1. Desperately using the blue side of the rubber to erase ink when all it did was totally fuck up the paper.
2. Writing an incredibly perfectly neat title and date so you didn’t actually have to do the work.
3. Finding a way not to feel like a dick wearing a school uniform apparently designed to make children think they were tiny trainee business people.
4. Despite everyone else wearing the exact same thing.
5. Manipulating your pencil case so absolutely no-one could cheat off your carefully spelled “necesary.”
6. Putting the straw out through the other side of the Capri-Sun.
7. Or finding a replacement for the Ribena straw that had totally disappeared by 11a.m.
8. Swinging on your chair, despite the tales of all the children who had smashed their head open.
9. Wandering around the classroom during a class activity for a while so the teacher thought you might be doing something.
10. Trying to time your entry to assembly so you got on the benches, but didn’t have to sit on the bobbles and spend the whole time fidgeting like fuck.
11. Trying to figure out which sports all the coloured lines on floor of the gym were for.
12. And why there was one that seemed to be for basketball in British school with no hoops.
13. Climbing the ropes in P.E. while doubting how stable that one beam of wood they were hanging on was.
14. Climbing the ropes in P.E. without shredding your hands on the rope that appeared to be made of sandpaper.
15. Climbing the ropes in P.E. at all.
16. Landing on the thin-as-fuck mat that was inexplicably considered adequate.
17. Dealing with an injury with just the help of a damp paper towel.
18. Attempting to run with a bean bag on your head, as though it’s an important life skill you’ll be using a lot later.
19. Or while carrying an egg on a spoon. Children should really be taught to carry things properly.
20. Trying to be the person given the crucial responsibility of being responsible for the OHP.
21. Without actually looking like you were trying.
22. Figuring out exactly what was supposed to go on the apparently infinite number of posters you had to make.
23. Thinking of books to go in your reading diary.
24. Attempting to not avoid being noticed by teachers as you covered your hands in PVA glue.
25. Getting a brand-new exercise book and then having to carefully cover it in paper - or worse, sticky-backed plastic that just stuck everywhere.
26. Using a mechanical pencil and not snapping the lead off continually.
27. Having to deal with an unexpected nosebleed, which was usually while the class was quiet and focused on something.
28. Having to let your future be told by four squares on a piece of cleverly folded paper.
29. Trying to make your own cleverly folded piece of paper and it always going slightly wrong.
30. Picking the best colour of ink to write with.
31. Realising that the awesome power of the ‘prefect’ badge actually was a bit meaningless.
32. Kicking a floaty plastic football too hard and watching it sail across walls and fences and into a tree.
33. Using a real football that had lost all its leather months before, so it was slightly soft and would really fuck you up if you stood on it by accident.
34. Then getting hit in the face with it and trying to pretend it the flaring, stinging pain didn’t exist so you didn’t have to play with a foam one for months.
35. Finding the exact right WordArt.
36. And the exact right Clip Art.
37. Attempting to get the seat at the back of a coach on a field trip.
38. Sharpening a pencil without snapping the lead off in the sharpener.
39. Forgetting to put your chair on your desk at the end of the day and having to troop back to the classroom to do it.
