Nostalgia: School Bells 2

It's funny how the bells of a hawker trying to sell his goods began these Chronicles. But hey, since I've already started this walk down Memory Lane, I might as well finish it, right?

One of the best things about Monday mornings was that the first two forty-minute periods were for Geography class. Guess who wasn't offering Geography? This guy 😅.

That should mean I had an hour and twenty minutes to sleep right? Psych! Those two periods were usually used to complete notes that I would submit that day. The next two periods were taken by Biology, and we usually spent them in a laboratory that looked like it had come from an old Frankenstein movie, with lizards and snakes in tanks of Formalin (that's how it's spelled right?)

If the laboratory was depressing, the teacher wasn't any better. She could be nice (any day there was a blue moon) and all, but most of the time she was a.woman who knew how to ask questions when you weren't paying attention.

And guess what happens when you don't answer her questions? At best she'd pull your ears or ask you to kneel down. At worst she would flog you on the hands with a dried cow femur. And then she'd remember to check notes. When your note was not up-to-date, guess who was going to get a double ration of cow-femur strokes? Ding Ding! You're correct. You!

So let's say that at the end of 50% of those classes, I was leaving with a sore ear, knee or palm. It kinda got better afterwards, because it was recess. During that time, the school would give us a packet of biscuits and a juice box, usually Capri Sun or its equivalent. Some Thursdays, they'd really be in a mood to frustrate us and give us an apple.

Let's take a moment to soak in the stupidity of that. Who gives a teenage child with an appetite as big as their ever increasing height one apple? Who does that?

Attending the school I went to developed a lot of street smarts in me. That was because I'd you weren't vigilant and fast, you wouldn't get your snacks during that recess.

There were many of my classmates (both boys and girls did this) who would simply go to collect the snacks, take about half for themselves and then bring the rest for the rest of the class to fight over it like a scene from Nat Geo Wild. That further emphasized the need to be fast and quick on the uptake, because the food we ate as lunch on Monday afternoons was the equivalent of a drug used to induce nausea. It was disgusting literally speaking.

That's ten minutes. My timer has no respect when it's Memory Lane time. Guess I'll see you when I hear the next bells.