The Scene is “The Quad”.
Leafy, quiet, the sound of tennis balls softly hitting the parched earth of the central grass. The trees rustle and the girls chatter. From the distance comes the sound of lunch time choir practice and the muffled yells of the CCF regiment marking down the walks.
And then, shattering the peace…
“PULL YOUR SOCKS UP!!!!!”
Oh how we raged. Those foul teachers and their obsession with our socks. Oh the cruelty of expecting us to wear them pulled up, covering our shapely shins and humiliating us in front of the boys and demanding we wear them spoddily high when fashion and our hearts longed for them to be rumpled around our ankles.
How we gloried in a rumpled ankle.
Perhaps the greatest sense of community engendered in my school was the way we would whisper back over our shoulders as a teacher came towards us, down a corridor, around the corner of a path.
“SOCKS!” they would yell and backwards down the ranks would mutter the repeat.
“Socks, socks, socks, socks…”
Somehow it never seemed to occur to us that they must have laughed constantly at our frantic efforts to pull them up before they reached us and the lines of brazenly hopping girls as they stalked by.
Bless us for trying hard to be different and rebellious – by all doing the EXACT same thing.
****
I’m currently battling the teen mark 3 (she’s not actually even a teenager yet, gods help me) who is engrossed in outwitting me in the ‘shortest tie ever’ competition.
The school rules say there must be 5 stripes visible below the knot. There is a certain amount of debate in how much of the top stripe must actually be showing, according to not-yet-teen-3.
Not with me there isn’t. I’m really not interested in letters home about rebellious daughters and their uniform. It’s bad enough she wears one at all.
Some people wear them with only 3 stripes, apparently.
Tell it to the hand, because the face ain’t listening, I say.
Every day, EVERY SINGLE day, we have a conversation about tie length. EVERY DAY she forgets to make it longer again on the walk home after wearing it shorter after she leaves the house. So EVERY DAY we have a conversation about tie length.
At least we all pulled up our socks before the teacher got to us.
****
I drove past the local academy yesterday; not the one dd3 goes to but another one with a more relaxed uniform policy. Every single girl had their socks pulled up as high as they could go. Presumably they are non-regulation, far too long, far too high up the thigh socks.
Oh, how square we would have thought them.