“You were not listening!” Mrs S raged, dark eyes blazing with hatred. I shook, whimpered and cried as she smacked me hard, many times, across the back of my legs with her wooden ruler. I was only seven and a half, fairly new to this school and Mrs S terrified me. I felt the eyes of a class full of seven and eight year olds upon me, staring at my distress. Tears streamed my face, my legs were stinging and I didn’t dare to move until Mrs S dismissed me.
My crime? The inability to do the ‘money’ sums. Pounds, shillings and pence sums were beyond me. I hadn’t done this at my old school. I tried to tell Mrs S. She never listened to me. She wasn’t going to help me. Did she believe that if she smacked me hard enough, I would magically be able to do this work?
My young life had completely changed. I had been a happy, confident little girl, doing well at school with teachers I adored and a group of friends. I was uprooted, due to our family being in the licenced trade, and moved from all that was familiar to a different pub in a different town, this new school where I felt like an outsider, even at such a young age. I loved my new baby sister.I was completely lost in all this new stuff.Looking at life through my adult eyes, that’s a great deal for a seven and a half year old child to cope with. I don’t remember any intervention, apart from my Nanna Hetty suggesting to my mother that she ought to speak to Mrs S or have me change schools. I’d been having nightmares about Mrs S while I was staying with my grandparents during a school holiday, and told Nanna Hetty about my miseries. Nanna Hetty was my paternal grandmother. I adored her, just as I did my maternal one. Grown-ups can have their differences and my mother would have taken Nanna Hetty’s views as interference. I was stuck. Dad was getting the pub sorted, under new management, and Mum had to get into a routine with the new baby and me, but I didn’t know where I fitted in. They told me just to do my best at school, but I already was. I did listen to Mrs S, but I didn’t understand and was too scared to say so.
Family friends came to visit one day and brought with them a girl a bit older than me. I don’t know who she was and I can’t even remember her name, but that day, she was my guardian angel. We were playing together. I overcame my shyness and asked if she could do pounds, shillings and pence sums. Yes, she could, and would she teach me? Yes, she would, and she did. Slowly, explaining everything, she taught me so well, I was bursting with confidence at my new ability and for once, I wasn’t dreading school.
Two things happened in my favour, though years apart. Twelve months after this move, we were off again to pastures new and I was leaving this dreadful school and Mrs S and the teacher I had after her.A feeling of belonging never occurred there for me. The other big thing was Decimalisation. Hooray! It might have been just for me.
Perhaps it was fate, perhaps it was setting my demons to rest, but many years later, I found myself working in the same school I had hated, sometimes in the same classroom that used to be mine, where Mrs S smacked my legs. Mrs S had passed away long since, or she’d be about a hundred and thirty years old. My favorite job in my entire working life is the years I spent there. It is a happy school with confident children and teachers who go the extra mile to care for them. Corporal punishment is a thing of the past, thank goodness.
My poem, in Haiku,
I was listening
But I failed to understand
And ended up scared.
She filled me with fear.
She was a witch with dark eyes
And a darker heart.
Hard, wooden ruler
Across the back of my legs.
I still didn’t learn
But I had nightmares
Caused by my raging teacher
Who would not help me
When I was seven,
A shy, new girl, feeling lost
And so unhappy.
Pounds, shillings and pence,
I just couldn’t calculate
And sobbed in distress.
PMW 2021
Thank for reading, Pam x
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