Guest Post: The Class Clown

This week we've been hearing from people with far more interesting school stories than mine. And a week of sharing mischief wouldn't be complete without my husband, Steve, who was the ultimate class clown...

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Well, Megan asked me to write a guest post about some of the “fun” that I got into during my school days. Trying to think up things to write is quite hard, not because there aren’t many things to write about, with me it was more the opposite.

Don’t get me wrong, I was never one of the kids at school that beat up other kids, or a “bogan” that smoked up the back of the school oval. I was more what is referred to as the class clown. You know the type… sitting up the back of the class, smart arse comments flying at the teacher, most of the other students cracking up laughing (not everyone would get the jokes), teacher losing it and in the end me ending up either kicked out of the class or in detention. I recall getting kicked out of English for telling dingo jokes and doing really bad Meryl Streep (A dingo’s got my baby) impersonations while debating the Azaria Chamberlain case.

Detention… now that was funny at my school. As 90% of the kids travelled by bus, the teachers really only gave detention during lunch or recess, as most of us had no other way to get home if not by bus. So really, who cared if the teacher made you sit in the classroom for another 10 minutes? My theory was the teacher wanted to be out of there more than I did (after 45 minutes with a room full of kids, I think the teachers needed their Winnie Blues more than the bogans), so I did everything to make sure that I stayed my full time in detention. But… if I did want to get out of there, I made sure I did. I remember jumping out the window once to get to a game of hockey I wanted to play in.

Once in my chemistry class, I had some leftover milk after making a coffee (yes I was addicted at an early age!), so I stapled the carton to a bit of string and hung it from the roof like all the other chemical elements they had hung up (ie H2O, NaCl etc) and labelled it MiLk. Doesn’t sound that funny but, well, this was during summer in the old classrooms with no air-con, so after a few days it started to reek. The school ended up getting the science wing fumigated because they couldn’t work out what the smell was.

But one parent teacher night was the best. My mum always got the “he could do soooo much better if he just applied himself a bit more”, so she was ready for that, but what neither of us were ready for was one teacher’s reaction when the dad of one of the kids in another year level turned up... in full drag! (he later had the snip snip, but the stories that go with this guy are a whole other post). The teacher’s face was priceless and he was totally speechless, and for weeks after that we kept leaving notes in the teacher’s pigeon hole pretending to be from that dad, thanking the teacher for his time, saying he made an impression on him, and could they catch up some time. He never suspected it was me.

Amazing what you can get away with when you put on your innocent face, something I am now seeing in our little girl, and a cheeky streak. Guess I’ve only got myself to blame for that one. Can’t wait to hear some of her school stories.

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Oh dear god - I hadn't thought of that. The next 16 years could be interesting...


Megan