Like trying everything within your power to make your substitute teacher cry

What the fuck is wrong with us? While teenagers around the world probably keep themselves to themselves and function like normal human beings, us Brits spent our teenage years terrorising and abusing everyone we came into contact with – and we don’t even feel that bad about it.

Our ties and our skirts were short, our days were long, and our classes were filled with impudent little shits who constantly did their best to make their teachers have a mental breakdown.

We were awful, we were strange, and we wouldn’t change it for the world. Here’s why.

SPENDING WHOLE DAYS TRYING TO DRAW THAT PERFECT ‘S’ AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR GRADES

You know, the one that looked like this.

It was like the original meme. Seriously, how did everyone know about it in a pre-internet age? And why the fuck did we all find it so fascinating?

DRAWING DICKS ON ALL YOUR MATE’S NOTES

Hahahaha how has no-one thought of doing this before? I’m a comic genius.

DRAWING MORE DICKS AND ETCHING UNIMAGINATIVE SWEARWORDS ON ANY FLAT SURFACE IN SIGHT

Oli haz small ballz . Lucy and Daisy BFFs 4 lyf. Tom = bellend. IDST guys, so don’t even try it.

SNEAKILY GATHERING IN THE CORNER OF THE PLAYGROUND OR YOUR FORM ROOM TO WATCH ‘THE VIDEO’ THAT WAS GOING AROUND

It was a pixelated, 12-second video of someone giving someone else a muffled handjob in the park. Still, everyone had it. Everybody claimed they knew who it featured and where it originated from.

It was the most scandalous thing in the world, until the next one was leaked and the cycle began again.

NEVER TURNING THE BUNSEN BURNERS OFF IN THE HOPE OF CREATING A MINOR FIRE

Also turning the dial the “wrong way” and making it a gypsy flame so it would set fire to someone’s hair.

SETTING OFF THE FIRE ALARM AND BRINGING THE WHOLE SCHOOL TO A STANDSTILL

How the guy who did it saw himself:

CIRCULATING RUMOURS ABOUT THE BIOLOGY TEACHER SHAGGING THE HISTORY TEACHER

And that he’d cheated on the fit Drama teacher with the new Textiles assistant. Look, you had to pass your time somehow.

CIRCULATING RUMOURS ABOUT THAT ONE TEACHER WHO SHAGGED LOADS OF EX-STUDENTS

Seriously, she met your older brother’s mate in a club and they totally had loads of sex. She’s famous for it.

COMING UP WITH THE MOST CREATIVE WAYS TO GIVE YOUR TEACHER A MENTAL BREAKDOWN

You’d hide their glasses in the sink and stick sanitary towels to the ceiling, then act like you were absolutely clueless to the whole thing.

Shutting them in a cupboard, taking the screws out of the chair, locking them out of the classroom – the methods were endless. They would eventually cry, and you wouldn’t feel either proud or guilty. You would feel nothing.

SNEAKING INTO A SMALL AND DEFINITELY SECRETIVE WOODLAND CLEARING OPPOSITE THE SCHOOL TO SMOKE

This is quite possibly the most obvious smoking spot which has ever existed, but I’m abso sure none of the teachers will look for us in it and suspend us!

TURNING UP YOUR SKIRT MORE TIMES THAN SHOULD BE PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE

And definitely more than acceptable. It cut into your thighs and you’d roll your eyes dramatically when a teacher demanded in the corridor that you roll it down because “she could see your breakfast”.

“I’ve grown, miss?”

PINGING THE SHIT OUT OF THOSE WEIRD SPRINGY KEYRINGS

You’d attach your lunch card or set book or keys to them. Everyone would pull each others so they snapped back and hit them. Someone would overstretch someone else’s and fire it with full force into their genitals, and tears would be shed.

BUNDLING/TWANGING/GRANDADDING/PEANUTTING

Bundling (verb): When someone shouts “BUNDLE,” so a large group of you tackle a preselected schoolmate to the floor in a sometimes 20-or-more high pileup. Most often done in a corridor or on a field.

Twanging (verb): When you swiftly, with the back of your hand, strike a male schoolmate upon their unguarded testicles, rendering them foetal on the floor.

Grandadding (verb): To knee a schoolmate, hard, in the thigh. Name derives from the grandad-like walk it would cause them to adopt for the following minutes.

Peanutting (verb): To yank a schoolmate’s tie as high as possible, with the intent of making the knot as small as physically possible – like a peanut. A successfully peanutted tie would take >10 minutes and a lot of angered muttering to untie.

FORMING A HUGE CIRCLE ON THE SCHOOL FIELD AROUND SOMEONE WHO’S BADLY INJURED THEMSELVES BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE’S PAIN IS YOUR SUSTENANCE

Usually related to one of the aforementioned activities. Usually a broken collarbone.

TURNING EVEN THE MOST MINOR ALTERCATION ON THE FIELD INTO AN OPPORTUNITY TO CHANT ‘FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!’

Every so often two kids would take the noble opportunity to beat the absolute fuck out of each other on the field, so you’d take the side of whoever was in your form (or even your year) and cheer with wild-eyed fury if they managed to lay the other one out.

When the Deputy Head eventually came and took them away, you’d give them a standing ovation.

ORGANISING OR ATTENDING FIGHTS AFTER SCHOOL AT A PREALLOCATED TIME IN THE NEAREST PARK

As soon as 3:30pm hit you were running out of school to get a front row seat for the Dean vs. Ricky showdown, who were going head-to-head over a “your mum” joke taken too seriously.

A grainy phone video would be circulated for years to come.

GETTING SENT HOME BECAUSE YOUR HAIRCUT WAS JUST A BIT TOO EXTREME

You’d gotten away with his straightened do and pierced ear for ages, but the peroxide was just a step too far and now you’ve been sent back to your mum with your tail between your legs.

GETTING YOUR PHONE TAKEN OFF YOU IN LESSONS BECAUSE YOUR TEACHER WAS COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE AND YOU WEREN’T EVEN USING IT

Prick.

BEING COMPLETELY FASCINATED BY THE COOL OLDER WOMAN WHO CAME IN TO DO A SPECIAL SEX EDUCATION ASSEMBLY

“Look guys, I like sex,” she’d say. “I like doing it, I like talking about it.”

With that you knew she was much cooler than your parents, and you were almost, almost duped by her into thinking a dental dam was a good idea.

FANCYING ONE MALE TEACHER WHO WASN’T EVEN THAT FIT BUT WAS THE BEST OF A BAD BUNCH

He wasn’t even average, but it was something about him being a man in a sea of horny, disgusting teenage boys that really got you going.

Your friends would giggle when he spoke to you, you’d roll up your skirt especially for his class and when he taught you about the female anatomy in Biology, oh boy, did you get it.

CHANTING ‘SHE FELL OVER!’ EVERY TIME SOMEONE HAD A PAINFUL FALL OR SLIPPED OVER IN THE CANTEEN

“WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!” you’d scream as the hot tears of embarrassment filled their eyes.

GETTING EGGED BY THE NEIGHBOURING SCHOOL

Fucking Trinity. They finished 20 minutes earlier than you, and always waited on the other side of the gates. It got worse on snow days, when they threw ice at the kid two years below who brutally retaliated and got suspended.

TURNING SNOW DAYS INTO AN EXCUSE TO CAUSE SERIOUS HARM TO OTHERS

All is fair on the snowball battlefield, and you weren’t leaving till you’d given a kid from the other school a busted lip.

BEING ENTHRALLED BY THE GUY WHO JOINED FROM ANOTHER SCHOOL HE WAS EXPELLED FROM, BEFORE HE WAS EXPELLED FROM YOUR SCHOOL SHORTLY AFTER

When he turned up, so did the rumours. He sold drugs out of his locker. He’d been expelled for punching a teacher in the face. His dad was a gangster and it was all a front because they were in witness protection.

Turns out he was just a shit who skipped too many lessons and smoked lavender which he thought was weed, so the nuns at his Catholic school had had enough.

BEING PROUD OF GETTING PUT IN ISOLATION BECAUSE YOU WERE HARD AS NAILS

Sit there and you think about what you’ve done.

PLAYING THAT HORRIBLE GAME WHERE BOYS WOULD PUT THEIR HANDS UP YOUR LEG UNTIL YOU GOT FREAKED OUT

Some people called it “frigid,” some people called it “nervous,” some people blocked it out of their memory because it was really fucking weird.

USING ‘FRIGID’ AS AN INSULT

Look I was a late bloomer OK?

MAKING IT YOUR MISSION TO MAKE EVERY SUBSTITUTE TEACHER’S LIFE HELL

You would swap names with your mate and laugh when they called you Alice rather than Lucy. Everyone would change seats when their back was turned and you would do everything, everything, in your power to make them cry.

WRITING ‘YES’ AND ‘NO’ ON ALL OF YOUR RUBBERS FOR THE PURPOSE OF YOUR SADISTIC GAMES

Then using them to tell your future. “Will Jake ask out Becky at lunchtime?” “Does Liam have a crush on Adam?” “Did Lily actually give Ryan a BJ round the back of the bikesheds?”

Whatever the rubber said was the truth. No exceptions.

USING NON-UNIFORM DAYS (OR MUFTI DAYS IF YOU WERE POSH) AS AN EXCUSE TO DRESS SLUTTY

Or to wear a tracksuit if you were a guy. There was always that one kid who’d forget and came in in their school uniform, only to be mercilessly bullied until the next one, when some other poor kid took his place.

NEVER LETTING THE KID WHO ACCIDENTALLY CALLED THE TEACHER ‘MUM’ FORGET IT

Hahahaha you just called the teacher mum hahahaha do you want your mum hahahaha do you miss her hahahaha wanker.

You’d go ahead and do it yourself two weeks later, and would never live down the shame.