This is a piece of experimental writing someone wrote.  It’s supposed to be humorous but…Is it?  They think you’ll either love it or hate it, think it funny, silly or boring (probably the last of those🙄!).  But either way do leave your opinions below, this person would like to know what you thought of this work:

Everyone can remember their first day of school, right?  How about your (second) first day of school?  Well, your second first day of school (because that school you’ll spend most of your teenage years in isn’t the first one you go to) at least not in the UK.  Some people’s first days go well, while others literally suck and you wish you could jump into a delorean, swap yourself with your wiser self, and start it all over again.  But the first day of school doesn’t have to be a disaster, and even if it was, in the years since going to school you’ll look back on it and laugh, you might even realise how silly you were to get so worked up over it in the first place.  Of course if your whole school life sucked then maybe it’s okay if you still get depressed over it, but trust me, unless you’ve been through the weird experiences I’ve been through, then nothing could be as bad as my life at BuleyForest School, where bullies roam free and everybody hates you…

“Welcome to BuleyForest!” the head teacher said, or at least that’s what I would have heard her say if I’d actually gotten to my first day of school on time! Instead of hearing a rousing speech which no doubt made every student feel confident and pleased to start their new life in secondary school, I was busy trying to stop myself from dying while rushing down the road sounding like a harmonica that was losing its reeds.

My first day of secondary school was already ruined before it had begun, no thanks to the bus I had to catch, or two buses in fact. You see, getting to BuleyForest wasn’t easy. Even though there were about half a dozen routes I could have taken to the school, all of them had to involve a heavy amount of bus travel, or walking, but that would involve waking up and leaving the house before the birds had gone to sleep the night before!

So buses it was, but we’re not talking about a school bus though. No, those fancy yellow buses I got used to seeing in American shows (a.k.a The Simpsons) didn’t exist for the likes of me living in suburban England. Instead the school ran two or three school coaches, which were basically the same coaches that you used to see old people taking for day trips out or ones you see ferrying people around the country and across the continent when they can’t afford trains or planes.

But the thing about those school coaches was, they were reserved for the really rich kids, you know, the ones who had parents who could drive their kids to school, or get a nanny to do it. Those really rich people who lived in the neighbourhhods that surrounded the school. Yep, that’s where I went to school, to a really rich school that prided itself on how private and perfect they were without actually being a private school* or perfect in any way!  BuleyForest School would give all those rich parents, who could afford to donate lots of money to the school, a special coach service to pick up their precious children (who lived only a few minutes drive from the school), but leave the rest of us who came from the other side of town (the poor side, who incidently lived a few hours drive away), to find our own way to school, and back then that meant relying on buses which were filled with angry and sadistic drivers.

*Now let me just point out that I don’t have a problem with private schools.  If you’ve been to one and you came out normal and don’t think the poor of society are just there to be laughed at and clean up after you then you went to a normal private school.  But some people, just like some schools, or one in particular think they’re better than anyone else and anyone with the right mind to be poor should be treated like a piece of gum you get stuck to your shoe and spend the rest of your walk stamping and wiping your foot on a pevement to get rid of.

Since we’d gotten off the bus (which felt like a good mile ago) I’d been half-running, half-staggering up a long road filled with nice expensive houses before entering the woods, or what felt like the woods.  I’d started to sound like a harmonica half way back down the road and my wheezing wasn’t getting any better.  I knew it was the beginning of an asthma attack, but I couldn’t stop walking now, getting to school was more important than stopping and making sure to stay alive!

Walking this route to school had been planned out of course.  The last time I had come this way to the school was after I’d been given a place in BuleyForest.  It wasn’t my first choice of school, my first choice was this cool place with a breakfast club and a timetable that meant you finished school about half an hour before every other school in the region!  But after a mix up over the phone with whoever decides these things, I was given a place at BuleyForest, and even though it wasn’t my first choice I still thought it was going to be a great school to study in, after all it was in a posh neighbourhood and prided itself on being posh and outstanding, so what could possibly go wrong?

So the journey to the school had been planned, and actually executed once before, back on a trial day I’d done in the summer.  What’s a trial day you probably didn’t ask?  IIt’s one of those days you go to school wearing your primary school uniform and get to know your future friends and peers.  I’m not sure if all schools did them, but BuleyForest was very keen to get us aquainted with other students who’d be studying next year too, and show us all the different chassrooms we’d be wasting weeks of our life in, even though it was likely we’d all forget everything as soon as we’d left.  Still, it was an experience I admit I was excited to go to, that is until I’d sat for five minutes in the form room and realised I was the only one in my brown primary school uniform.  I spent the rest of the day eavesdropping on conversations and nodding along like one of those dogs you see in the back of cars, pretending I was making friends while a sea of purple uniforms all talked to each other.

Last year I’d gotten here well on time.  It didn’t matter if you were late on the trial day of course, after all it was a trial day and a whole bunch of purple uniforms chattering away arrived late.  But today, on my first day at the school, when it actually mattered to be early, where impressions of me would be made in the first few seconds on everyone I met…Today I had to be late, and not a few minutes late, we’re talking nearly an hour late!

I was sure the buses had been conspiring to make it happen. I’d left home earlier than necessary with my Mum and we’d run to the bus stop to wait for the bus that’s always perpetually late. This time though, the bus thought, ‘Nope, I’m going to be early, just to mess with you’ and sped past us before we’d turned the corner and reached the stop.  Of course like any regular bus user knows, you need to lose all your dignity and run after the bus waving your arms like a crazy person.  In any other situation you’d run away from someone like that, but bus drivers know better.  They usually open doors or wait a few seconds until you catch up, never mind your red face, your panting like you’ve sprinted six miles and sometimes your drooling where you’ve tried to shout at the bus to “wait” but instead barely managed to make a “w” sound.  It never matters that by the time finally climb aboard you look like a rabbid animal that they should have run over rather than opened the door for.  No, bus drivers know better…

But this driver must have been new, or had a sadistic streak because he waited, watching us flail our arms like windmills down the street, running with the heavy bags my mum packed, filled with lunch, school supplies, medical kits and probably the kitchen sink, before closing the door and driving away, happily splashing last night’s rain which had settled into the gutter onto my new uniform.  After that the only option was to wait for another bus to take us into town, and then another bus to take us back out of town on to the other side of the leafy suburbs where the school sat nestled half in woodlands, the town being like a buffer zone between the poor neighbourhoods and the really rich ones.  Except by then the buses had gone on strike and decided to only drive down the road when there were no other school aged kids left on the streets.  I was going to be so incredibly late!

Having finally boarded a bus which had decided to stay away from the picket line, we alighted at the right stop, in front of what is probably a mile long road!   A combination of walking, stumbling and crawling down the road got us to the woods, not the school woods, but another woodland area (this whole place had been built in what looked like a forest).  I call it the woods because when you’re inside it, you feel like you are deep inside dark woodland, but what you’re actually walking through is a small group of awkwardly planted trees designed to hide the other side of the road from the prying eyes of the slightly less well-off but still really rich houses I’d just walked past.  It isn’t fun walking through there when the floor is still muddy from last night’s rain and is filled with wet leaves.

Having navigated this area of flora which is brilliantly placed to split what should be one road into two, you finally emerge onto the even posher looking road, shoe soles caked in squishy mud and then have to walk the same distance you just walked (another mile or so!) while using every third or forth step to attempt to half-skate and subtly wipe off the mud from your shoe without looking like you’ve stepped in dog poop.   Finally at the end of that road the school is almost in sight, you just have to cross a four-way intersection without any lights and drivers who feel that pedestrians should be extinct.

Finally at the school my lungs decided they were going to start singing their swan song, although it came out more crow than swan.  My face was already red from the speed walking and the constant wheezing but now my body decided to throw in a full-blown asthma attack into the mix. “No time” Mum said pushing me through the entrance gates while I sucked on a useless piece of plastic that the genius pediatrician Dr Barky had prescribed me.  I called her Dr Barky because she had a loyal pack of junior doctors who always bared their teeth in what I think were attempts at smiling but looked more like a pack of wolves who had just spotted their lunch.

Finally I was here, my first day of school had begun. “You’ve missed the assembly” the sour faced Mrs Knowitall told me while acending the creaky steps of an old victorian building I was now in, with me in tow. “But you will get to your form room and get your timetable from there”. I would have liked to have asked her a question: What happened in assembly? What have I missed? Can you slow down while my lungs decide to live or die?  But I didn’t ask, because she didn’t stop walking and when I tried to speak only wheezing came out – I sounded like a set of bag pipes being played by someone tone deaf (not that someone with a musical ear could make those things sound much better).

The door opened and Mrs Knowitall let Mrs Duke, my new form tutor, know that she was one student short and I had now arrived. Knowitall stepped aside and motioned for me to go inside while shaking a bunch of papers.  It looked more like she was trying to shoo away a cat that was giving her allergies than encouraging me to go in.  Mrs Duke pointed to the first table right in front of the her, right in front of the whole class.  ‘Okay’ I thought ‘This is it, this is the moment that’ll determine your social standing for the next five years!’.   So I took a deep breath, smiled and glided into the room, taking off my coat and rucksack, hooking the coat easily on the chair while sitting down and placing my bags on the floor, all done elegantly and with a smile on my face.  Perfect!

At least that’s the way I wanted my introduction to my class to go, and that’s what I’d been daydreaming was happening before Mrs Duke’s impatient throat-clearing made me realise I was still standing at the door.  So I took a step forward and the whole class watched.  Unfortunately, what they saw was an eleven year old red-faced girl shuffling like a very tired walrus attempting to heft itself through the classroom door when it doesn’t fit.  My bags were all over the place, hanging off my shoulders and the space Mrs Knowitall had left me to step through would mean I’d have to clip her with my bag to get past. I was sweating all over like an olympic sprinter who’d decided to do the sprint twice in the hottest country on earth, with bagpipes in my lungs heaving my bags into the room and onto the table as if I was Santa Claus carrying his a sack filled with twenty bicycles, who’d drunk far too much sherry.

The bag, or bags, as I had my lunch safely boxed away in the most crinkly plastic bag you’ve ever heard, pounded down on the table.  The sound was deafening, well not literally, but I’m sure someone back in the poor side of town could hear it!  I looked at Mrs Duke who had a frown on her face. I mouthed the word “Sorry”. I intended to whisper it but I was still wheezing and didn’t want to subject her to another badly played scottish reel.  I tried to take my coat off, effortlessly and elegantly, but I ended up getting my rucksack caught around the zip and unfreeing myself involved a lot of twirling around 360 degrees while shaking my arms.  Ballet dance over and I finally could put my bag down and swung my coat onto the back of my chair.  The button on my coat sleeve had caught on my new school cardigan though and so I’d have to awkwardly twist myself into the seat of the chair, all the while attached to my coat.  In the end I was so tired and embarassed with the whole ordeal that I sat down, not gracefully, but literally like a cow which had been lifted into the air by a tornado but now found itself with nothing below it but gravity.

There was only one other girl sitting at the table at the front and she stared at me, she stared hard. It was a table that could fit four students at a time but it was just me and her at this table and she stared at me like a feral dog who’d just had their territory invaded. I tried smiling back but as everyone knows, baring your teeth is something you should never do with a feral dog, it only aggrivates them and eventually make them pounce on you. I chose to do the clever thing and closed my mouth, looked down, and ignored the canine while keeping my eyes firmly on the table as if there was something facinating about the bit or scratched plastic on the surface that read ‘B&W 4EVR’

Mrs Duke gave me my timetable, it was the same timetable for the whole class, and carried on explaining the school rules, safety and a bunch of other important stuff you never really remember. There were only about five minutes of class time left when I’d finally showed up and now the class was over, I’d missed everything!

Now we had to make our way out of this classroon and out of the building (this school had a lot of buildings) down a different set of creaky stairs, and enter the labyrinth that was the outdoor school site.  We had to pass a bunch of buildings, all with various doors you didn’t know if you could walk into or out of, then head to the building behind the building that has a building above that, all the while knowing exactly which door to go in through!  Of course if you got lost you couldn’t use a thread or string to mark your way back to the beginning like in Greek mythology, because in here every building also had a one-way system, which meant you’d be led right to the minotaur before you’d be given the alternate route to exit.

Of course I was still attached to my coat back in Mrs Duke’s form room, so I had to use the one hand that I had free to try and put it back on.  But at least those five minutes of sitting, and maybe the fear of the feral dog, had torn the bagpipes in my lungs to shreads putting an end to that unpleasant jig. The whole class rushed out the door while I was still struggling with my coat and bag. Having no clue where to go, I was going to do what any rational human being does when you want to blend into the background and not find yourself in the wrong classroom having already embarrassed yourself enough with your entrance to your new school peers.  I was going to follow the flock and hope that whoever was bleating at the front knew where they were going.  Eventually I managed to get everything to fit, doing a few more ballet poses in the process, although it looked more like an elephant pirouetting than a dancer, and I was now ready to head to and begin my first proper class.  I smiled to myself despite all the social trauma I’d just been through, maybe this day wasn’t going to be so bad afterall.

I grabbed my rucksack and hauled it onto my shoulders and then reached for the other crinkly plastic bag on the floor.  When I came back up the feral dog was standing in front of me, so close I could smell which shampoo she’d used that morning – not a particularly good one, I nearly sneezed on her it was that unpleasant!  “You smell” she said looking me up and down, and then she turned and off she went out the door to follow the now disappearing flock.

My face went a darker shade of red and I stood there unsure whether I should follow the flock or become a new aesthetic feature in the clasroom while hiding under the desk.  I was hot from dehydration brought on by not drinking since I’d woken up, I was still sweating like an olympic sprinter, and now I apparently smelled even though I couldn’t smell myself…Well I could smell myself, it’s not like I’d lost my sense of smell, but all I could smell was fabric softner from my new uniform, and extra strength deodorant.  Still I took out more of that and stuck it under my arms and all over my chest too, just to make sure.  I didn’t think I could smell or sweat on my chest, but my mind started to formulate all sorts of weird made up illnesses where you did.

It would take me a long time to realise that the ferel dog’s, “You smell” didn’t refer to the smell I created from teenage over-sweating, but was instead, the smell of fear I apparently reeked of.  Yes, in BuleyForest School, or BullyForest as I’d start to call it, I had just encountered my first bully…And she wasn’t going to be the last…

This was just the start of my daft experiences at school and life in general, and if you want to read more, then be prepared…it gets a lot dafter!

-Story based on real-life events, but adapted for (attempted) humour.  Names of persons and places changed so the person who wrote this doesn’t get recognised by their former peers or teachers (or get into any legal trouble) 😉

(Did you like this story and want to read more, or do you hope that you never read anything like this again, lol.  This piece of work is published for someone I know very well so I’m struggling to know whether it’s good, so please give an honest opinion on it – good and/or bad thank you) 🙂

How was your first day of school?  Do you remember your first day of secondary or high school?  Were you bullied at school?  Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂

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