BACK TO SCHOOL...

As I sat in bed this morning, looking around at the

familiar furniture and layout of the room, I was reminded

that this was the very same bedroom from which I emerged

each weekday to trudge along to school back in the 1970s.

The school no longer exists (the original building anyway),

so my room (and indeed house) are the last remaining

links to a long-vanished period of my youth.

And then it dawned on me that it wasn't quite so.

A few weeks before my family moved from this house

in 1983 (returning four years later), I had started going to

night school classes in my old secondary school.  You see,

I'd left the hallowed halls of academia without sitting any

Highers, so decided to pursue Higher Art, English, and

History and increase my meagre qualifications.

I soon dropped out of art as I found it too boring,

and then had to choose between History and English as

they swapped English teachers on the night I attended that

particular subject a few weeks into the course.  To keep the

teacher I'd  started with(who knew his stuff), I had to give

up History, as the two subjects were on the same night

and I couldn't attend both at the same time.

So, ten years after leaving school, I was back at the

very same one, trotting along every week from our new

house, 'though I'd begun the course while yet living in my

old one.  I eventually acquired my Higher English qualifica-

tion to add to my two O' levels (Art and English, the only

two I ever sat,) and had enjoyed the experience of re-

living my schooldays in the process.

But, to get to the point (finally), I now realize that

I regret having left school at 16, and wish I'd stayed on

for yet another year or two.  In that way, I would have re-

mained a 'schoolboy', and extended the period of my boy-

hood for just a little while longer.  After all, you can't really

consider yourself an 'adult' while still going to school,

can you?  Unless  you're a teacher of course.

Some of my classmates stayed on after I left, and

I find myself envious if I hear them reminiscing about

their schooldays after I'd departed.  I was out in the work-

ing world, pretending to be an adult, while they continued

their existence as 'schoolkids', with all the attendant holi-

days and lack of financial responsibility that such a life

entailed.  Would I really do things any differently

'though, if I had my time over again?

Maybe, maybe not, but it's sometimes fascinating

to ponder how things might have been had I stayed on

and continued life as a schoolboy.  Would the period of

my youth seemed longer in retrospect, or would it have

made no difference in the long run?  Feel entirely free

to indulge my fanciful thoughts by adding your two

cents worth in the comments section.

  Or see me after school!   

Posted in: Cartoons