Why You Should Not Have Played Truant

Two lessons taught with very different outcomes

At primary school you attend every lesson, on time, and you are the most obedient child in the class. You love school and school loves you. Your teachers think you are a wonder child. The other kids give you those side looks. New, but not irritating enough to beat up. Strange accent, but not unpleasant. Sounds American.

You keep being asked the answer to questions. You know them all. It’s boring.

One day, for the first time in your life . . . for the first time ever in your goody-two shoes life, you decide not to go to school. Instead, you meander down side roads, to parks, play with strange children and roam. You’re safe. You’re not the kind of child that is going to be spotted and picked on. Even if you are seen you’re protected by the cloak of goodness.

You keep being asked the answer to questions. You know them all. It’s boring.

You’re feeling peckish and you have enough to buy a drink. You go to a local popular store (look, it was Woollies, ok?) and wander around, thinking about how naughty and rebellious you have been. If they could see you now, all those children who say you’re the teacher’s pet and can get away with anything. As you spend time inhaling the sweets counter, you look up and see your worst nightmare staring at you.

Is it your teacher?

You wish.

It is your mother. She’s on her lunch break. She expresses surprise. “Hello, what are you doing here?”

Well, they don’t call you teacher’s pet for nothing. Smooth as silk, you reply, “The teacher sent me to look some prizes for the class.”

As a reward for your goody-twoshoesness, she buys you a bag of sweets.

There are no questions. You have a rep. Also, your mother is a refined gentlewoman with a sweet, soft, trusting nature. She’s proud of you, and as a reward for your goody-twoshoesness, she buys you a bag of sweets. Win- win. But you’ve learned your lesson. You never play truant again.

Except some years later, when you’re in the fourth year (aka year 9 aka 8th grade). Your teacher's running late but has to go to Wales for the weekend. She is a young Jamaican battle-axe straight from the #Caribbean. In other words, the worst kind of teacher. The Jewish and Indian teachers are bad, really bad, but Mrs Yotty Sat on a Potty takes no prisoners. You all believe she’s going serial-killing lazy students in Pillgwenlly at the behest of the Welsh Department of Education. Still, you wait and wait, until after a lengthy fifteen minutes some of you decide that she’s probably cut class.

Ergo, the rest of you should too.

You're caught like expectant road kill, frozen for perfect identification in a police line-up.

Seven of you leave, dragging behind a reluctant eighth goody-two shoes (Whoever could it be?), complaining all the way that it will end in tears. Hark, who listens there? No one. But you get out of school scot free. You do the ignorant pedestrian thing arms linked, taking up the whole of the and pavement. We’re about to hit the cake shop for sausage rolls.

As you are approaching our target, shouting and screaming as only schoolgirls can, one of you gasps. There, at the traffic lights, sitting in her Austin … Mastra … Lastra … in her red car, is our missing teacher. You're caught like expectant road kill, frozen for perfect identification in a police line-up. She takes in each face with measured slowness, lingers on yours, then nods. The lights turn green and she drives on.

We do not waste a second of that glorious long weekend.

You study it carefully. Learn how to spell it. How to pronounce it.

For those two summer-packed days you all stay indoors, labouring over our homework: research reference, numbering, the Dogon star system, kings and queens, the Bermuda triangle, Roswell, income taxes, the Bader-Meinhoff gang. Everything goes in. name and date. you remember the way she looked at you and decide you need to up the ante. you look up Wales. One word sticks out, it has no choice.

You study it carefully. Learn how to spell it. How to pronounce it.

#Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Tuesday morning, (for Monday is but one more day of torture) each one of you a submits the most detailed and exquisite homework ever produced in studentdom. Tour teacher says nothing. Does nothing. And never has.

That is why none of you ever attend reunions. You remain terrified to this day that she will turn up, hatchet in hand, muttering, off-topic so she can torture you even more, “About that Lady Chatterley homework that you turned in…”

And that, children, is your lesson for today. Go to class/work/course. Learn something new. Feel good for the rest of your life. Feel safe.