As a pre-pubescent boy in Victoria entering a trade-oriented single-sex secondary school, I was as keen as mustard to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge. But I had no aptitude for the trade subjects. My marks were poor in areas such as Woodwork and Sheetmetal. By contrast, my results in all the academic subjects were very high indeed. This was a problem though I didn’t realize it at the time.
Socialization with the other students, however, was excellent. Those other students respected me, and called me ‘professor’. Here, I was in my element, as happy as a pig in mud. Never before, and seldom since, have I felt so at home with my situation. Mingling with the other young students, whose future was clearly in trades, was no problem for me. They were firm friends of mine and I of them. Almost to a man (boy?), we clicked. In the playground, we were an organic whole. It was bliss on earth.
At the breaks between classes, we played games of our own design, e.g. a home-made form of handball, played on a court we had drawn in the earth with a sharp stick. We improvised constantly to make our own entertainment. As exercises in self-reliance, our playground activity was the gold standard.
All this was too good to be true. It had to come to an end.
The headmaster asked my parents to come to the school. Sitting my mother down, he said, I want you to take your son out of my school.
My mother, shocked, asked, What’s he done?
The headmaster showed her my results, excellent in the academic subjects, abysmal in the trade subjects.
So I changed to a school, also single-sex, which purported to support the academic stream. In retrospect, I’m so grateful to the headmaster and to my parents that this was able to happen. But at the time it was a dreadful wrench for me.
I was an oddity among my new classmates. They were urban in background, and came from aspiring middle-class families. My patois, typical of the semi-rural district in which I had grown up, was mocked by all my snobby classmates. Even in the (now exclusively) academic subjects, I was behind what I had experienced in the trade-school. B’Jesus, they taught Shakespeare here.
That first year in the new school was hell for me.
I adjusted in time, and became one of the brightest (academically) of the students in my class if not in the school. I learnt to live with, and even to adopt, the approach to life of my fellow students. But I still hankered for the paradise I had lost. Where were my old mates, the sons of tradies, destined themselves to become tradies?
To cut a long story short, I can now boast a Ph.D., which has helped me form beneficial social and career connections, develop a high degree of self-worth, cut through the bullshit, and generally to breeze through adult life. I was made, but not in the mould of my parents, nor in that of my earlier expectations or desires.
Now I live in retirement in a small coastal village in Queensland. And what of the folk I now have to learn to live with? Surprise, surprise. Generally, they are ordinary folks, not in any way tricky, not pretentious, not on the make. They respect me and I them. They might well have been those people (now adults) I left behind in the trade school together with their wives and partners.
Deja vu.
Should I encounter difficult moments in my life (and I certainly have encountered a few recently), I can absolutely bank on a degree of support I would never receive in a big city. Last year, when I lost Janet, my beloved partner of 33+ years, I was supported without hesitation via companionship and all sorts of more practical ways, such as provision of meals. The goodwill was gushing. Which big city would provide me this?
I shall certainly reciprocate when I am able.
Paradise regained. The wheel has indeed travelled full circle. In my life, I am privileged to have learnt to live in two worlds, perchance more. I find myself currently living in the one I prefer.
What’s more to like?