What's the oldest thing you are still steamed about?
Me: being told I'd confused Africa and Australia (on the map).
I was four.
@cstross Having to spend bloody ages doing all the long division exercises in SMP Maths book 5. All. Of. Them.
God, it was tedious.
@cstross Remaining well-behaved on an endless family car trip to Michigan only to find out that Kalamazoo isn't actually a zoo! Not one damned monkey!
@cstross my English lit teacher told me there was no such word as "acceded" ("Richard 3 acceded the throne"). Still makes me mad, and I still use the word whenever appropriate, with maximum glee. And I got a first class degree in English, just to spite her.
@cstross Being punished in nursery for hurting another kid. I didn’t, but they blamed me. I went to the naughty step.
I was 2.
Earlier today I also remembered being punished for “pretending to gag” when forced to eat tomatoes. I wasn’t pretending. I was probably 4 or 5. If it wasn’t for hypnosis, I’d probably still gag.
These experiences have informed my parenting style drastically.
@cstross I learned in approximately 4th grade from a library physics book that the "multiplication" cross product (×) sign and the dot product signs (·) had different applications. However, in 6th grade my teacher told the class they meant the same thing and were always interchangeable, and I got in trouble because i made a bit of a stink about it.. She had literally never heard of vector math and even said to the whole class that I made up the word "scalar."
@cstross at some point in elementary school, our teacher was explaining that avalanches are basically the same as those cartoon snowballs that grow bigger and bigger. i laughed and told her in front of the class that she was misguided, and got sent out of the classroom for that...
@cstross In kindergarten, they gave us coloring exercises and connect-the-dots puzzles and graded us on neatness: ability to draw precise straight lines, color in the lines and completely cover the paper. I was hopeless at this and was convinced for years that connect-the-dots was beyond my intellectual capacity.
One day my crayon slipped outside the lines and I took the sheet to the teacher, worried about what to do. She just said "fix it!" HOW? HOW, I ASK YOU?
@cstross Asking for butter milk to drink and getting yoghurt.
It's not the same! I was five and told to get over it.
Well, here we are... 🙇♀️
@cstross Being accused of making things up when I told another kid I *was* reading the book open on my lap, I just wasn't reading it aloud. I was 6.
Oldest thing I'm proud of: telling my parents, in the school corridor at a parent's evening, that they might as well not go out together any more because they always argued when they did (they took no notice but continued arguing for the next 12 years until they finally put us all out of our misery by divorcing). Again, 6.
Going to my beloved grandmother's' place aged five with my mum and wanting to show nan a board game I got for Christmas.
I set it all up and kept trying to show her, but she and mum were having a very in-depth conversation. After many attempts it was suddenly time to go home, so I packed up, very grumpy.
Nan said she'd look at it next time, but it was the last time I saw her alive - she passed away a few weeks later.
50 years later I'm still annoyed with her. Irrational, I know...
@cstross cursive. The 4th time through learning how to write the same alphabet (upper and lowercase) I was a disagreeable child. Adults do not know what they're doing
@cstross A Physical Education teacher at about 9 or 10 accused me of leaving open a water fountain in one of our school yards. One I wasn't strong enough to push the metal button that opened the tap. I was outraged at being accused without evidence, and I still am.
@cstross science teacher asking if any of us knew what body temperature was. I threw my hand up, said ‘about 96 degrees?’. I can still hear his response, even though this was almost 40 years ago…
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re not that hot stuff’.
If he wanted an answer in Celsius he should have said so.
@cstross Being taught English by native speakers who did not speak German. I was a bilingual kid (French + German) in a french speaking area where german is taught it parallel.
Felt like teaching you to swim with boots.
@cstross In high school a druggie teacher told my parents that I have not done $thing. I did it, but being a druggie he lost it. My parents made me copy the class notes by hand, which were almost verbatim from the schoolbook, except when the addled brain of the teacher made him skip paragraphs or pages.
The teacher was a fan of toluene.
@cstross My parents sent me to a therapist for ADHD at a young age (teachers were complaining).
I remember nothing about the therapy, except that she played chess against me and lost. I wasn't particularly good at chess, and I was like five years old. I became convinced she lost on purpose, which I found incredibly disrespectful, and I refused to cooperate with her any further.
I still would be deeply insulted by someone letting me win at a game.
@cstross my first memory: the nurse forcing my parents to leave me in the hospital alone overnight, then taking my temperature using the most accurate but also highly disturbing way. I was three.
@cstross aged 4 I couldn't understand why there was a beach underneath the Humber Bridge because I'd been told it was a river and rivers don't have beaches. Instead of my parents trying to explain, understand my objections, or admit they didn't know why, I was told it was a long story.
Still fuming now.
Also promised myself I'd always find satisfactory answers to my own children's questions - which, with the exception of "why are you so embarrassing?", is a promise I'm proud to have kept.
@cstross Not sure of the age, but I remember I made a teacher really angry about something. I completely sincerely and literally asked “What did I do?”
“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!!!!!” was the only reply I ever got. I’m sure it was really annoying, but to this day about half a century later, I wonder what it was. Still sort of steamed that they couldn’t just answer the literal question, though I more understand someone being too angry to do so in the moment now.
@cstross when I was about 9 a teacher asked what do camels store in their humps. I put my hand up and said fat. they said no it's water. then 5 minutes later came to my desk and spent time explaining that camels store fat in their humps. they obviously got confused that I had given the right answer when the class was asked.
Food Grossness
Being forced to eat cabbage.
It still makes me gag if I just smell it. When I was 5 they learned about my cruciferous vegetable food sensitivity. All over the table. And them. And me.
But they didn't really learn about it, and I didn't figure it out until I was in my 40s.
Being a super taster makes me really sensitive to some foods, especially bitter ones. Never liked beer or coffee for same reason, though they don't make me gag.
@cstross
First day at school, having completed required tasks & being asked what I wanted to do; answering I wanted to read a book & being denied on basis that I would have to be taught to read first despite me explaining that I could already read. Teacher refused to simply give me a text to demonstrate that I could in fact read, & only accepted the fact at the end of the day when parent collecting me confirmed that yes that was correct.
Food Grossness
@cainmark Same, except I *do* like beer and coffee!
I know the rules how to move pieces (I think) and that's it. Don't know shit about strategy and suck at it in other games.
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@cstross Coming in first in the egg-and-spoon race at primary school sports day at the age of no-more-than 6, only to see them overlook me completely and give first place to the kid who came second while I got nothing.
Put me right off competitive sports for life
@cstross My dad was building a garage and I was helping by moving bricks in a wheelbarrow. Some obnoxious little boy told me "Girls don't do that" and it really upset me. I was about 3.
@cstross Being told off for swearing in primary school for using the word "bloody" when I was using it correctly and in context ("covered in blood").
@cstross Doing reading classes at school and thought I could only read the book with the teacher. So annoyed when they told me I could’ve been reading on my own all along. I was 5.
Read the whole damned library ina year.