Nowhere High

On Wednesday afternoon’s we used to play hockey for school sport on the front oval, it was a great place to play because on two of the sides it had a gutter which would stop the ball from going out so made the game a little quicker.

The one thing that I hadn’t really payed much attention was that at one end of the field, behind the goal area, so where we were ultimately trying to smash hockey balls towards, was the teachers car park.

Now this one afternoon our usual teacher for sport was away and we had a substitute. This, uninformed teacher, tried to convince us to we shouldn’t put the goals where we always had as we might hit a car. We laughed it off and continued to set up, but he was more serious than we thought and tried to tell us to change it, at which point we stood up for ourselves and started to argue our point, (the gutters etc.) and I surprised myself at how much I spoke up and took a lead role in this arguing.

Anyway, so part the way through the game I found myself in a scoring positing, not far at all from the goals, the ones at the car park end, and although the shot probably didn’t need it I gave it my all and whacked it as hard as I could, at that same instant time went into slow-mo.

I realised what I had done, it missed the goals, got airborne, bounced once, then twice, then whack! Right into the side of a teachers car, dent. Bummer. There was a bunch of other dents in that general area and because of it I tried to argue that the teacher wouldn’t notice, but I was made to go admit to it and apologise to the teacher.

So eventually I saw no way out of it and went to tell the teacher, a teacher not known for their happiness, but to my surprise she took it really well and really didn’t care!! I was blown away.

Later on the teacher supervising the game admitted to us that if it hit another teachers car, one that LOVED his car, he would have been the first one running and hiding!!

The library was always a place full of action, battles and mischief took place here all the time and it was all about stealth battles due to whole library quietness thing.

We wanted to be prepared for whenever the next battle would strike so we decided that it was a good idea to stockpile ‘ammunition’. We would forever be taking those plastic ends off of the bottom of the school chair legs and ditching them at each other.

So one lunch time, and then whenever we had a chance after that and weren’t fighting a battle, we would pull the plastic bottoms off of the chairs and covertly store them in the pottery that was on the top shelves all around the library.

It turned out to be a brilliant plan as when war broke out we would grad a vase full and attack!

Sitting in class one day I was having a chat to another students as there was nothing really interesting going on and the conversation turned to that of his hobby. He loved to collect car badges, without the permission of the owners of those badges, but nonetheless its what he liked to do.

I was a little bit intrigued and asked when he would practice his hobby, how he would go about it, and all questions like that. I think I mentioned how cool I thought they looked and all but that I wouldn’t go stealing badges for lots of reason, but anyway.

So then he puts his hand up and asks to go to the bathroom, fair enough, we’ll continue the conversation when he gets back.

On his return he quietly passes me a Ford badge which he had just gotten off of a car, I naturally asked him a couple of questions and that’s when he informed me that the car belonged to the teacher who was currently teaching us. Stunned I took it, and threw it out later, thinking that I now know that sometimes I need to be more careful of the conversations I have with people.

We had a science class once that went through 8 teachers in one term which of course produced quite a lot of stories worth telling. Here’s one of them.

We were doing something, I can’t remember what it was but that’s not important, and we all needed to use scissors so the teacher handed out a pair to everyone. When we had finished with them he asked for them to be handed back.

That’s when it happened, I looked at the guy next to me in a stunned silence as we saw a few pairs of scissors flying through the air and then slamming into the blackboard behind where the teacher was standing, not far at all from him.

Once again we wondered where the heck we were.

Looking back there are a few stories from school that I enjoy telling over and over and this is one of them, I just love it what some students could get away with and the length they could get away with them.

I had a friend who did art class and another who had a free period at the same time, art class at our school from what I heard and experienced in earlier years was all practical. The teacher would try to sneak in a theory lesson every now and then to feel like they were do their share but in the end even those turned in to practical lessons.

Now the friend with the free period would go to the lesson just about every time it was on, but if looked like it was going to be boring, like theory, he would just take off. Anyway throughout the year, year 12 this is, he took advantage of everything he could, going to Canberra on art excursions for instance, and any other excursions that took his fancy.

It got to the end of the year when all students had to hand in their major works which they were meant to have been working on all year and the teacher asked the free loader guy for his to which he replied “Oh no sir, I’m not in your class”. The teacher stunned came back with something like “Yes you are, now where’s your major work”, so the student explained that no, he had a free period on at this time and would just always come into their class for something to do.

The conversation went on a little while until the teacher finally started to come around “But your names on the roll, I mark it every class…” and then I imagine a stunned silence as the thoughts processed… “But I took you to Canberra for the art excursion!!”

To which I believe was a casual “Yeah thanks for that sir” as he left the room and left the teacher processing things.

There’s so much I like about this story whenever I think about it or retell it to someone… thinking on your feet, the power of a crowd, people who normally don’t get on all pulling together and much more.

So we were in the quad one lunch time when once again the bell went to go to class, we were reluctantly starting to move when a couple of the guys started to push each other, just the usual mucking around between mates.

So we, just being idiots, started to chant fight, fight, fight, which we would have stopped fairly quickly except we noticed other people in the quad were quick to rubber neck to see what was going on. So we kept it up, and a few people started to head our way to see the ‘fight’.

By now the guys had stopped, but the people kept coming so we kept chanting and as people came closer we gestured for them to do the same. It quickly caught on and before we knew it people were running from every corner of the school to see what by now sounded like the biggest fight we’d seen in a while.

Eventually teachers were running in our direction to break it up, they were forcing their way through the crowd as quickly as possible and when they finally reached the centre were very confused to find nothing really going on.

We looked at the teachers, shrugged, said something like “I dunno what’s going on, their’s no fight here” and disappeared through the crowds.

It was one of those moments where we thought, what can they do? Put the whole school on detention!

It’s funny how something small can turn into something big and you find yourself getting carried away before you even realise that you have.

I must admit that I can’t even really remember how this one started, maybe there was something or maybe it was just sheer boredom one lunch. Anyway someone started to dig a hole, thinking about it it could have been to bury someone else bag, not sure.

And then someone else just started joining in using a stick, and then a little while later a conversation started with the guys standing around about what would be the best implement, that was laying around the school, that they could use to dig it.

So after a few breaks and maybe the odd period someone thought that it was time that they bring in a few objects to help dig this hole, and true to their work the next day they brought in some gardening tools.

Now don’t think that by now they hadn’t come up with a goal, no that too had been discussed by the workers, both the ones digging and the others standing around like council workers, and the goal they came up with was to bury a school bin, standing upright. A great goal, and I should point out that where this was being done was in a fairly open and obvious section of the back oval.

But due to their determination once again another project went ahead full steam without any big hiccups, the diggers may have been caught early in the project by a teacher and after a rough fill in to make it look like they wouldn’t continue it was dug back out and continued.

The project was completed with no major blowouts to the budget and on a side note I think it was covered each night by the bin that eventually got buried in it.

We were sitting the trial HSC English exam and I was struggling my way through the essay question when I look over to the guy next to me and am really surprised by what I see.

One of the other students was wearing a bumbag and had pre written an essay on small cards, taped the all together and folded it into a neat little business card sized booklet.

He, like everyone knew basically what the essay would be on and what information it should contain so pre wrote it and just copied it word when he got into the exam. Not sure how, but he didn’t get caught.

We’d play touch footy at every opportunity we had, before school, during breaks, whenever and at one end of the ‘field’ there was a massive tree. If you were running towards the tree and heard the call ‘foliage’ then you knew someone was about to kick the ball high into the tree, which was in the in goal area, and the idea was to catch the ball and score a try before getting tipped. It seemed to work more than I would have thought.

Anyway on this particular occasion the call was made and the ball went up but never came down, it was stuck in one of the topmost branches.

So after a while of throwing rocks, sticks and anything we could find at it we started looking at other ways of trying to get the ball down. After some brainstorming my cousin wanders over to check out what we’re up to, sees where the ball is and offers to climb up after it.

So he takes a while, because of the height and the sparsely spaced branches closer to the top, but eventually he makes it. But then after throwing the ball down to us he discovered that he was stuck, he couldn’t seem to reach down to the branches below without feeling like he was going to fall.

Naturally we wanted to help and the only way we knew how to get stuff out of trees was to throw rocks at them, so the call went ‘quick everyone grab a rock’, it was a joke and it didn’t take long to stop the others from rocks. Thankfully everyone knew it was a joke and just threw them in his general direction and not directly at him but I found it funny.

Year 11 would, like all schools I think, technically finish in term 3 and in term 4 you would start your year 12 work and mostly you would be doing the same subjects in both years so they didn’t change the timetable at all.

Now in year 11 I was doing commerce but has decided to drop it for year 12 but even so we still had to show up to class for the rest of the year. There were 3 other guys from my class who had also decided to drop it so at the first class of term 4 we asked the teacher about what we should do as we wouldn’t be taking the class next year.

Naturally we expected a reply like just do the work for now, or that we would have to study our other subjects or the like. But no, he completely surprised us by saying that we could play cards or do whatever we wanted as long as we didn’t disrupt the class. I think the jaws of everyone in that class dropped simultaneously and we were excited and blown away by the teachers response, although the other students were more than slightly jealous of what they had heard.

So for a whole school term we did nothing but play cards in that class and loved it!!