Thursday 23 September 2021

False memory syndrome

Childhood was an idyllic, carefree time where everything was wonderful. Or was it? Here are five lies your brain tells you about it:

The sun always shone all summer long

Bollocks. Your brain can’t be arsed remembering the endless days of incessant rain, and why should it? No one wants to dwell on being bored shitless stuck in the house before they’d  invented the internet and all you had to entertain you was Connect 4.

Subbuteo was brilliant

Even in the primitive world before Playstations, Subbuteo was unrealistic rubbish. Have you ever seen a real life footballer shoot from 30 yards out and somehow end up flying into the back of the net before the ball did? Let’s face it: Subbuteo was shit.

We’d graze our knees playing and it wouldn’t bother us one bit

The truth is you bawled your eyes out every time you came off your bike and skinned your knee, just like any other child. Not least because you knew it meant your mum would scrub it with TCP that stung worse than the original injury, after first giving you a clip round the ear for being so clumsy.

Christmas was such a magical time

Christmas as a kid was about hoping and praying you’d get the new BMX you wanted so desperately, and then experiencing crushing disappointment when your parents had fobbed you off with a Care Bear. And they made you eat lunch while the Top of the Pops Christmas special was on, the vindictive bastards.

School days were the best days

If you were at school during the 70s, 80s or 90s bullying was basically part of the curriculum and if you told a member of staff about it they’d give you detention for being a tell tale. In those days the teachers could fling chalk, blackboard rubbers or even chairs at you and nobody would bat an eyelid. It was Grange Hill on steroids.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

14 comments:

  1. All true. The bullying... by the teachers! It was outrageous and I was a frequent target. Even the ones who were my allies rather hated me, save for a very few. My favorite teacher was, in hindsight, a passive aggressive homophobe who looked down on me because of my family. Very strange how it all looks once you gain some perspective. Hope you are healthy and happy. And where is that Sophie Ellis Bextor video for While We're Still Young? Seriously... it's Friday tomorrow and I need me some disco ball fairy dust magic, dammit. Kizzes.

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  2. I used to graze my knees on purpose because I liked having a plaster stuck on me.
    Also - 1976 is the summer of our youth, and it felt like it went on forever - all the other years were indeed crap, especially if like me you had to holiday in the UK.
    School days - lessons in survival at the local comp. I still have war wounds.
    Sx

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    1. I do hope you've grown out of that "Elastoplast fetish"...

      Yes, we too only ever holidayed in the UK. More often than not we'd have rain. Jx

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  3. I was once given a pair of "Nicks" trainers for Christmas!

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    1. Could have been worse - they could have been Woolies' own brand "Winfield". Jx

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  4. Can't say I was eager to get there five days a week.My memory's probably selective!

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  5. I agree with all of that and could add more.

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    1. It was all such a long, long time ago... Jx

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  6. School was indeed a place where only the bullies were happy. Except they almost certainly weren't otherwise they wouldn't've been bullies, I suppose?
    Still, thank heavens for chair-throwing. Our German teacher once threw a chair at a gobby little cow (who totally deserved it), but unfortunately he missed her.

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    1. There were occasions during German classes when more of the class were sent outside to await appropriate punishment from the fearsome roaming Deputy Head than there were actually sat at their desks... Jx

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  7. Every single word the truth. The Willamette River Valley was the home of the rainy summer, and a wicked heat inversion come August that made life as an asthmatic a living nightmare. Didn't have Subbuteo, but we did have Goal! a handheld video game which you could beat by always kicking for a field goal. Yawn. And the bullies? Teachers and kids. The Biker had a shop teacher that would take you out in the hall and make you dodge a punch. You won, you got to go back to class. He won, you went to the principals' office with a broken nose!

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    1. Just who was the fucking idiot who said "school days are the best days"? He/she was obviously never a child in any school any of us went to. Jx

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