It’s Easy to get Lost in a Moment From the Past : My Yr 12 School Days

I loved school.

I am one of those lucky ones who look back on my school days (mostly) with a wide smile and a dorky buzz of excitement for our next High School Reunion.

Recently I have been surrounded by schools. My kids are both now school aged, so I drop off, pick up, read newsletters, pack bags, wash uniforms, note homework dates, read the Readers AND SO MUCH MORE…(and exhale…..). I am now also incredibly excited to get back to my work in education and I love the opportunity to visit loads of different schools here in Melbourne.

Oh but once I’m amongst the kids of today, the memories of yesterday keep flooding back.

Flashback to Year 12 (in the ’90’s)……

• Let me set the scene. Let’s crank up some Peter Andre. Let us spray the Impulse with abandon. Get that sausage roll hair fringe high and scrunch that perm up with as much hairspray and/or mousse as you can get your hot little hands on. Make sure you don’t lose the little gem stone from your signet ring and keep across what is happening with Bobby at Summer Bay….
• The constant soundtrack to my life is Mum shouting to me to, “PUT ON A JACKET!”
• Finally, we were the Kings and Queens. We had earnt our crowns. We had our own Homeroom that we were allowed to go in UNSUPERVISED during breaks. Despite this, we spent most of our days huddled in the cold on the pine, picnic bench outside the door. We revelled in watching all the freezing ‘kids’ go by, because we could go inside IF WE CHOSE TO!
• We now had a toasted sandwich maker. I wasn’t a big fan of the toastie back then, but I learnt to love them, because I could. Note *1 toaster amongst the whole Yr 12 contingent, but this didn’t dampen our lunch time possibilities. I still am forever jealous of your bacon pieces, Caz. Culinary magic. The cheese and chow mein toastie? Not so much.
• I went to a country High School. We shared some classes with those babyish Yr 11 kids. So annoying! Funnily enough, I look back now and all I think is what incredible teachers!
• The school bus along the bumpy country roads to and from school was no longer a social event. It became a desk. If I had to make time for Home and Away that night, I used the 40 minute bus trip to make a start on my homework.
• See ya’ later itchy school jumper. We were allowed to create our own Rugby Jumper (to be approved by the Principal of course) and we wore them around like a second skin. Weekends were no exception. In the wash only to be dried and thrown in front of the heater ready to be back on by morning. If they weren’t dry yet, we wore them damp. Blazing sunshine? Still glued to us, because now we were frightened we might have ‘BO’ and surely taking our jumper off would mean releasing the whiff, right? Sooooo embarrassing!!
• The pressure was real. What WERE we going to do the following year? This was it. The end of the line. We were to be pushed out of the nest by November. We were either that kid who dragged about a ridiculous amount of text books to and from school each day, or we breezed in and out without a care in the world. I was the former and I worked hard. Thinking of Yr 12 makes me smile, but it also makes me prickle a little with anxiety and exhaustion.
• Pimples were a thing at 17 (still are at 44, but whatever). Makeup at school was not. But they could NOT tell us we weren’t allowed to use layers of tinted Clearasil now, could they?
• For the love of all that is good in our world, we got the crinkle correct on our socks. They had to be just ‘so’. Not too high, not too low. And all praise the cool kids who got away with wearing the olive green socks BEFORE it was deemed correct uniform. Trail blazers!
• Before the days Daryl Braithwaite rocked the Racecourse with The Horses, we rocked our Home room. We were ahead of our time. Throw in some of Martika’s Kitchen, Kriss Kross who made us JUMP and some Bon Jovi tragic rock. Truth be told, I think I appreciate John Bon more now, but it was cool to be a bit ‘deep and grungy’ with some rock. ABC’s RAGE was our language.
• We suddenly liked our teachers. Mostly. And they liked us. They joked about their weekends and we knew their first names and if they were married or played football. Suddenly they were people and they wanted us to do well. Hand on heart I was incredibly lucky to have had the teachers I did. I wanted to make them proud and it was an exciting, yet shocking revelation to discover they were actually ‘human’.
• We toyed with the idea that the bloke we pashed behind The Civic Hall (Blue Light Disco’s were SO yesterday) last Friday night may actually be ‘the one’. High School Sweethearts was ‘a thing’. Could he be? Would he be? For me? No. But I do still have some pretty amazing friends.
• Oh the youth of today. Wait for it….I got my first computer in Yr 12. Aahhh the sweet joy of lining the holes up on the paper reams with the printer as I printed off a completed CAT.
• And by the way, did anyone really know how many times that bloody clown ran around the moving float in the C & A Maths CAT?
• Being in Year 12 was apparently unique. The pressure of all sharing this ‘magical’ bonding experience was meant to bring us so much closer together. In many ways it did. But in other ways, we were a bunch of 17 year old kids thrown together, all swapping boyfriends (it was the country), competing against each other for grades and simply trying to fit in. This was resilience training of a kind. Despite this, bond we did and I still share the strongest of friendships with my crew from High School.

Now I’m a grown up, thankfully my Mum doesn’t tell me that I need to wear a jacket anymore. Rather, now I’m in my 40’s, she generously gives me ownership of my choices, and alternatively asks me if I think I need to put my jacket on. #blessed

If you’ll excuse me I’m off to look through actual photo albums (rememeber those?) and crank up some Margaret Ulrich.

Oh the good ol’ days.

Good times, good people.