A master class in truancy
It’s possible to get through life on the bare minimum of schooling — but not advisable
I was absent from the fourth-form class photo that year. I was probably wagging, if the truth be known.
School truancy is a problem in New Zealand without doubt. No matter what data one reads it is not good. I guess if kids do not attend school regularly, they struggle to reach their potential.
We never had truancy in my day. We had wagging.
I was a wagger of some repute. I had two methods of committing this offence.
Being an asthmatic kid helped in the 50s and 60s. The most effective way for getting over an asthma attack back then was to just rest at home and use what medications there were, in the days before the wonderful inhalers and other drugs available now.
If you got asthma or bronchitis, you just stayed home until the wheezing stopped. Sometimes a day or so, often a week or so. It wasn’t pleasant for the first few days.
So that was always a plan when I felt the need not to go to school. Tell mum I felt a bit wheezy. Mum, of course, being a wonderful, caring mother would let me stay home.
One had to be careful with this plan. No playing outside or leaving home. Mum was not above making a quick diagnosis that I was swinging the lead and send me off to school anyway, late of course with the then difficulty of explaining to my teacher why I was late.
My other alternative plan was to leave for school as normal but not make it. Stay on the bus and head into town to wile away time at the shops or in the local library reading books. Far more fun than having to struggle with algebra and Latin conjugations.
Sometimes a trip to the river with other waggers to do things that little boys enjoy, building forts, playing war games, keeping an eye out for any teachers or adults who may make life a bit difficult, then just go home after school was finished for the day.
I do not remember much about my fourthform year. At a class reunion a few years ago we were all talking about our form teachers and I had no memory of my fourth-form teacher.
When I was told who he was, I realised I had completely forgotten about the guy. He wasn’t much of a teacher and we did not particularly like each other but I had just forgotten him. Also, I was absent from the fourth-form class photo that year. I was probably wagging, if the truth be known.
Ambition and aiming for great things were not really my bag; never have been. I always joke that I was a gentleman of leisure but born into the wrong section of society, the section that has to work for a living.
Sadly, I had to muster enough of an education to get some sort of decent job, preferably one that did not involve getting my hands dirty but was reasonably well paid.
I stayed around at school until I was 17 and then headed off to police school for 19 months’ training as a cadet. Even there, I took life easy. Doing enough to get through. Exams and such like were necessary and time-consuming.
I had to study which got in the way of the social things a teenager likes to do. The money would be okay after I graduated.
It was good money being a cop back then in the very early 1970s, not so now, of course.
Somehow I managed to graduate. With all this wagging and lack of ambition, I still seemed to pass exams quite easily. Not sure why. I must admit my goal was only ever to get a pass mark; anything else was a waste of my time, never get ahead of oneself was my motto even back then.
I did enjoy the easier things of life at work. Unfortunately I also seemed to enjoy being a cop, did so for all my service.
I hadn’t factored that into my clear lack of ambition and lack of interest in reaching for the stars. I turned around one day and found that if I was not careful I’d be off up the ranks before I knew it. Definitely having to leave Whanganui.
Enough of that, gentlemen of leisure simply do not allow that sort of silliness.
I eventually wandered off out of the police back into the real world where I carefully managed to keep out of any real responsibility or importance around the place but still manage a healthy pay packet. Again I actually enjoyed my job as long as I was left alone to get on with it.
My main goal in working was to retire as soon as possible, stop working early and become that man of leisure. Through good luck and some careful management I did, leaving work to those with much more ambition.