A LESSON LEARNED
Chris relives his early years through the eyes of teachers and nursery staff…
Last week, climbing into her attic for the first time in a quarter of a century, my mum came across a box of my old school reports and letters spanning nursery right through to sixth form.
All my school reports seemed to run along the same lines – namely that I generally seemed “a bit sleepy and more intent on staring out of the window at squirrels than actually learning anything”.
There was also a recurring assertion that I could definitely be very good at things, if only I’d try.
The trouble is, I was trying… I just wasn’t very good at things. Except for staring at squirrels, apparently.
I seemed to pick up pace a little in my last year at senior school, managing to get myself suspended for “constantly talking nonsense”. At least that proves I was awake – and also shows that I already had a future career very much in mind.
The nursery school reports were definitely the most interesting, though, having, as I do, absolutely no recall of the first four years of my life except for a vague memory of living in a treehouse (I’m now reliably informed that I never actually lived in a treehouse, so make that no memories at all). First up was an accident slip, stating, Chris was eating his lunch when he fell side ways off his chair, banging his head on the floor.
That one paragraph says so much, not only that I appear to have found eating lunch to be a dangerous activity, but also that I clearly have more in common with my pet rabbit Ted (who regularly falls asleep mid munch and nosedives into his food bowl) than I thought.
My nursery school’s daily report diary records on January 17, 1969, that Chris has been crawling around the floor chasing wind-up toys, and go this head stuck under a lot of things.
Apart from making me sound like a moron, I have to wonder: what did I get my head stuck under, and how many things even exist that you could get your head stuck under… in a single day?
The diary also records, a couple of months later, that Chris has been bouncing up and down this week. That’s all it says for the whole week – just bouncing up and down. That’s what I did… all week? What a week that must have been.
Various accident slips also show that during my time at nursery, I was bitten by four different children. What was this – The Nursery of The Walking Dead? Why was everyone biting me?
Going back to the diary, there’s one very strange entry: Chris has not been himself this week. It has been a lovely week. Did my parents not see this comment as just a little bit insulting?
“Oh no, I don’t think they’d have meant it like that,” said Mum, pondering my suspicions about the comment. “It was a lovely nursery school.”
Hmm… maybe my parents just wanted to leave me there in the hope I’d eventually be eaten.
“Chris is more intent on staring at squirrels than learning”