High School Old School

...and here they are! (read my last post).

Rebecca (my old housemate) myself, Michelle and Hayley. Gotta love that tiara, hey Melisa!

My Debutante Ball - the highlight of my high school years. When I was in grade 7, my bestest buddy, BB, met a charming young man named Henry at a school disco, who she developed a bit of a crush on. Being the mature, sophisticated youths that BB and I were, and due to the fact we went to different schools, we relished the times we got to spend together. We used to make his name out of alphabet spaghetti, call him; giggling, and hang up, and write romantic stories about him in the little book we used to keep. Totally mature, like I said. Long story short, I met his older brother, Bill, whom I lated dated on a off for about a year, then Henry moved to my high school in year eight, and I transferred my affections to him for a short time. As a result, we became quite buddy buddy (mainly due to my teasing him about getting married and having lots of sex and babies with my best friend), and as he was one of only two guys in my school actually taller than me at this stage, I begged him to fulfill a promise to be my Debutante partner in Year 11. When those 4 years eventually passed, (and even though our romantic future never quite worked out) we were still close friends (and he was still taller than me, thank goodness) I was unfortunately in hospital for a month, and thus missed the time when the Debutantes were being presented. Luckily, I persuaded the committee to let me 'come out' the following year - my last year of high school - and even more advantageous, I convinced my two best friends to 'be presented to society' with me. Naturally, we had an absolute ball, and Henry being the fabulously fun guy that he is always made rehearsals fun. I must admit, it was one of the first time's I'd ever worn a skirt. The nigh went off smoothly, but seeing as Hen was now 6ft 6 and I was on 6ft myself in heels, we were placed to the side of the Set as the photos were taken. Still, I got to enjoy the night with my closest family and friends, as you can see in the photo above. Henry is still one of my best mates.

Stacey and I as Survivors at a local Ball. (The theme was 'TV Stars' and we didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with an outfit. Good job our school shirts were no longer needed!)

This photo represents one of the main reasons why I detested school so much. I was always the chubby tom boy - which never bothered me a jot until I reached my final two years, and we no longer wore school uniform at the Senior Campus. Having ridiculously thick hair - much to my mothers chagrin - I often got it razored to thin it out so it was more manageable. Unfortunately, on a trip to an out of town hairdresser not long before my Deb Ball, the eejit who was trimming my hair mistakenly used the scissors instead of the razor, and my hair was reduced to a closely cropped mess of boyish hair, which made me look like a 12 year old chubby male. Not that I'm terribly shallow (ha!), I cried for weeks on end.

Kellie, Burgan & I in Our Room. (Finally! My hair was growing a little!)

This was our 'room' in school. Like every school, there was specific cliques and groups, and this room housed a group of around 10-20 girls, who had their own little groups in the bigger circle. This was handy, as we could flit between them all and be social, yet still spend time with our closer friends. As one of the girls would get interested in a specific boy, his group would then occasionally connect with our own, and move off again when the romance fizzled out a little. This was also the room where most of my English exams took place (*shudder*). I recall, not too long after this photo was taken, sneaking out of class and running off to my then boyfriends fathers house (who was a local dentist and never home during the day) and drinking wine from a cask, watching daytime TV and playing Giant Balls of Death. This involved both of us holding a large exercise ball in front of out chest, running at each at full force, and trying not to fall through the large floor to ceiling windows/break any of the ornaments in the house after the massive bounce. After a few hours of this, we sloped off back to school after spraying rather a lot of deoderant to cover the wine smell, and carried on the day as usual. I thought I was such a rebel.

Ah, Muck Up Day again!

As I mentioned, we were certainly bright! This was the corridor linking the class rooms to the front of the school, and it led off to the canteen and courtyard etc. We could see it from the window in Our Room, so we could always watch who was going were like the nosy cows we were. We turned up to Muck Up Day in a van with our rollerblades on, but fortunately remembered to take some shoes, too. (We only wore white converse back in the day, and every girl had a different colored star. Mine were aqua blue).

Our Room again, and the very desk I'd sit on to take SAC's (like mini exams during the year; they added towards our final scores). People would mostly sit their pencil cases in front of them, slightly open so we could see our mobile phones (they were banned at school). Whenever I'd get a message, I'd pretend to sharpen a pencil/rummage for something, and quickly read it, then sit it on my lap and type out a response whilst looking at the board and pretending to pay attention. During SACs, because they were like exams, we weren't allowed pencil cases (presumably we'd keep notes in them to cheat) and were only allowed 4 pens on the desk. This didn't usually bother me, but during a particularly horrid SAC on Australian war, there was a soccer game being televised between my own team, Arsenal, and my mothers team, Manchester United. There was a fierce rivalry in my house. Not wanting to miss out on the score (and knowing there were others in the room who wanted to know the score) I kept my phone in the toilet roll holder in one of the bathrooms across the hallway from the classroom, and snuck out several times pretending to need to blow my nose (I had a revolting cold at the time) and called my Mum to check the score. I'm not sure she was aware of the importance of what I was in the middle of at the time.

My favorite Muck Up Day photo, and the last time we were all together.

My exams (the real ones) were unfortunately really badly spaced, so while some people got all theirs out the way in the first week and could relax, mine stretched at one every 4 days for nearly 3 weeks, and my final exam - and hardest, Environmental Science - was due to end only a hour before our Formal began. The exam itself wouldn't have been too bad had I have been paying attention during the year, but as there was only 4 year 12 students in the class (and two of them were my closest friends) they merged us with 4 year 11 students - and you can't put 4 of us girls in with younger boys and not expect carnage. We had a great teacher, who thought we were hilarious (or else just had a nervous breakdown trying to teach us and basically gave up) and let us run amok before we settled down a bit, and we were constantly writing romantic and sordid romance novels which was the highlight of our week. On a particularly frivolous day, my best friend Shell and I rummaged through the teacher's papers on his desk, looking for something or other, and came across an application to another school (this did not surprise us particularly, as we would have given even the strongest teacher reason to doubt their career choice) but, as I said, we loved this guy and we wanted him to stay. To show him our great affection, we pinched the application whilst he wasn't looking - along with his photocopy card - and proceeded to claim to need the bathroom. We then raced to the copiers, stuck the photo from his application in (which was from something like 1961 - the photo, I mean) and blew the image up to about a metre big several times, then proceeded to write amusing things on the photos and stick them all over the school. It didn't go down so well, and 2 years later, I had the rather unpleasant task of serving said teacher's fish and chips at the local pub I was working at. He'd taken some time out from teaching, presumably to calm his shattered nerves.

All in all, although I claimed to not be able to wait to leave the confines of my school - and sharply rebuked anyone who said that revolting line 'school years are the best of your life' - I'd love to go back and do it all again, minus a whole lot of raging teenage hormones and some of the more annoying people who attended.