The Right Bag

College is rapidly approaching for a certain member of the family. And preparations are underway in the various areas that need addressing before the first day: Subjects - French, Chinese or Drama?; Which netball team will I get into?; and of course, the ordering & fitting of the school uniform (and the related arranging of the mortgage to purchase the gear).

It's the uniform & accessories that fascinate me. I was surprised to discover that the school expects the uniforms bought for the 3rd form, to last the pupil the length of their tenure, so M is dismayed to find she has to stump up on the first day in a size 14 tunic - I don't know what size she is now, maybe a 10 or an 8? - but I can tell that she never, ever intends to be size 14. Ever. And will wear this uniform only under sufference. She's a tall girl actually, I can't wait to see what her smaller friends have to endure in their first year, some of the tunics will be dragging on the ground.

There are still a few items to settle on, one being the school bag. And here's where we segue into reminscence...

I moved schools a lot to follow the global ramblings of my parents. A lot of what M is going through now is foreign to me, because I can only think of two schools that I attended where I started on the first day of school. One was my first primary school (all I can remember is the school caretaker outside, conducting a group of kids singing "I am H A P P Y..." - maybe its a Welsh thing, but even I was pretty worried about this, and that I played a christmas tree in the school nativity play - demoted from Jack Frost), and the other was intermediate. At all other schools, I tended to arrive somewhere mid year. Primary school in NZ, grammar school in Wales, Wellington College, and then Naenae College.

I think my parents had to stump for the spiffing grammar school uniform - grey long pants, grey school jersey (or optional waistcoat worn by some), and really fantastic school blazer. At Wellington College, I was humiliatingly garbed from the lost property, because my dad taught there & had access to the facility. Probably no-one knew. Except me. The official Wellington College School bag also came from lost property, otherwise I'd have been forced to carry my dad's cast off briefcase. And this college bag was quite cool. Soft vinyl, school colours & crest, and best of all, everyone else had one. I belonged. I had that bag for a few years - it sat in my shed containing a spare gearbox for a Fiat Bambina that I once owned - but inevitably, the handle broke & I steeled myself to part with it.

At my next college, the uniform was somewhat plainer, the absence of a crest made sourcing the correct style simple & economic. But the school bags were much the same as Wellington, just a different colour. Unfortunately, my folks saw no reason why I shouldn't use the cursed briefcase. And so for a few years I shuffled resignedly to & from school carrying this camel coloured monstrosity that hit my knee at every second step.

I think it was the 5th form that I was finally able to persuade the powers that be that I really deserved an official Naenae college bag. By this time, the style had changed (the old ones handles used to break, and the school got sick of half the students ingeniously keeping them in action with various coloured ropes). They were bigger for a start, but still designed so they could be slung over one shoulder. And the handles were much improved.

So robust were these bags, that it is only in recent years I was persuaded by my wife to throw it away. It served proudly for decades as my overnight bag on business trips.

But robust as it was, there are some jobs these bags were not designed, nor equipped to deal with. Like containing small explosions.

Which brings me finally, to the real topic of this post...

It must have been the 7th form, I was hurrying along to physics, ahead of me were the class nerds...

Tangent: At school, I was neither a nerd, nor cool. Somewhere happily (mostly) in between. I was reasonably academically successful, such that, after one disastrous maths test, I overheard one of the class nerds tell another "Don't worry, even Rodriguez Llewinsky (my real name) only got 45%". I was so proud. However, I was mercilessly shy with girls, and found this a real bother. Luckily, I got over it in my 30s. We did have a small team of nerds though. And to be honest, I have no idea of their academic prowess, we all assumed that they were pretty bright, they all had really esoteric interests, it's just that they socialised with no-one but themselves.

The nerd at the heart of this story was the closest of the group ahead of me, as he rounded a corner, he was jostled by a cool kid coming in the other direction, which I think, wouldn't have been a rare occurrence for the guy. let's call him (the nerd) David Foohey, for the sole reason that this is not his name.

David was a stocky guy with unruly hair, and coke bottle glasses. He was, and probably still is, a nice enough guy. Just one of those guys who peered through his thick spectacles at you & spoke with a funny voice. And he had a funny laugh. But we're not talking about American Splendor grade nerds. David joined the army when he left school.

Anyway, as a result of the jostling, David's official school bag was knocked from where it had lain, slung across his shoulder.

The notable, and quite surprising consequence of this action, was that approximately 10 feet in front of me, the schoolbag turned into quite a sizeable ball of flame, which threatened to engulf the nerds. All of whom, excepting David, looked completely taken by surprise. David also looked startled, although not completely, he was also a bit singed, as he heft his flaming bag over a fence into the biology class's vegetable garden, and retreated to a safe distance. Smoking.

The story came out, over time, after some discreet quizzing of his friends. The bag, it seemed, contained a small home made landmine. The intention was that at some stage during the day, David was going to plant the device somewhere in the school field, in the customary path of the school caretaker's tractor.

In a way, it was a pity this plan was thwarted, it would have been legendary. In another way, it's lucky it was thwarted as the chances of someone stepping on the mine before the tractor would have been quite high.

David was suspended for a couple of weeks, I'm not sure his real intention was ever discovered by the school authorities, but it transpired that the parts & ingredients for the bomb were stolen from the chemistry lab. He returned to school, having served his time, and finished his college education without further incident.

He was, however, now world famous, in school.