furthered when half way through the finale song, I pushed my way to the front and began waving to my parents, an act totally out of character with the Scarlet Pirate’s tough demeanour. They waved back heartily, although later I found out it was not actually a wave of “hello, you’re doing well” as much as a wave of “get back in your place, you bloody little idiot.”
But I didn’t need to worry about Mrs Lowe. I wouldn’t be in her class much longer.
·
My entry through the gates of Goulburn South Public School was a lot more dignified at the start of Term 2 than in the term prior. I had made plenty of friends… “friends” being the technical term for any kids who didn’t snatch toys I was playing with. On top of that, I had found all the marching, clapping and painting easy, which allowed lots of time for daydreaming, mucking up, bossing other kids around and generally pointing out the flaws of their work.
Unfortunately, these innate leadership abilities were not appreciated by Mrs Lowe, who unbeknownst to me had formed a secret alliance with my parents to spoil my fun.
The news was broken to me that I had prematurely graduated from Kindergarten into the lofty academic heights of Year 1 and I was to report there straight away. It was like winning the Lottery and so with a pride that transcended simple arrogance, I packed my few belongings and walked out of Kindy leaving the kids to their musical ineptitude and literary deficiencies.
This newfound hubris lasted approximately ten steps before my bottom lip and lower legs began a simultaneous tremble. Like a sad refugee, it was with hot tears in my eyes and a wet mouth that I crossed the asphalt playground clutching a shoe-box of my scholastic belongings. There were some crayons, a plastic stapler and a paper plate with my name written on it, decorated by crepe paper balls that I had scrunched and glued with my own little hands. The most bizarre possession in my pathetic menagerie was a matchbox stuffed with cotton wool and a dead spider.
The Year One building was a monstrous and ominous structure built in an era when walls were five feet thick, hallways were long and polished and ornate ceilings were so high they were almost out of range of the naked eye.
Mrs Stone guided me solemnly to my desk, next to a kid called Bertie. It is amazing that even at that age, kids have developed the capacity for cruelty and exclusion. It took only seconds for me to size up Bertie’s dirty fingernails, messy hair and thick glasses held together with sticky tape to realise that he was the class victim. It is a sad indictment on my character that I never did anything to stick up for him, despite the fact that he was nothing but civil to me.
The Year One curriculum revolved mostly around learning the rules of Hector the Safety Cat and making papier mache vehicles out of toilet rolls and matchboxes. But when we weren’t up to our elbows in flour’n’water soaked pages of the Goulburn Herald I could still hold my own in reading and was pleased that the class could at least all belt out the beat in Waltzing Matilda.
·
Perhaps the biggest advantage of Year One was that we were allowed to use what were colloquially referred to as “the big toilets”.
The Kindergarten classrooms had been equipped with tiny toilets, a row of little porcelain bowls which were inside the classroom, hidden only by a short wall. Even at that age, my toilet-phobia was highly evolved and I had spent many a boggle-eyed day busting rather than humiliate myself by indulging in the spectacle of highly public group defecation.
But as a new Year One student, there would be no more of that. The big toilets were isolated in a squat brick shed on the other side of the playground. The toilet block was off limits during class time and so it was actually compulsory for all kids to go the toilet at the end of lunch.
When the bell went, two lines quickly formed of boys and girls respectively, while the teachers called out their favourite phrase during lining-up situations, “single file, indian style”.
There was a great sense of anticipation in the line the closer you got to the toilet block. The door was like the mystical entrance to a temple or Aladdin’s cave guarded by two teachers who stood as sentinels to the holy and secret rites performed within.
As you turned the corner you were faced with a line of a dozen or so bare bums perched atop a poplar forest of spindly legs, courtesy of the boys jostling shoulder to shoulder at the urinal with their elasticised shorts and underpants around their ankles. Their heads were bowed reverently as they focussed on the task at hand.
There was always much laughter and carry-on “at the wall” (as we used to say) as each boy engaged in manic “sword-fights” or tried to outdo each other in shooting their golden jet-stream as high as possible on the urinal surface.
Standing there with rows of multiple urine streams shooting upwards off to my left and right was like a bizarre nightmare set amongst the amazing jets of the Hellbrunn Water Palace.
Without a doubt, the undisputed and highly regarded champion of the height record was Daniel Canter. A stocky blond boy with a perpetual grin, he was the true master, the Von Braun of trajectory, the Da Vince of piss.
When it came to gravity defying urinary motion, Canter was an artiste. He would begin with an almost imperceptible bending of the knees before leaning carefully back like he was riding an invisible windsurfer. Next, through a subtle manipulation between thumb and forefinger, he would incline his organ of creation upward to achieve maximum trajectory.
His jet stream would splash down in the thin metal tray that ran along the top of the urinal. It would instantly fill and flow to the right and left and a heady aroma would fill the air, bringing with it yelps of choking laughter from the other urinees.
Daniel Canter and I became good friends. He came to my house after school and we ran around the back field throwing acorns and pellets of sheep crap at each other. In moments of boredom we would press our fingers hard into our closed eyes until flashing dots of colour appeared. I went to his house and we made stuff out of construction sticks. These were little plastic ladder shapes that came as the stick in a 10 cent ice block called Wammo or Wakky. The inner core of ice was such a deep purple that was almost black. It stained your mouth for days.
It was my friendship with Daniel that lead to the next great disaster in my school career.
We were standing side by side at the wall flanked by other bare bummed boys performing their daily rites.
I strode the invisible windsurfer and once the appropriate grip on my fleshy nozzle was established, released the ballast. Our synchronised golden jets shot upwards.
The urine stream, like any other object moving in the Earth’s gravitational field, follows a curved path equating to the mathematical function of the parabola. The horizontal component of any individual urine droplet (hurine) remains constant throughout flight while it accelerates at 9.8 m.s-2 downwards.
Therefore, greatest horizontal range is achieved by a trajectory angle of 45* where the aforementioned individual urine droplet would achieve maximum height on the parabola (vertical component vurine = 0) before falling back to earth.
However, on that day we were not concerned at all with hurine but rather with vurine. It was our tonks versus gravity, pure and simple. Daniel was firing at his preferred angle of about 75*. I immediately matched him and drove on into the danger zone of the mid 80*s. If he was older, he might have yelled out, “Pete, what do you think you’re doing, man? Pull back! Enough’s enough! Someone will get hurt”, but he was too busy giggling and snorting, the only person in my life I have seen literally piss themself with laughter.
In a laboratory situation, the critical angle of height maximisation is technically 89*. At its zenith, the urine stream still has a positive horizontal vector and as such is still travelling in a forward direction, insignificant as it is. To go another single degree is to attempt a true vertical trajectory of 90* and the fluid stream on its way down wants to occupy the same physical space as the fluid stream on the way up – impossible - and you get into all sorts of problems.
By this stage, all the other kids had gone silent and were staring in astonishment, their jet streams all respectfully inclined toward me like the finale of an Esther Williams water ballet. My own stream had now left the wall and was headed back towards me.
Like a mad scientist hypnotised by his own creation, I maniacally pushed through the 90* barrier and kept on going. There was a curious slow motion moment where I, too late, realised with horror that the horizontal component of my handiwork had turned negative. The golden stream danced crazily in the air in front of my face before turning on me like a mad snake.
The kids to either side of me dived for cover as my urine jet stream splashed down and ran up my shirt like I was being straffed by liquid amber. Even after I had corrected my mistake, there was still a good two seconds of urine in mid air that had like a Tomohawk missile already been launched and targeted. It was just enough to drench my face, saturate my hair and run down the other side of my shirt.
The toilet block was immediately filled with boys hysterically stampeding into each other, their efforts impeded by the pants around their ankles.
·
My mother arrived in a state of shock.
The school secretary had not quite known how to describe my particular dilemma and so had euphemistically left the message with one of the hospital staff that I had had a “little accident”.
My mother had visions of broken bones, bruised skin and massive bloodshed. It must have been something of a curious mix of relief and repugnance to her, therefore, to instead find her son sitting on the office steps giggling to himself and sopping in his own urine.
She did not say a word to me for the entire trip home.
Six year old children are remarkably robust. It never occurred to me for a moment that I should be self-conscious or embarrassed by my misdemeanour. When I returned to school the next day, every kid knew about it, but no-one really said anything or made any fuss. My profile had been lifted but life went on as normal. I did notice, however, that the teachers supervising compulsory wee-time kept a sharp eye on me.
I was paralytic with excitement in the final weeks of the holidays. Then the countdown reached zero and the day finally came when my drink bottle, lunch box and floppy back pack were finally put to use. I can still remember the smooth plastic of the lunch box and the smell of warm peanut butter when I opened it. The frosted drink bottle had not only a cap but a green ovuloid cup as its lid. Mum froze the drink bottle so it swelled and distorted like a… like a… well… like a plastic drink bottle filled with red cordial that had been in the freezer all night.
On the car trip to school, I was filled with anticipation, and could hardly speak with the excitement. These warm and fuzzy feelings lasted right up to the approximate moment when I got out of the car.
On my mental view-screen (as I had fantasized in my pre-sleep moments under the blankets over the previous weeks) I had envisioned school as a vast warehouse of Lego supervised by a maternal woman who told stories and handed out bowls of custard.
On getting out of the car, I saw hundreds of children - some crying - a vast ocean of asphalt and enormous and foreboding buildings reminiscent of a Dickensian poorhouse as filmed by Tim Burton.
I let my feelings be known by grabbing on to the school fence - a long run of vertical steel bars – and refusing to let go. My parents responded by getting a leg each and pulling me along the length of the fence parallel with the ground, my hands slapping from bar to bar and causing reverberations from the fence like a deep metallic xylophone. I must have looked like someone dropping from rung to rung down a ladder on a horizontal plane.
Eventually the fence ran out and I dropped to the ground, but all hope was not lost. My fingers found purchase on the grass driveway as my parents dragged me on undaunted. Any new Kindy children arriving at school through the gate could find their way to the classroom simply by following the trough left behind as I ploughed across the playground with my claw-like hands.
My teacher was Mrs Lowe, an enormously birds-nested woman who had graduated from the College for Kindy Teachers with Sing-song Voices. Even when she gave instructions to sit in a circle, it was an aria.
After a somewhat hesitant beginning, I took to school like a fish takes to bait. I loved my little wooden chair and desk and folder full of colouring in. I loved sitting up straight and marching and lining up and I looked forward to story time and news time and singing.
One of the best parts of the day was when the music box came out and we each got an instrument. There were triangles, tambourines, cymbals, sleigh bells, shakers and weird wooden fish with rippled backs that you clacked a stick down. My instrument of choice was the castanet, which delivered a satisfyingly sharp cracking noise like a machine gun when shaken back and forth with just the right oscillation.
Mrs Lowe would perch herself over the piano and belt out something about leaving a little girl in Kingston Town while the class exploded into a frenzy of arhythmic percussion. I was horrified at the blatant inability of most of the class to clack, shake, hit and tap in any way that even vaguely complemented the song in question.
I soon became a thorn in Mrs Lowe’s ample side with my constant attempts to get those around me to play on the beat – a feat attempted by grabbing their instruments from them and trying to play several of them myself along with kind words of encouragement like, “That’s not how you do it, this is how you do it…”
Their musical skills did not improve in the slightest but I managed to make lots of children cry on a semi-regular basis. Within weeks I was castanetting about daddy taking me to the zoo tomorrow up the back of the classroom by myself where I couldn’t bother the others as they sat there clumsily hammering away like neanderthals beating yak bones.
My misadventures soon spread out to other academic areas. Living out at Corrinyah, my father had filled in my spare hours between tree climbing and lolly theft in teaching me to read. He had a kit sent out from Sweden or somewhere equally nordic which was made up of stacks of flashcards of words like mother, dog, happy and Volvo. It didn’t taken me long to graduate to a book about Sam and his various body parts and almost as fast as my parents could buy them I was churning through Dr Suess books about a cat with a hat, some bloke who didn’t like green eggs and a dog that liked to dig ditches. I spent hours behind the piano with a stash of books poring over the intricate rhymes and even more intricate illustrations of disturbingly unstable buildings, bridges and machines.
The end result was that while my new-found friends were learning that “a” is for “apple”, I was throwing up my hand and calling out that it also stood for “archipelago” and “alabaster”.
Mrs Lowe was quick to point out that “p” stood for “Pain in the bum” and sent me to the “b” which stood for “Back of the Classroom”.
Toward the end of first term, we put on a short play one night for the parents. It is probable that our play lasted just a few minutes and we were the cute-value warm-up for the older kids who came on later with a more substantial dramatic offering. But in my mind, it was a production matched in scale and grandeur only by Aida.
With the typical egocentricity of the small child, I was amazed that so many families had turned out to see me play the part of the Scarlet Pirate. My role as lead in the show was cleverly disguised by my position at the back of the stage and the fact that I had no lines. But I sang and strutted as if every eye was on me.
My already shaky relationship with Mrs Lowe was not furthered when half way through the finale song, I pushed my way to the front and began waving to my parents, an act totally out of character with the Scarlet Pirate’s tough demeanour. They waved back heartily, although later I found out it was not actually a wave of “hello, you’re doing well” as much as a wave of “get back in your place, you bloody little idiot.”
But I didn’t need to worry about Mrs Lowe. I wouldn’t be in her class much longer.
·
My entry through the gates of Goulburn South Public School was a lot more dignified at the start of Term 2 than in the term prior. I had made plenty of friends… “friends” being the technical term for any kids who didn’t snatch toys I was playing with. On top of that, I had found all the marching, clapping and painting easy, which allowed lots of time for daydreaming, mucking up, bossing other kids around and generally pointing out the flaws of their work.
Unfortunately, these innate leadership abilities were not appreciated by Mrs Lowe, who unbeknownst to me had formed a secret alliance with my parents to spoil my fun.
The news was broken to me that I had prematurely graduated from Kindergarten into the lofty academic heights of Year 1 and I was to report there straight away. It was like winning the Lottery and so with a pride that transcended simple arrogance, I packed my few belongings and walked out of Kindy leaving the kids to their musical ineptitude and literary deficiencies.
This newfound hubris lasted approximately ten steps before my bottom lip and lower legs began a simultaneous tremble. Like a sad refugee, it was with hot tears in my eyes and a wet mouth that I crossed the asphalt playground clutching a shoe-box of my scholastic belongings. There were some crayons, a plastic stapler and a paper plate with my name written on it, decorated by crepe paper balls that I had scrunched and glued with my own little hands. The most bizarre possession in my pathetic menagerie was a matchbox stuffed with cotton wool and a dead spider.
The Year One building was a monstrous and ominous structure built in an era when walls were five feet thick, hallways were long and polished and ornate ceilings were so high they were almost out of range of the naked eye.
Mrs Stone guided me solemnly to my desk, next to a kid called Bertie. It is amazing that even at that age, kids have developed the capacity for cruelty and exclusion. It took only seconds for me to size up Bertie’s dirty fingernails, messy hair and thick glasses held together with sticky tape to realise that he was the class victim. It is a sad indictment on my character that I never did anything to stick up for him, despite the fact that he was nothing but civil to me.
The Year One curriculum revolved mostly around learning the rules of Hector the Safety Cat and making papier mache vehicles out of toilet rolls and matchboxes. But when we weren’t up to our elbows in flour’n’water soaked pages of the Goulburn Herald I could still hold my own in reading and was pleased that the class could at least all belt out the beat in Waltzing Matilda.
·
Perhaps the biggest advantage of Year One was that we were allowed to use what were colloquially referred to as “the big toilets”.
The Kindergarten classrooms had been equipped with tiny toilets, a row of little porcelain bowls which were inside the classroom, hidden only by a short wall. Even at that age, my toilet-phobia was highly evolved and I had spent many a boggle-eyed day busting rather than humiliate myself by indulging in the spectacle of highly public group defecation.
But as a new Year One student, there would be no more of that. The big toilets were isolated in a squat brick shed on the other side of the playground. The toilet block was off limits during class time and so it was actually compulsory for all kids to go the toilet at the end of lunch.
When the bell went, two lines quickly formed of boys and girls respectively, while the teachers called out their favourite phrase during lining-up situations, “single file, indian style”.
There was a great sense of anticipation in the line the closer you got to the toilet block. The door was like the mystical entrance to a temple or Aladdin’s cave guarded by two teachers who stood as sentinels to the holy and secret rites performed within.
As you turned the corner you were faced with a line of a dozen or so bare bums perched atop a poplar forest of spindly legs, courtesy of the boys jostling shoulder to shoulder at the urinal with their elasticised shorts and underpants around their ankles. Their heads were bowed reverently as they focussed on the task at hand.
There was always much laughter and carry-on “at the wall” (as we used to say) as each boy engaged in manic “sword-fights” or tried to outdo each other in shooting their golden jet-stream as high as possible on the urinal surface.
Standing there with rows of multiple urine streams shooting upwards off to my left and right was like a bizarre nightmare set amongst the amazing jets of the Hellbrunn Water Palace.
Without a doubt, the undisputed and highly regarded champion of the height record was Daniel Canter. A stocky blond boy with a perpetual grin, he was the true master, the Von Braun of trajectory, the Da Vince of piss.
When it came to gravity defying urinary motion, Canter was an artiste. He would begin with an almost imperceptible bending of the knees before leaning carefully back like he was riding an invisible windsurfer. Next, through a subtle manipulation between thumb and forefinger, he would incline his organ of creation upward to achieve maximum trajectory.
His jet stream would splash down in the thin metal tray that ran along the top of the urinal. It would instantly fill and flow to the right and left and a heady aroma would fill the air, bringing with it yelps of choking laughter from the other urinees.
Daniel Canter and I became good friends. He came to my house after school and we ran around the back field throwing acorns and pellets of sheep crap at each other. In moments of boredom we would press our fingers hard into our closed eyes until flashing dots of colour appeared. I went to his house and we made stuff out of construction sticks. These were little plastic ladder shapes that came as the stick in a 10 cent ice block called Wammo or Wakky. The inner core of ice was such a deep purple that was almost black. It stained your mouth for days.
It was my friendship with Daniel that lead to the next great disaster in my school career.
We were standing side by side at the wall flanked by other bare bummed boys performing their daily rites.
I strode the invisible windsurfer and once the appropriate grip on my fleshy nozzle was established, released the ballast. Our synchronised golden jets shot upwards.
The urine stream, like any other object moving in the Earth’s gravitational field, follows a curved path equating to the mathematical function of the parabola. The horizontal component of any individual urine droplet (hurine) remains constant throughout flight while it accelerates at 9.8 m.s-2 downwards.
Therefore, greatest horizontal range is achieved by a trajectory angle of 45* where the aforementioned individual urine droplet would achieve maximum height on the parabola (vertical component vurine = 0) before falling back to earth.
However, on that day we were not concerned at all with hurine but rather with vurine. It was our tonks versus gravity, pure and simple. Daniel was firing at his preferred angle of about 75*. I immediately matched him and drove on into the danger zone of the mid 80*s. If he was older, he might have yelled out, “Pete, what do you think you’re doing, man? Pull back! Enough’s enough! Someone will get hurt”, but he was too busy giggling and snorting, the only person in my life I have seen literally piss themself with laughter.
In a laboratory situation, the critical angle of height maximisation is technically 89*. At its zenith, the urine stream still has a positive horizontal vector and as such is still travelling in a forward direction, insignificant as it is. To go another single degree is to attempt a true vertical trajectory of 90* and the fluid stream on its way down wants to occupy the same physical space as the fluid stream on the way up – impossible - and you get into all sorts of problems.
By this stage, all the other kids had gone silent and were staring in astonishment, their jet streams all respectfully inclined toward me like the finale of an Esther Williams water ballet. My own stream had now left the wall and was headed back towards me.
Like a mad scientist hypnotised by his own creation, I maniacally pushed through the 90* barrier and kept on going. There was a curious slow motion moment where I, too late, realised with horror that the horizontal component of my handiwork had turned negative. The golden stream danced crazily in the air in front of my face before turning on me like a mad snake.
The kids to either side of me dived for cover as my urine jet stream splashed down and ran up my shirt like I was being straffed by liquid amber. Even after I had corrected my mistake, there was still a good two seconds of urine in mid air that had like a Tomohawk missile already been launched and targeted. It was just enough to drench my face, saturate my hair and run down the other side of my shirt.
The toilet block was immediately filled with boys hysterically stampeding into each other, their efforts impeded by the pants around their ankles.
·
My mother arrived in a state of shock.
The school secretary had not quite known how to describe my particular dilemma and so had euphemistically left the message with one of the hospital staff that I had had a “little accident”.
My mother had visions of broken bones, bruised skin and massive bloodshed. It must have been something of a curious mix of relief and repugnance to her, therefore, to instead find her son sitting on the office steps giggling to himself and sopping in his own urine.
She did not say a word to me for the entire trip home.
Six year old children are remarkably robust. It never occurred to me for a moment that I should be self-conscious or embarrassed by my misdemeanour. When I returned to school the next day, every kid knew about it, but no-one really said anything or made any fuss. My profile had been lifted but life went on as normal. I did notice, however, that the teachers supervising compulsory wee-time kept a sharp eye on me.