31 Days - That thing that happened in High School that changed my life forever

Throughout the month of May I will be taking on the 31 Days of Confessions challenge. I will be blogging every day about a different subject or question. You'll possibly get to know a lot about me!

Enjoy!

I tell myself that I loved High School; that they were the best times ever. I tell everyone else that too.

I don't know why.

The truth is, High School sucked. I think I rather enjoyed Year 7 but the memory of it seems to have clouded over the years. My family and I had moved into town six months before High School started. I was halfway through Grade 6 with a gaggle of wonderful friends when I was uprooted from all that to start again amongst a group of kids who had grown up together and were already in well-established friendship groups. I simply could not infilatrate or assimilate. I spent most of my time hanging out with kids younger than me...ones with horses! However, in Year 7 I managed to ease my way in with a group of girls who invited me to their parties and sleepovers and hung around with me at school. For some reason, at the beginning of Year 8 all that kind of went pear-shaped and I found myself totally alone at recess and lunchtime, feeling pretty bereft. One of the girls from the group was eventually ejected and so she found me and together we'd find a spot up on the hill, surrounded by some shrubs and we'd spend the afternoons reading novels and talking about books we enjoyed. That friend left the school at the end of the year and transferred to another school....and after that I had a single different friend per year.

People didn't hang around much. I don't know why.

I guess that due to the fact that I didn't have that one close friend that remained and stayed and I meant as much to her and she did to me, I learned to be pretty self-reliant. I learned not to get too close to people because they had a tendency to up and leave when circumstances presented themselves. I was especially hurt when it seemed that they'd leave me in the lurch for people who seemed a lot more exciting than me. I really didn't do that kind of hurt very well....

Now, as a woman in her 40's I do have my really close friends, however I'm not one to be in their faces all the time. I don't demand attention or affection; in fact I guess sometimes I possibly even come across as....distant? Holding people at arms length? Don't get me wrong! When I'm with my friends all is groovy, I love seeing them and enjoy their company but when we're not together rarely have that yearning that pleads "Oh I need my friend!" I'm happy with my own company and don't mind being alone.

So, I guess that's what High School taught me. I learned to be ok with being by myself because often, that's all I had.

Stories from back in the day - Finishing HSC

Source

As I drove into work this morning I heard DJ's talking about the fact that results for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) were being released today. Young people were ringing the radio with great excitement after having received their results via text message this morning, wanting to share with the whole country the fact that they had passed.

Wow! They get their results via text message now.

Back in my day young whippersnappers! Back in my day......we had to wait months for our results to come out on the horsedrawn coach that would often be delayed because of the droughts and flooding rains.........................

Well...no, not really....but almost!

Back in my day, the VCE was called the HSC (Higher School Certificate) and I did mine waaaaay back in 1984.

When Madonna looked like this.

And we went to the movies to watch stuff like this:

Who you gonna call.....???

And Dolly magazine told us all the important things we needed to know:

You bet your sweet life I wanted to meet Ralph Macchio!

I think the passage of time has sweetened the memory of my HSC year somewhat. My memory recalls that it was the school year where we all sort of grew up a bit and I found that people who wouldn't give me the time of day at the start of the year would sit and chat on occasion by the end of the year. We all thought we were it and a bit being the seniors of the school, having our own Common Room and HSC jumpers that "we" designed and wore. I say "we" because the decisions for the hideous jumpers were not made by general consensus. We had a choice of lemon and mauve. *shudders*

Like I said, it was the 80's - and the colours were either pastel or fluoro. (see above Dolly cover)

But I do remember the workload. Oh the workload! I studied English, English Literature, Biology, Human Development and Society and Art, which compared to the brainiacs who studied English, Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry seemed like a breeze, but it wasn't. The essays were brutal, the pracs were insane and the amount of time I spent on my artwork and the backup work for the artwork almost did my head in. There was a lot of time spent in the art room after school, nights I didn't go to bed and classes I didn't attend simply because I was sitting in the Common Room madly finishing assignments and essays and assigned questions to hand in by the end of the day. I even remember running to one of my teacher's staffrooms at the end of the day to hand something in and she was actually standing at the door counting down the seconds before she wasn't going to accept the work. Pressure!

Study? What was study? I was just doing the work. 

Still, on that final day, when the final bell sounded I cried like a baby. (and we hadn't even had the exams!) School was finishing and life as I had known it for twelve (13, if you count Prep) was about to change.

It was a strange thing finishing school. For a week or so after the exams I kept thinking that I had forgotten to do something; that there was a piece of artwork I hadn't handed in, or an assignment to finish or an essay to write. It took a while to just relax.

The results of our exams didn't come out until January - and back then they were POSTED out. You know....snail mail.....before the internet. 

Unfortunately, our family was on holiday somewhere up in the mountains so our neighbours were instructed to forward my envelope to the caravan park where we were staying. This meant that I was going to receive my results a few days after my friends, but at least I wasn't going to have to wait until we got home from holidays to know.

The wait was excruciating. What made matters worse was that bushfires had broken out around the area we were camping and we were all on alert, waiting for the word to evacuate. I remember laying in the hammock in the middle of the night seeing the glowing of the fires on the mountain. There was a chance my results wouldn't reach me.

We asked every day at the Caravan Park Office if I'd received any mail. 

Until, one day.....there it was. 

My heart was thumping out of my chest. With trembling fingers I opened the envelope. 

"I PASSED!" I screamed.

And promptly burst into tears!

I didn't realise until that moment the stress I'd been under; how anxious I had been. I never assumed that I was good enough to pass, but pass I did....and I did better than I expected. 

We celebrated that night. My parents, who never had money to spare, took us all out for pizza (back when pizza wasn't as common as now) and the best icecream I've ever eaten. All the tensions of the past year dissipated. I didn't even think, "Now what?" It was all over and I was glad.

Now we live in a world where students know their results so quickly it makes my head spin, but I feel for them because they are facing more competition for university placements and employment opportunities. I don't know if the world is any easier these days. 

What was it like for you at school?

Did you do HSC/VCE?

Stories from Way Back When - In which she is sent to school

*Just a word about my Nanna's religious fervor before I get into this post. I was driving home the other day and wondered about the pastors, evangelists and teachers who prayed for me during those early years. I wonder if they too, thought that this was something that God simply wasn't going to do? I wonder if their job was simply to pray as asked, responding to my Nanna's faith, rather than their own personal beliefs? For the first time in my life I really wondered about the pressure that these men and women of faith were under. They must have been caught between a rock and a hard place sometimes. If they talked to Nanna about acceptance of my condition then (knowing my Nanna) she would have possibly judged them for not having enough faith in God. Hmm....interesting thoughts!*

Life progressed pretty much on schedule for me. Some children born with achondroplasia have physical developmental delays. It is not unusual for a child with achondroplasia not to walk until they are two years old, even later. Not me. I walked at thirteen months.



I'm not 13 months old here but I think this one of me investigating something in the grass is pretty cute!

 Soon it came time to send me off to Kindergarten (pre-school). I took to Kindergarten like a duck to water. Living in a small, country town had its advantages and I was already well-known. I assimilated into the group well and did everything all the other children did - the only babying I received was when all the other children were expected to say "Thank you" and I was allowed to say "Ta". I have no idea why. I was a very articulate child! My teachers helped me reach things like the painting easel and the bathroom sink by placing one of the large blocks in front for me to stand on.




There I am! Front and almost centre, looking very serious. To the left is my best friend Adine, who will later have an important role to play in my smooth transition to school!



Adine and I in an egg and spoon race with a couple of our other Kinder friends.


My parents were very good with cutting the apron strings and letting me be just a regular little girl and playing just like other children. Sometimes when your child is born with any kind of difference there is a tendency to want to hover and protect them, being scared that they're going to hurt themselves seriously. Trust me, the potential was always there. Being very top heavy meant that I was prone to falls and when I did, my very short arms didn't allow me to break my fall, so my head would hit the deck first. I am sure that my forehead was perpetually a varying shade of new and healing bruises. My mother remembers a time where we were all at some kind of social gathering and I was outside with all the other children playing as per usual. One of the mothers came up to my mother and said, "Excuse me, but your little girl is outside with the other children!" to which my mother replied, "Yes, I know. She's perfectly fine."

The only thing that was a bit of an issue regarding me starting school was the toilet and managing my own self care. Everything else was all ready. I was smart (having already read something from the newspaper before even starting school!), I was social, I had the school bag....

Me with my brothers - Nathan (left) and Lane.

...the only problem was that I was unable to....hmm...how do we put this delicately? Nope! We can't. I was unable to wipe my bottom. My arms just couldn't reach. Doing a wee was fine, but Number 2's? Nope!
Lucky for me I was pretty "regular" so my mother would put me on the toilet before we left for school in the morning, I'd do what I had to do, Mum would attend to my needs and I'd be right until I got home in the afternoon.

One day, this didn't happen and I went off to school withough my regular morning toilet sit. When I got home, my mother asked how my day was. "Oh it was fine!" I said. "I had to do a poo at school today, but it was ok....Adine wiped my bottom for me!" My mother roared with laughter when she heard this apparently. Adine and I were just like two little old ladies when we were together and the thought of the two of us in the toilets together doing what needed to be done amused her to no end. I think it was possibly at that point where she knew that I would always find a way to get something done...even if it meant relying on my best friend to help.