How would it have been to be in the same classroom as your parents, kids or spouse
Do you ever fantasize how it would have been to be in the same classroom as your parents, kids or spouse?
That is without the knowledge of being family. Just like in ‘Back to the future’.
Would you like each other or hating each other’s guts? Would you be friends or would you just walk past your family member?
Well to help you abruptly out of your fantasize attempts, because of my given idea: you wouldn’t want that…..at all😝. Never. Ever!
Same class at highschool
As romantic as it may sound, it wasn’t that colorful at all when busband and I were in the same class as 17 years olds (1982/83/84). (Puke here)
This applies mainly from my perspective because according to husband I was rather interesting to him, but I never noticed that ever. Which is a good thing for him because I would have made him my pack donkey personal assistant and personal money-collector-scrounger to buy me French fries when we had lunch break.
Being in the same class as Jack for me meant to witness these major annoying conversations from Jack and teachers. My husband was kind of the ‘ohhh shut up’ evoke-guy from class. My Jack told teachers how they should teach, what they should teach, when they should teach, why they should teach and more of such crap. He showed teachers verbally that it was ridiculous what students had to learn In school and most irritating thing of all is he was always absolute right hahaha.
Disturbing hardheaded guy
I know my Jack sitting most of the time backwards in his chair and be situated straight with his nose to the front of the class wasn’t in his dictionary. I know because he sat one meter away from me in the row next to me. Being thrown out of class was a regular returning happening show for him, and I was always thinking what the Bleep the matter was with him. It annoyed me big time and I was already feeling sorry for his future wife who had to be put up with such a disturbing hardheaded guy in the future. You sure had to be crazy to marry such a figure!
YESSSS: you’ve read that right!!! I apparently was already feeling sorry for myself without knowing it at that time.
I practically sat next to my at-the-
time-not-aware-of-future-husband-to-be; there only was this walk path for the teacher between us. So I was being observed pretty well and I could be first hand witness of all the little bugger’s (emphasize on ‘little’) provoke and get on teachers nerves activities. Which were printed on my retina for ever and ever and did absolute NO good in our marriage what so ever.
Square roster and eternal detention
He was perfectly capable of making teachers insane and make them ready for a shrink and probably even the shrink should need a shrink as well. Supererogation of non-stop jokes was Jack’s daily activity at school.
On certain point in the middle of the lesson: Jack started to fake that there came an eraser out of his mouth. With his face en profile it really looked like that too; like some sort of (in this case) annoying magician he entertained the whole class. So first came out the little pencil eraser, then came out a pen, a ruler, a whole calculator and as last a whole school bag and everybody rolled over the floor laughing in the meantime and outside the class room were Vice-Principal and school director were beholding the whole play with astonishment.
Jack was used to having a square roster, as we call this in Holland, most of the year. Which means you have to be at school from 8hr in the morning until 17hr mandatory every day for one week. During his school life Jack saw the school more than his own house and as a result as previous illustrated incident this time he had to deliver also a self written story on A4 paper as punishment for the next day.
Well the very next day chaotic Jack had forgotten to hand in his detention and now had to hand it in within the hour the teacher told him. And so Jack did indeed turn in the A4 detention supposing containing a self written story to the Dutch language teacher. Which was in itself an extraordinary story figure who had this alien like most weird squeaking and sadistic sounding voice.
And with this disturbing horrifying sarcastic articulation he started to read Jacks written words murmuring between his teeth out loud in front of the whole class room.
The irritating man was excellent in narrating and soon the whole class room was eating up these very words Jack had managed to hurl on this piece of paper.
The combination of the teachers narration and Jack’s apparently very entertaining story, made this happening a brilliant piece of detention.
Flabbergasted teacher
After the whole class had been falling off their chairs rolling over the floor laughing their heads off because of the written story; the teacher threw a spanner in the works: “very good jack, but I thought I said you had to write a self-made story written in your own words, and not copied from a book”.
That was the moment it was Jack to laugh out loud because these were his own words and he most certainly did not copy this from some book. Then arose this long discussion in the middle of the class about whether or not Jack had cheated.
It took Jack very long time to convince the irritating teacher that the story was indeed his very own words without any copying whatsoever. So when the poor guy finally realised that; he landed in a totally flabbergasted state staring at the piece of paper. In fact did the teacher gave Jack the biggest compliment he could wish for and that is that the teacher thought he was a professional writer.
The self written piece of this seventeen year old annoying student, which apparently was so terrible good (because he always had been awesome in at Dutch language), that from then on this also annoying teacher used Jacks story in all his future lessons until decades after that. Which was an ever greater compliment.
Probably there now are walking human beings on this earth who, if they had this particular teacher in school, had heard this unlikely story from a little brat teenager (remember that we’re taking about my husband uchh) and a wacko schoolteacher fighting over the reliability of a detention paper but most of all the ridiculous hilarious story that was written on it. The piece was so good written that it left everybody falling from their chairs and total laughter and tears.
Jack’s forced detention story written in 1 hour became epic on this school for many generations after. (We spoke to him about that 25 years after).
Don’t think though that my huspup had been a major dipshit back in the days, because he was the type of person no teacher could be mad of for that long. He has always been in the possession of this great charming smile in which he could hypnotize every single school teacher apparently.
Museum school
Anyway we went to this old museum school recently; A school from 1889; so really old with all ancient school details intact. This classroom will take you far back in time when nobody ever heard of iPads, iPhones or fast food for lunch.
A row with old school desks, a school board, old ink jars, read boards and teaching materials were back in the day’s something else than digital windows in front of your eye balls.
Old school desks were standing there ready to get filled with the most annoying ex-students ever in history (that would not be me of course): my mom, my husband and my daughter who on her terms always made teachers reach for some pre-Xanax (no clue what stuff they had at the time) while sitting backwards in the desk giggling and talking like she would never ever stop.
Me, there was nothing really to mention other that I was this major door-slammer when gotten thrown out of the classroom because of too much talking and giggling.
My mom on the contrary has about the same level of fame reputation as husband and maybe even worse. When my mom sometimes meets people she never saw again after highschool for 70 years or so; they immediately mention that they do remember her vividly because she always was a scallawag.
Her whole school period consisted of shooting peas and paper balls through the classroom with a catapult when the teacher was writing on the blackboard, throwing paper balls at each other with other students (at least the not so well-behaved ones), during cooking class throwing pancakes or other food through the air and at each other or how can it otherwise be: doing salt in the coffee of the teachers.
During my mom’s highschool career, there was a lot of laughing going on, standing outside of class for punishment, visiting the principal and mainly writing a million detention lines and accommodating in school until evening for final punishment.
So you see this is the origin of my genes and my ever so dutiful mother will also be remembered by many school teachers who definitely must have had too many nightmares for their entire life.
Can you imagine being family of these people? I do cause I am family. Well it is totally awesome to have buggers as mom, husband and daughter!
So there they were: a bunch of scum sitting in the school benches looking like nothing ever happened and as wonderful cuties themselves.
German surrender terms
It totally did breathe the atmosphere from former days and I really could empathize with being in 18- or 19something. The only thing I most certainly could not empathize with, but my mother did, was the anxiousness of becoming in a state of war awareness. On May 15, 1940 the then Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch army signed the German surrender terms in this very school building. Which officially meant that World War Two had started in this exact school and the Dutch army had to lay down their arms.
That’s why this school is called ‘Museum School’, because in all the display cases in the hallway you can find the document of the capitulation, and a collection of newspaper articles, food certificates, identity documents and prison clothes, maps, special telex messages, posters and photographs of this war.
During the war my mom went only to school a few times, fortunate for the relevant teachers at the time, because dealing with a little punk and dealing with a war would have been too much probably. If my mom did go to school on the few occasions; she often had to hide behind a big tree (which is still there in front of our house).
Then there were planes flying over and the bullets flew all around. Which was certainly very scary; but for mom not so much because she hardly has ever been scared of something and so for her it was all some type of game running from one tree to the other tree. But fully aware and respectful of the fact that this was serious business.
Now back to the here and now sitting in this museum class together with my family was such a fantastic experience to sit all next to each other (well sort of) in one class with lots of other people too (we were only slightly noisy) and imagining how it would had been if we would have been school mates back in time.
Note: read more in my future book
