Andy's Confusion

1992

"What an Idle Boy"

In September, my class finally moved out of the shared Reception classroom and into the first of the classrooms which rowed the hallway’s far wall. Year Two’s teacher was Mrs Scott. A sweep of urchin-short black hair topped a thin face, often pinched in understatement, with her Standard English voice lowered to a playfully sarcastic drone.

Schoolwork now involved frequent use of photocopied sheets. Before distributing these, Mrs Scott told the class which photocopied ink box required what arrangement of numbers or words.

Within seconds of the start of her explanation, Mrs Scott’s talk of addition, punctuation and arrangement thereof quickly slipped my grasp. Within seconds, I forgot the meaning of each instruction and failed to grasp its relation to its successors. In seconds, the briefing was a barely intelligible drone.

After staring bewilderedly at the worksheet for some time, I approached Mrs Scott’s desk.

“Mrs Scott,” I said, in the First School drone of deferential ascent, “wha’ d’ y’ have to dooo?”

Mrs Scott had just told us all what to do. Hadn’t I listened? 

My incessant demands for repeated explanation galled and wearied her. With solemn sternness, she urged me to listen. While not shouted, her urgency steadied me with cautious fear. For some reason, try as I might, I seemed unable to force myself to listen. Instead of risking further admonishment, I cultivated the habit of keeping my perplexity to myself.

James, as he sometimes somewhat sternly reminded me, had been able to tie his shoelaces at the age of three, and to tell the time at the age of five. At well over the age of five, I could do neither. 

One day, as my work rate sorely lagged, Mrs Scott placed before me a stack of worksheets, each of which had been respectively completed by my classmates, as well as one for me. She told me to concentrate on this task for now.

I thought she wanted me to fill in everyone else’s already completed worksheets. Although baffled, I set about adding to each already graphite-inscribed space the required combination of letters. As I worked, I vaguely supposed it to be unlikely that the teacher would want me to graffiti everyone else’s work. This reservation was overwhelmed by a decisive aspiration to obedience. 

Mrs Scott returned, and, at my vandalisation of my classmates’ work, was aghast.

“What an idle boy!” she said.

While the word evoked a stern-faced totem pole as worshipped by obscure islanders in Tintin, I understood it to refer to laziness. Was that where my inhibitions lay? In a grossly selfish lack of motivation?

1997

"Come On, Andrew! Do – Get – That Finished!"

Two classrooms, divided by a thin, doored wall, housed Year Six. 

The furthermost class, 6BL, was taught by Mr Logan. Mine, 6DK, was taught by Mrs Kilburn. Short, wavy dark grey hair framed large, tinted spectacles. Her vowels rose in an Estuary-sounding twang. At the start of term, she and Mr Logan explained the joint classroom situation, and that the two of them sometimes liked to “have a cuddle.” In demonstration, they staged a loose embrace. 

Mrs Kilburn had both joviality and easy, urgent authority. Her serious indignation, she forewarned, would be heralded not by shouting, but by a low-voiced restraint of her wrath. Graffiti on homework diaries – such, she said, as “Calvin loves Lorna forever” – was forbidden. 

Most lessons were held here in the form classroom. Science and Information Technology were taught respectively in the Science lab and IT block, albeit by Mrs Kilburn, and Technology was taught in the Technology room by Mr Foggon.

In the form classroom, I once more found myself seated beside Anthea Heatley. 

On failure to grasp Mrs Kilburn’s instructions, I was often reduced to glancing at my hostile neighbour’s work, in search of clues as to what I was meant to be doing. While I was slightly ashamed to do so, this was the only alternative to asking for further instruction. 

My unwholesome tactic fuelled Anthea’s assertions of my ridiculousness. She seemed to trace my stupidity to maleness. I, she snarled, lacked a “brain to think with!” 

While severe irritation fuelled my dismissal of Anthea’s jibes, a meek humiliation held her contempt to be just. I was indeed fat. My inability to grasp instruction did indeed seem out of place. Did both stem from ill-discipline? 

An episode of ITV’s You’ve Been Framed prefaced a montage of comedic home videos with a display of a boy and girl in school uniform, the former with his tie at half mast, the latter dressed neatly. 

Host Jeremy Beadle declared girls to usually do better in education. Boys, he added, were more suited to such adventure as depicted in the following scenes of all-male buffoonery, set to Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear it for the Boy.”

While I loathed claims that maleness was less suited to intellect than femaleness, I dreaded that they might amount to more than chivalry. While Anthea’s bluster held no fear, the fineness of her features, lightness of voice and softness of hair lent her wrath a humblingly earnest bravado.

Much of the work was still, to me, barely comprehensible. I typically worked very slowly, often because I didn’t fully understand what to do. As I worked on the monotonous tasks, my mind was inclined to stall. To stare into the distance offered soothing relief from the burden of concentration. The overheated classroom, and lack of sleep, lulled me further. 

Mrs Kilburn frequently swept down to level her face with mine.

“Come on, Andrew,” she urged, “do – get – that finished!”

If I asked for guidance on how to “get that finished,” I supposed, Mrs Kilburn would realise that I hadn’t listened to her instructions. She’d wonder at my laziness, my obstinacy, and my inattentiveness. She’d try to dissuade me from such behaviour. She’d almost certainly be cross. She might even raise her voice. I lived in instinctive dread of the tumultuous fright and humiliation of chastisement, of teachers’ lamentation of their persecution with my uncooperativeness. 

Over in the newly refurbished Music block, Mrs Kilburn, in preparation for a statistical exercise, asked how many dogs people had. Keen to show support for dogs, I mentioned my father’s work-based custody of five sheepdogs. 

Mrs Kilburn then more formally repeated the query to each student. When my turn came, I began a repeat of my earlier description. Halfway through my conversationally worded offer, Mrs Kilburn interrupted. 

“HELLO! AN-DREW!” she yelled, not quite at the top of her voice. “ARE YOU WITH THE HUMAN RACE?” 

While jovially exaggerated, her volume and fierceness staggered me. The query was, she explained less loudly, in search of pet ownership.