Category: Teens

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Autobiography Teens

Hopes And Fears For The Future

When I was fourteen my form teacher told my father that I ought to go to university. He said “People like us don’t go to university”. From that moment onwards I made up my mind. I thought to myself “I am not like you and I will go.” I won a county award in the sixth form for my work on the French scholarship paper and was allotted a good grant which meant I did not have to ask Father for a penny. I then felt my future was assured.

When I was young I avoided old people apart from my uncles, aunts and grandparents who were in a class of their own. The ones Mother visited didn’t smell good and complained constantly. I thought they must live miserable lives. My father talked about taking a job in the Civil Service with a pension. I had no intention of working for anyone else, especially in an office. I knew I must find work for myself where I could be fully in charge of my own life.

In any case, sixty is light years away when you are fourteen, so pensions seemed irrelevant. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do and I knew I was capable of extraordinary achievements.

Decades later I realised with surprise and horror that old age was on the horizon. I was fifty and had led a varied and enjoyable life. A dear friend of mine who was fifteen years older then me said that he regarded every day as a bonus for him. He had nearly died twice, yet he lived on and enjoyed life in good enough health until he was nearly ninety.

“I don’t like getting old” I said.

He replied, with a twinkle in his eye, “It’s better than the alternative!” He was right. Ever since the war was over I was convinced that I would reach thirty if I was lucky. I was so horrified by all the new instruments of destruction, especially the atom bomb, that I was certain it was inevitable that a third world war would happen soon and if it did and both sides used this bomb, it would be the death of our species. We have had several smaller wars but to my amazement the instruments of death which were the most powerful were not used.

I am at heart optimistic, but I also have bouts of extreme anxiety from time to time. I like to know the truth of situations as far as that is possible. I have always taken risks to be able to do what I want. My gift of imagination has made me a spotter of opportunities that very few people recognise. It has also cost me to always consider worst case scenarios, so that I have an alternative plan if everything goes wrong.

Now in my early eighties I still keep myself busy reading and writing and researching. I am lucky enough to have a small circle of friends and family with whom I share similar interests.

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Autobiography Teens

Bullying Tactics

My sister was still in primary school. Every Friday night Mother would take the three of us to the cinema. One evening we were all ready to go except for Mary who hadn’t turned up. Her school was only five minutes walk away. I went off to fetch her. I went in through the main door and walked to her classroom.

To my surprise she was sitting at her desk writing. Her teacher was sitting at her desk. What was going on? I began to feel angry. Being a Collegiate girl gave me a feeling of power. I announced firmly “I have come to fetch my sister. We are all waiting for her at home so that we can go out.” My tone of voice brooked no denial.

“Run along dear” the gorgon said turning to me with a smile. “She has just finished.” My sister rose joyfully from her seat and almost ran from the room.

“Thank goodness you’ve come” she said. “I don’t know how long she would have kept me. And did you notice she called me dear? She has never done that before!”

This was the teacher who so terrorised her by hitting her on the hand with a steel ruler when she couldn’t do her sums; that when she had gone through college and was a qualified infant teacher herself

she still had feelings of dread when she had to teach number work.

Mary loved boiled sweets. We all got a penny on Saturday. It is typical of both of us that I spent mine usually on one walnut whip and ate it at once. Mary bought the cheapest of boiled sweets, ate one and put the rest away to last out for the week.

One day when she wasn’t there I rummaged through our chest-of-drawers to see what she was saving now, sometimes it was money and sometimes sweets. What was my motive? I didn’t like boiled sweets. I wasn’t a hoarder and I wanted to understand why I was so different from my sister. What I found was a surprising number of sweets, not all that she liked.

I tackled her with it when she came home. She was naturally indignant that I had touched her things. “Never mind that” I said “who are those sweets for?” She turned red, blustered a bit and burst into tears. I knew something was wrong so I continued to question her.

She admitted that she was being bullied at school by one of the girls who had come over from Germany without her parents. She had wheedled her way into Mary’s sympathies by dramatising her story and getting her to buy sweets for her.

At first Mary did this willingly, then the child began to put pressure on her. She was frightened. I persuaded her to stop all this at once. I was very protective of my little sister. I told her I would sort the child out if she gave any more trouble. It worked.

As Mary grew older she learned how to use her tongue to prevent bullies from bothering her. It didn’t happen to me because I was (rightly) considered to be an oddball, so I was left alone.

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Autobiography Teens

A Real Friend At Last

Our magazine ran for nearly a year and then we both got tired of doing it. Our friendship came to an abrupt end. We had little in common instead of writing.

In the second year a new girl, Bella Rose, came into our class. Her father was also a civil servant and her mother was French. She loved to draw and paint especially Arthur Rackham-style fairies. With so much in common we soon became good friends.

Unused to the unwritten laws of friendship I dropped Rosalind like a hot brick. I had no idea what I was doing. I simply ceased to notice her existence. She, however, did not forget mine.

One day when I was in the cloakroom on my own I was seized from behind by my skimpy black plaits and my head twisted round to confront a small face distorted with hatred. Sharp black eyes bored into me and without a word she used all her puny force to bang my head against the clothes hooks.

I was taken by surprise. Suddenly she stopped as abruptly as she began and fled. She never spoke to me again. It was a short, sharp lesson of human jealousy. If I had learned all my lessons so quickly I would have been a walking encyclopedia.

Bella and I remained friends until she left at sixteen to go to Art School. I was always welcome to tea whenever I liked. She was an only child. The house was always neat and clean. Her mother was constantly knitting clothes for her. She was a good cook and I could practice my French with her.

We met every Saturday to play tennis. I was never any good at sports, but tennis attracted me. I lost most of the time but that was one of the prices I paid for the friendship.

We all create a mask for ourselves which gives us the opportunity to hide from other people our dark side. The thicker the mask the more we hide our true selves from the world. The more content we are with ourselves, for better or for worse , the less we worry about what others think of us and the more we reveal our natural identity. When this happens we make deeper and more lasting relationships.

There is nothing like having an opponent who is good enough to win to bring out anger, hatred , envy, fear of failure and tantrums, such as flinging down the racquet after making a mistake. I never played well enough to beat Bella.

I have always been very competitive in the things I do best. As I grew older and realised just how good I could be in academic subjects I gradually discovered that I was my own best friend and my worst enemy. Now, I trust myself enough to recognise the value of my own work, whatever other people might think.

The secret is to learn new things from others only when they fit in with our particular way of creating. My friendship with Bella lasted for four years then we went our own separate ways doing very different things.

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Autobiography Teens

The Joy Of Learning

I turned up for my first day at grammar school in my brand new uniform. The colours were navy blue and light blue. The hat had a Russian look: a round cap with a tassel on the left resting on my shoulder.

The class years were divided into A, B and C. I was put into B. My teacher, Miss Hughes, was sallow and looked tired. Everything she did and said was laconic.

First she took the register. She not only asked for our names but also what sort of work our fathers did. My magic camera was ready poised to inform me why this was necessary. I soon found out. She made no responses to most of us but I remember three in particular. The first was “Oh you are the doctor’s little girl” . The second was to me “Ah you are an evacuee and your father is a Civil Servant” and then she passed over very quickly the child who said her parents ran a fish and chip shop. The tone of voice said everything. This was my first encounter with social snobbery. I realised also that there was some status accorded to the Civil Service about which I knew nothing except that we had very little money. At that stage in my life I was beginning to understand that the reason we were poor was because my Mother could not manage money.

Miss Hughes then distributed books to us all. I was amazed at the great pile placed on my desk, and they were all brand new including a water-colour paintbox. And all for me! I loved painting and looked forward eagerly to get going. We also had exercise books of different kinds. I couldn’t wait to start my lessons. We had rough-note books to put down our ideas and homework books for keeping track of what we were doing at home. We were told to write only with fountain pens and to be very careful not to spill ink into our desks.

After all the dreary stuff in primary school I could now get down to brass tacks: real learning: geometry, algebra, Latin, French and English grammar. I looked forward to homework and often did more than I was asked to do.

Miss Hughes did not comment on my being an evacuee. At that time I was probably the only one. Soon after, more arrived and when there was enough of us, we were put into an additional Class 1 X. I soon knew from my maths lesson that X is an unknown quantity and indeed we were. I was only in that class for less than two years. At that time most people believed the war would soon be over and we foreigners would return to where we came from. Of course this would not happen. I was at last in a group I could get on with. We were all outsiders. The most outsider of all was Rosalind Keil who was Jewish and had come to England from Germany some time ago with her sister but without their parents. She must have learned English long before because she had no foreign accent.

Rosalind and I shared a common love of writing stories. Together we produced a class magazine. Rosalind wrote a never-ending story where every instalment left the hero (or heroine) in dire straits. I wrote bits and pieces including advice on make-up. Everyone in our class read this work and waited eagerly to get the next one. There was a sense of camaraderie in that group that I had never experienced before.