Surviving in a Non Dyspraxic World at a Girls Secondary Modern School 3

The Purpose of this blog is to promote The Dyspraxia Foundation E book' "Dyspraxic Adults Surviving in a NonDyspraxic World" self help book for dyspraxic adults. All proceeds go to the Dyspraxia Foundation adult support groups. Available on Amazon for £9.99

This  blog is part 2 of what it was like at Cheadle Kingsway Secondary School for Girls, Teacher and pupils names have been changed but the name of the school hasn't. Some of the funnier bits have become material for my stand Up Comedy.

PE, Maths and Chemistry and putting my foot in it.

P.E. Hell

I found competitive sports and PE. a nightmare and I was always the last to be chosen for the rounders or netball team. I did not learn to ride a bicycle until I was nine or tie my shoelaces until I was twelve. I tried desperately not to show myself up in P.E. although I hated it and only did this because I had to. I even got a grade 2 in P.E. one year on my report for trying hard. This was yet another disappointment to my mum who was more concerned with my poor academic grades and not my sporting ability

An incident I find funny now but at the time I felt like dying of shame. In the changing room after the compulsory shower after PE, the whole of second year were curiously staring at my well developed body like I was some kind of freak. I tried to get dressed behind my towel to have some privacy but couldn’t co-ordinate holding my towel and getting dressed at the same time. To my embarrassment my towel slipped exposing my enormous boobs and my fat belly, causing everyone to roar with mocking laughter. I pretended that I didn’t give a dam and told them all if it was that entertaining I would become a stripper when I left school. From then on I pretended I was on my period every week and refused to have a shower. If you are a well developed dyspraxic teen and your school still makes you endure this humiliation, I would advise you to get a towel with Velcro sewn onto it.

me at 16

 Another incident which was disastrous for a self-conscious adolescent occurred, but I can laugh at it now. During PE we all of second year were made to stand in line in the hall for misbehaving. This was no big deal to me as it was a preferable diversion. I began to develop tummy ache which was getting increasingly painful, but did not dare ask Mrs Peters a PE teacher with wrestlers legs, who had taken a dislike to me if, I could go to the toilet. I decided that I would relieve the pain by letting out a bit of wind. To my dismay a noise like a balloon being let down reverberated around the hall, causing the other girls scream and run away. I tried to blame it on Hazel who had the misfortune to stand next to me but everyone knew it was me! I’m sure if Hazel had blamed me if she was the farter she would have got away with blaming me.

In fourth and fifth year I wagged P.E. by hiding behind the mobile units, preferring going to detention and copying from a dictionary knowing full well the teachers would not look at what I had written because they also had to stay behind. This was less of a punishment than doing PE as far as I was concerned. Avoiding exercise didn’t help with my weight problem. Needles to say my PE grades went right down to a grade 5 during this time. By the time I was 12 I went on diets lost weight and then regained weight. This led to an obsession with dieting and binging which lasted for 20 years. Loosing weight was one of the few ways I got social approval from my peers and as an adult felt in control of my life. I can't find any photos of me when I was t my largest so I must have avoided the camera.

Maths

When I was about 14 my organisational skills suddenly improved I think I had developed my own strategies to organise myself or perhaps it was a stage of maturity in my development. I began to get on with my work and my standard of work dramatically improved.

 In third year I had Mr Summerhill a good looking man with an addiction to cigarettes who wore a horrible grey green suit for work, which was often stained by a leaking biro.  He was a really good maths teacher who could relate to young people and wouldn’t stand any nonsense. Thanks to him I began to make good progress in maths and got fatly good marks for this. To my dismay in fourth year I was put in the A stream for maths with all the brainy students. I had forgotten how to do some of the calculations I had been taught and because we were in the top maths class, we were expected to get on with it without much help. I wanted to ask Mr Summerhill why he had put me in the top stream but I was too shy to approach him. I soon got moved down to a lower stream but not the bottom one.

The Mystery of the Flying Zinc

One day after buying a stink bomb from the joke shop opposite the78 Record Exchange in Stockport I decided to let it off in school. I calmly walked into the toilet and threw the stink bomb over the toilet cubicle wall then cool as a cumber I walked out. 30 seconds later a stream of royal blue clad girls came running out, spluttering and holding their noses. I commented that it was a very childish prank because of the pong I did not have to pretend to look disgusted.

Mrs Smith I have a confession to make, It was me who threw the zinc at you in chemistry, although who would suspect someone who couldn’t throw a ball properly to aim so accurately?  Mrs Smith was a very stressed out chemistry teacher who was easy to wind up and make her red in the face and explode with anger.

My Brother Robin and I,yes we both could ride a bike

In chemistry I developed a phobia about using the pipette with acid. There were not suckers in those days and we had to use our mouths to suck up liquids, (Maybe I was scared of burning a hole in my neck) so I 'wagged' chemistry by hiding in the toilets and read ‘Clockwork orange’. I now realise that my phobia was due to my poor co-ordination. I got into trouble because my teacher thought I was deliberately being awkward so I fulfilled my deviant role by dropping chemistry. I was very disorganised, although I deliberately used to forget my P.E. kit I did unintentionally forgot to do my homework, to bring in the correct subject file and cookery ingredients.  Mrs Swain a cookery teacher who was considered to be very strict because she was the head of fourth year was the only one who realised that I couldn’t help forgetting things and asked me to do some baking for her.

As Tactful as a Bull in a China Shop

Some teachers thought I was not trying hard enough I, and my English teacher Mrs Bryce a softly spoken woman who used to be a nurse gave up on me because she thought I was good at creative writing and was not reaching my full potential.  She was the only teacher who could see through Veronica when she buttered up the other teachers to become a library assistant then a prefect. Mrs Bryce was exasperated by my poor spelling and written presentation. She had assumed my lack of progress in these areas were part of my defiant attitude towards her. During a lesson she asked me a question about a poem, I could not answer her because I was not paying attention.

When she asked me why I couldn’t answer.

I said

“To be honest Mrs Bryce I wasn’t really listening”.

The whole class were impressively shocked by what they though was one of my impertinent put downs, when it was an untactful discourse; I had tried to explain that my mind had wondered because I had difficulty focusing on what she was saying. She told me on her last day of teaching at Kingsway that she had given up on me for wasting my potential.

I would be unintentionally being tactless to my friends. I unintentionally offended my friend Mary. I went to her house for tea and when I used the bathroom I could not find the light switch. I told her entire family that their bathroom gave me the creeps not meaning to be critical about their house. They all thought I was being toffee nosed because I lived in a big posh house and my dad drove a Jaguar car. This faux pas went around the whole school and was an excuse for other pupils to have a go at me. Not only had I offended Mary’s entire family but her best friend Hazel because this used to be her Grandma’s old house. Though it was quite acceptable for my peers to say deliberately disablist, fatist, racist and Anti- Semitic comments, without anyone defending me.

I left secondary school with Grade 1 in Biology and grade 2 in Home Economics, Geography, Art and English. And grade 3 in Maths. These types of grades were perfectly acceptable for my school but I realise now that I had significantly underachieved. My career advisor Mrs Whitely who did not even know me well recommended that because I was "non academic", I should go into catering which proved to be totally unsuitable. I didn't fancy doing silver service which is just as well so I did a bakery course at Tameside college instead  but that's a blog for another day. I would have been better doing O levels and having dyslexia support at my local sixth-form college, but there was no such service. I don't feel any bitterness and resentment after all these years, but I'm glad the Dyspraxia Foundation is working with the British Dyslexia Association to raise awareness in schools so today's young people don't have similar experiences to mine.