How naughty were you at school?

When given a detention at my school you had to learn and recite a passage from Shakespeare before you could leave. If you memorised it quickly you could escape quite early.

So.....(!) what play would you like me to quote!

I was a good girl, I was, but in the 3rd year infants we were having a sewing lesson, and I clipped a tiny bit of material from my gymslip with the scissors. Mrs. Wilkinson tanned my backside with the battleboard, which I thought was very unfair, it was MY gymslip, not the school`s!

I wasn't particularly naughty, but I always hated school and was very disdainful of authority.
Plus I could come up with what I thought were some great one liners in reply to the teachers.

I was very naughty. I was worse at home.

My class at Secondary School (the top stream) were collectively renowned for being practical Jokers, One of the pranks was to set off an alarm clock in the class when the new nervous French assistant was delivering his first lesson. We all leapt to our feet and panicked about, convincing him that it was the fire alarm, left the room two by two at quick march and assembled in the playground, while the poor Frenchman took the register to ensure that the whole class was out, but of course a few had hidden inside. Along came the janitor (who came from Aberdeen) who grilled him in Doric Scots as to why we were out, ensuring even more confusion.

We also sent Valentine Cards from one random teacher to another, drove our English Teacher mad with outbreaks of suggestive mis-spellings and many other ploys.

However our best, most successful plot. which we kept going for two weeks, was the Steradent Tooth powder one. My Mum and Dad both had false teeth so I supplied the powder. A small quantity was issued to most members of the class and just as the Teacher entered the room we sniffed the powder up our noses. This causes a, not unpleasant, fizzing sensation, which in turn makes the sniffer sneeze prodigiously, and even foam at the nose. Poor Latin teacher was at a complete loss as to what had caused this phenomenon and rushed around opening windows and issuing us with sheets of toilet paper, We repeated this in several classes, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes when the teacher had left the room for some reason and returned to mayhem. Many of us had friends or siblings in other classes who joined in so suspicion did not fall directly on our class. The entire building was given a thorough cleaning, teachers were banned from wearing perfume or aftershave etc. which must have worked because the mysterious sneezing outbreaks petered out. (actually we had run out of Steradent and got bored with the joke).

To my everlasting regret, I was a goody two shoes. I was terrified of both my mother and the nuns.
I have made up for it.

In primary school I was sent to the heads office for "playing" with my plastic hair band. I was very cross at that as all I had done was slide it down to capture any wayward bits of hair when repositioned IYSWIM
That's the only time all through school that I wad punished for bad behaviour.

<goesoftopolishhalo>

I was summoned to the headmistress and accused of being a ring leader. I had my own little 'gang' and organised 'feats' for them such as jumping off high walls or climbing trees. When one of my gang fell out of a tree, and landed flat on her back completely winded, I was certainly in trouble!

I was a good girl. I was once smacked across the palm of my hand for making too many boots in my work book! I thought this was grossly unfair, as we had to use those pens with nibs which you dipped into an ink well. They were awfully dribbly.

Blots

Love them, keep them coming please!

I was good too and don't remember getting up to tricks like Granny 23 what fun that must have been.
However, I did get my knuckles wacked with a ruler for doing curly writing instead if italic and if we didn’t have good table manners, we would get a bang on the head with a spoon!

When I was doing my nurse training in the early 1970's, we put a clock in a little gap behind the blackboard, it had a loud tick and the poor Pharmacist couldn’t concentrate on his lecture and was quite put out by our giggling.

I was quite good most of the time. I liked school. I got into mild trouble all through my school life for talking too much. I was also very stubborn and if I didn’t like something I wouldn’t do it. Consequently I never finished any sewng project, got out of a lot of maths by asking to “be excused “ when I guessed my turn to answer a question was imminent (this didn’t work in senior school, I discovered), and utterly refused to learn the rules of lacrosse. I was such a nuisance in games lessons that they gave up on me in the end.

I was a good girl, I loved school being an only child, and don’t remember ever being in real trouble apart from maybe talking however when I was about 14 I got summoned to the head mistress office, I was shaking inside, my crime I had been seen on my way home from school in the street without my school hat on and wait for it, drumroll, holding a boys hand

I was a good girl too apart from hiding in the dining hall with friends to miss games.

My other half was not - we were in the same class during several years at secondary. He was regularly hauled out of english by one teacher for any slight misdemeanour and was sent to the deputy head every morning for not having his hair cut (he looked like David Essex back then). Needless to say 50 years later he no longer has this problem

By and large I was well behaved, but I remember being caned by the headmaster, along with two others, for some bit of mischief in a geography lesson. The worst of it was that I had to face my father afterwards. That was it, really.

I was evil at secondary school. I changed school at 13 and I suppose in order to fit in I joined the bad girls. Apart from not wearing my beret all the way home, talking in the corridor and smoking behind the bus shelter my biggest crime was talking to the boys from the boy’s school next door over the ginnel wall! Each of these ‘crimes’ gave me a detention so we had tea late every Wednesday. It wasn’t until the Sixth form that I settled down. Oh and I forgot I put a preserved fish down some one’s back!

Not naughty at all. Never wanted to be the centre of attention. Still don’t.

I was not naughty at all too terrified of the teachers but I remember an incident we were waiting to go to the swimming baths lined up near the gate when a lady came with her daughter and someone made a rude comment to her and we all got hauled in and reprimanded severely I still fight injustice to this day as I hadn't done anything. Maybe that was a lesson I remembered all my life?

I was a good girl but seem to remember my homework was always more of a chore than it should have been. We didn’t have any reference books in the house nor a telephone so if I was really stuck I had to go to the call box on the corner to look up in the telephone book one of ‘the bods’ and beg for help. Fancy a phone directory being intact in a call box - amazing days. I’d have done so much better at the grammas school if (a) I’d had Google and (b) my birthday hadn’t been in the last few days of August - the baby of the year! That’s my excuse anyway ?

I was moderately well behaved, at 7yrs I was sent to a private school with a rigid discipline code, there were many petty rules you could break and get a slippering. That taught me 3 things, obey the rules, do as you are told, and don’t get caught.

My secondary school was slightly more relaxed and I avoided most conflict with authority easily and enjoyed my school years. 50 odd years on I think the schools did a good job of preparing me for adult life and the world of work.

I was never out of trouble, both in school AND the boarding house, so a double whammy. Like Anja, I had to learn long, biblical tracts as punishment which has stood me in good stead for quiz nights.

I wasn’t bad, but had my moments. I once instigated a prank of cutting a bunch of flowers from one primary teacher’s garden and giving them to another who lived up the road (she was delighted!). I was instrumental in a day at grammar school when we tore down the hens of our skirts as a protest at not being allowed to wear them shorter. The school wisely let us get on with it - knowing full well that we only had to sew them up again that evening! And I had to cut the playground grass with nail scissors once after gawping disrespectfully at a Chinese funeral taking place across the road. There was a pyre in the garden and we thought they were burning the body (they weren’t!).

Whoops, hems not hens! Ruddy predictive text!

I went to twelve different schools as we were always travelling so once I found my feet I was no angel because there were only three schools that I liked and where I was truly happy.

I wasn't a ring leader and worked hard but I think my reports said something along the lines of 'easily led'

Fortunately Dad's last and longer posting meant I could spend four years at grammar school where I thrived. I still hung out with the jokers but it was the kind of school where everyone got on and there was no bullying.

I won't highlight any of my pranks. The thread won't be long enough.