No. 16 in the Kitchen Tape Series

Recorded 1 June 2018, at our kitchen bench

Bullied at High School

GM:  OK. Today’s date is the 1st of June 2018.  We are with Trenna Mahney.  

Tren,  you started to tell us about high school before, can you tell us a bit more about your high school time? 

THM:  Well in the 70s I think there was a much less regimented approach to teaching.  I don’t recall having any outstanding teachers. 

People knew that I came from a Home.  Homes were considered to be places where naughty kids came from. 

I was going through puberty and girls were getting busts and wearing bras.  I wasn’t, I was completely flat chested and skinny as a rake and getting taller. 

Matron had allowed us to grow our hair at high school but I still wore cat’s eye glasses and I wore a plate which pulled my front two teeth apart which had chipped and broken because my mouth was overcrowded with teeth. 

Several had been pulled out in a major surgery, all at one go, not something that would be done now.  But, it was done, and I don’t think I have a tooth in my head that is not filled.  There was a plate that I wore, and I also had silver or lead or whatever they were, fillings all through my mouth.  

Intellectual to me was someone who was geeky

I also couldn’t bear the sun so I squinted a lot.  Nothing was done because I don’t think they realised that children who had eyes like mine needed to wear, maybe, some sort of prescription sunglasses to assist the daily headaches I had to endure, trying to focus on my way through the school, because I found the light just blinded my eyes. 

In those days I didn’t use any drops. I just wore thick, very thick, bifocals which really just magnified the pain of that.  I never talked about it to others.  I just didn’t want anyone to notice my glasses although they were highly noticeable.

I was a good student but my thing was that I did not want to be seen as an intellectual.  Intellectual to me was someone who was geeky, like a Nutty Professor, or ugly like the girls who generally were. 

The bright girls were the ones who also wore glasses and were studious and daggy and they were made fun of.  I wanted to be like the cool girls.

I  knew I would never be cool enough, not like Helen.  Helen and I rarely saw each other during school because I was in A section and she was in B section [the sections were determined by academic achievement].  

There were two lines of prefabricated buildings and my classes were down one area and her’s were down another area.  The only room that intersected those buildings was the arts building and where we did human studies or whatever it was when we did … I guess it was a form of biology, but it was pretty daggy. 

It was just done by, I think, a teacher who was  prepared to talk about sex, and I’m pretty sure that was one of the sports teachers.  I think there must have been a format of a class, and as long as she could read about it and say “this is what it’s about”, and that’s what it was about. 

There wasn’t anyone qualified or trained to deal with our questions. Quite often that class would be a free studies class. I think that was basically because nobody wanted to take that class.

Poetry and Music

When we had free studies I quite often wrote my poems, which I wrote just heaps of in my first years of high school.  They were all very self-consciously aware of how ugly I was, and how gorgeous some of the boys were. 

We used to call boys “dolls”. We’d say “what a doll!” There were a lot of dolls. 

I would write poems about Derek Hamlyn and how beautiful he was, wearing his green cord Levis and white open necked shirt.  And how he had his beautiful long blonde hair and he seemed to always be tanned. 

so yes, I was daggy

He was a year older than me so of course he would never see me. [Trenna gives a small laugh]  Of course he would never see me because there were some beautiful girls there.  I was just totally in love with him.  

There are all sorts of boys I wrote about and that’s where I noticed a difference between me and Helen. I wrote about all the people I loved who were pop stars and gorgeous looking guys.  She never did that because she always got the good-looking boys. 

They were always after her, so she never had pop stars she liked.  She liked certain music but usually the music would come from people at Craig House who she knew that liked music, like Wayne who liked The Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney. 

She liked John Lennon.  She liked to think that she liked more sophisticated music than I did, because I still liked lollipop music from when we were in primary school and I hadn’t developed my tastes in music really. 

I knew about Daddy Cool, and Joe Cocker, and people like Bob Dylan, and someone brought a Led Zeppelin album to school. I knew about them.  I tried to pretend I knew them, but I didn’t really, so yes, I was daggy.

I had befriended a girl who was also in Advanced, Janet Nelson.  She and I had got together.  She was just a plain average looking girl. 

She did belong to a church group, it was a Baptist church but you never sort of talked about it.  She was just a nice girl, and we grouped up.

I don’t know how we grouped up with Julie Hampton and Sue Butts because both Julie and Sue were in either Elementary classes or Basic classes, whereas Janet was only in Advanced, and I was in a mix of Intermediate and Advanced classes. 

Maybe Sue or Julie were in Intermediate for Social Studies or maybe it was in sewing classes and typing classes that I met up with them.  It was always clear that Janet was going to stay until the end of school [5 years].

That was never discussed with Julie or Sue and I don’t think they had any intention of staying on at school beyond third year.  Whereas I just never discussed it because I didn’t know what I was doing in school and I don’t recall any adults ever discussing it with me.  

I’m NOT a Toffee Apple!

When I arrived at high school from primary school I had a high ranking in athletics.  I didn’t so much play team sports, there was netball which I did play but I didn’t particularly like, and I don’t know that I was really much of a netball player.  I don’t know what happened there. 

I know that when I went to high school tennis was offered as a sport and I played it, but I found that extremely hard.  I thought I’d be good at it because I was very good at table tennis, but I realised that I wasn’t, although I could run fast, and jump this way and jump that way.  

I was double jointed and renowned for being able to walk on my knees, and to do strange things with my arms. I think the glare of the sun washed away the shadow and the colour of the ball so although I did want to do tennis, I never really succeeded. 

We did play a bit of softball which I found to be thoroughly boring.  Again, probably the ball went past me and I couldn’t see it.  

I was good at athletics and I could sprint.   I was a very good sprinter and I was a fabulous hurdler.  High jumping I left behind in primary school.  I don’t know why, but it was mainly hurdling. 

But to hurdle you look peculiar anyway and in my case my legs and arms were so long and disproportionate to my body. I had to wear bloomers which were bright red, and then a bright red bib type top with a number on it. 

It was the most horrifying uniform for me to come out with because as soon as I came out I knew the boys would go berserk at what I looked like.  I couldn’t bear what they did.  In that regard they were super nasty.  

I knew I was good, and if I won that just made it worse.  They just really were cruel. 

I got used to all of their everyday jibes, like calling me skeleton, and stuff like that, but that one in particular hurt. I think because I loved doing athletics so much, they completely ruined it for me. 

I knew I was good at it. To me it was like I could fly.  I just jumped over these things without even thinking of them.  I knew in my head how many steps between each hurdle, and I don’t think I ever fell or knocked over a hurdle.  

We had a sports teacher who I had to tell in the end that I didn’t want to do the hurdling, and she pleaded and pleaded with me, and got not just other sports teachers but the principal to talk to me.  Telling me how I was giving up a golden opportunity, that I had real potential to go further, like being in the Commonwealth Games or something like that. 

That just sounded hideous to me because I just thought more people would watch me and make fun of me if I was on the telly.  I used to go down and play and do the sports hoping that the others would get on and do other sports without me. 

In the end I think the teachers realised that it was causing me considerable trauma, because I would cry and plead that I didn’t want to do it.  In the end they just let me get out of it, which is a shame, because I would have loved to do hurdling. 

These days I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do it.  It would be considered a non-Marfan syndrome sport because of the way you position your body and the heavy running and landing on your feet. 

What that would do to your scoliosis in your back I suppose would be awful.  

Anyway, I got out of that and I found that that was a part of my life at school – to get out of things I didn’t want to do, because I wanted to be invisible, but only visible to the dolls I loved. 

No Fashion Choices

she hung out with all the pretty girls, who hung out with the gorgeous boys

My group of four friends, we would all meet in the morning but Sue and Julie were clearly more friendly.  They got to wear cool things that weren’t part of the uniform. 

At the time it was very popular to wear a multi number of coloured wire bangles that would go all the way up your arm.  Julie in particular loved them because she hated her freckles, and she would wear them on her arms and they would be really cool. 

Everybody loved those,  but for me they were so huge they would just fall off my arms, so I never had any of those.  

And Granny sandals, they were so fashionable, which everyone would wear with ankle socks.  Everyone would wear them and the cool girls would paint them different colours.  

I know that the Craig House girls, like Sue, they came as a black sandal, and she would paint them like a baby blue colour.  Leave one part black and then another part baby blue colour.  They would be in. 

Everybody would think they were really cool sandals.  Helen would always have boys around her and she hung out with all the pretty girls, who hung out with the gorgeous boys.  

Science and Mr Ryan?

I didn’t know which way to go with school.  I found science something I didn’t understand. 

We had a dreadful teacher.  I feel for him because he was a weak man.  Looking back now he was probably in his early twenties, Mr Ryan. 

I did write a bad poem about him. [GM: I’ve included the poem at the bottom of the page.] He had no control of the class.  The class ruled over him, and when we did experiments he would always match up a girl with a boy, which I hated with a passion. 

It was always a joke that when we were about to be paired up, all the boys would turn around and look at me and see who was going to get me.  And of course whoever got me, everyone laughed and clapped, and yelled “go for it!” 

I hated it so much.  

Bunsen burners, I didn’t know what they were.  I couldn’t see them, let alone know what to do with them. 

I couldn’t see reactions as they happened as you added something to something else.  I remember when we learnt about litmus paper going light blue or light pink.  It made no sense to me because I couldn’t see what I was doing. 

I felt terribly stupid, and scared to use all the equipment because I was worried I’d set something on fire. 

There were always talks at the start of the class about potential hazards with the things we were using.  And I thought “that’ll be me for sure because I won’t see it,  and then someone will think I did it deliberately, and I’ll get into trouble”.  

So science for me was just when I did my doodling, where I’d  draw a triangle starting in the middle of the page, and then draw another triangle, and try not to lift my pen off the paper, and fill the page with connecting triangles.

 Or where I did my 1970s style lettering.  You know, that you would do the swirly lettering, like my name Trenna in groovy colours and stuff like that. [GM: the 1970s style writing Trenna was referring to was one where each letter looked a bit like it was made from balloons.  It was very popular among teenagers in the 1970s].  That was pretty much what I did in science. I learnt absolutely nothing, and I don’t think Mr Ryan really ever tried. 

He just wanted us to go at the end of the period, and go quickly, and we were quite happy to oblige him. 

Social Studies?  I could not see the point of social studies, and again, it was a dreadful class. When I think about it now, the worst classes or my form classes were social studies, and science, and I realise that both of those were lower level education.  They were at Intermediate level. 

They weren’t Elementary or Basic, but that’s where you got the kids more likely to belittle your abilities to know things.  So if you put your hand up to answer a question you would be mocked to the end of the earth.

I’m not saying it didn’t happen in maths, because if I knew something I did get mocked.  

Agatha Christie Novels for Homework

I decided the best thing I could do at Craig House at night time, when we had to study or do homework from 7 to 9 pm, where we sat in the dining room, us girls in the main house and boys in the rec room, and Mr Gibson or Mrs Gibson, or whoever was the house Master of the time would sit at the head of the table and do their things. 

I had no idea why we needed to know who the hell Jethro Tull was and what he did.  There were lots of things like that

They were generally teachers too, so they quite often were marking papers or doing their own thing, so they didn’t really pay attention to us.  They asked if we had any homework and what homework we were doing, but apart from that they didn’t go round and look at everything.  

I had a habit of placing an Agatha Christie book inside a text book and sat and read the Agatha Christie novel.  I found out that made me quite cool at school because I always had to put my hand up to say I hadn’t done my homework, and that sort of gave me a reprieve from being picked on. 

I didn’t do my homework.  Very rarely I did maths at all, ever.  I did do English because I liked it when I was writing stories or poems.  I don’t even really remember learning about grammar like verbs and stuff like that.  I just don’t remember doing it.  

Seed Drill Origins Still a Mystery!

The social studies that I did do, were projects we had to do.  Some I just could not see the point of. 

I had no idea why we needed to know who the hell Jethro Tull was and what he did.  There were lots of things like that. 

The only one I really did like in social studies was when we had to do a trip, an imaginary trip, that we had to describe travelling from Cape Town to Cairo. 

Because we had learnt firstly about India and Africa and learning about where they were and blahdy blah.  But anyway, we had to do this one “Cape Town to Cairo” and we had to describe how long it took us, which areas we went to, what we came across on our travels, and we had to be able to draw things.  

That was dreadful, but my friend Janet was really good at drawing.  She won a prize for her “Cape Town to Cairo”.  I got good marks because I’d done a good story. 

It’s one of the things I know that was put in my file at Craig House because it was so good, and it was really interesting.  It was done over a long period, and had to have lots of pictures, so you would cut out pictures of lions and various animals and different tribes of African people and so on. 

The only thing that I got very wrong was I hadn’t worked out how long it would take me to get from Cape Town to Cairo and I’d made my trip way too quickly.  

What we were meant to know was what you would find in the different places you’d go to.  For some of those I had the wrong type of animals. Ones that you wouldn’t find there but you’d find in another part of the journey.

And where the Nile went, because the Nile went from Cape Town to Cairo or something like that, and where you could be safe and stuff like that. 

So I liked doing that project, but apart from that… do I remember any Australian social studies done?  No I don’t.  

I don’t remember anything at all that talked about Aboriginal people, and I’m saying I don’t remember because there was none.  We did nothing about Aboriginal people, it was all about England, and our Merino sheep, and various types of crop production. Which was boring as.

More Bullying and a Triumph

It was a time when there was a new school uniform, they were “V” necked so you could see a bit of a neckline but not much.  They had the little red tie that came off it, like a sailor’s uniform. 

That was the time when Barry Sammels, who was one of the tough boys who always sat up the back of the class.  He was one of the boys who did everything wrong, and I didn’t like him. 

He was a little bit fat but he wore his jeans so low on his hips that they always showed his bum crack, and it was ugly and horrible.  He and his mates, there was Dennis Moir and some other boys.  

One of the boys, I think it was Wayne Owens, who was good-looking, actually stood up with me and was made to sit next to me in class.  And he actually, when I left school early one day, he was down by the bus and he said something nice.  I don’t remember what it was. 

I know that when I caught the bus home, I never sat down the back of the bus, but they would quite often say “there’s a seat down here”, so they could  do horrible things.  I don’t think they spat on me.  I know they did that to some people, but I don’t think they did that. 

It was just that they would mock me, and try to pull clothes off me or something like that, or empty my bag and find what I was hiding in my bag.  

It was the day when I went into class, and, I have a birthmark on my left collarbone, a strawberry, quite red, birthmark, which I was told would disappear as I got older, but it looked a bit like a love bite. 

One day Barry Sammels came into class and he crept up, grabbed at my dress and pulled my top open so that everyone could see.  And he said “Hey Skeleton’s got a love bite.  Who gave her a love bite?” 

And then he picked out all the ugly, daggy boys and he started saying to them “who was it? Did you give her a love bite?”  It was so humiliating. 

He did get caught for that and that’s why he was forced to sit next to me initially, and I hated it, and I got so upset I left.  

That’s when I left early and I got to see Wayne Owens down the bus stop and he was nice to me, and I just hoped he was still talking to me when the rest of school came out and other people would see, because a lot of the girls thought that he was a real doll. 

They did see it and it made my day. 

I knew I had a talent, but I let it all go so I wouldn’t be considered a brainiac

He didn’t say a lot, but he was just nice, he didn’t make fun of me or anything like that.  The next day when Barry Sammels was meant to sit next to me again no way was he going to do it, so Wayne Owens came and sat there instead and no one gave me a hard time after that. 

Even though he didn’t say anything, nobody would say anything about him giving the love bite because I don’t know whether he would beat them up or whatever. 

But mostly my education was wasted in high school.  I probably could have done well. 

My really sweet maths teacher ended up saying he had to write my matron a letter because I wasn’t doing my homework, and I kept that letter in my bag, terrified, because I knew I couldn’t give it to Matron. 

He never followed it up, which was really good, but probably if he had done it, maybe I would have tried, because a lot of the maths I was very good at.  

If I had done better I would have understood maybe the very start of trigonometry, which I didn’t learn a lot about, and geometry.  

It was mainly arithmetic and algebra that we learnt.  I loved algebra.  I found it like a puzzle game, and it just seemed simple to me. 

It was the time that I did do the best in the class without having ever done any homework at all, so I knew I had a talent, but I let it all go so I wouldn’t be considered a brainiac. 

So, I had no guidance in school.  Maybe I should have seen the guidance officer, but those things weren’t discussed in my day.

That was it, and I don’t remember much else I can tell, other than pretty much I’m probably responsible for the lack of achievement that I could have had. 

Even still, I didn’t do too badly, but I never got to go on with a higher school until I did it much later in life.

That’s it for now.

---

 Confusion in Science
              by Trenna Seckington, dedicated to Mr Ryan

Shut up, be quiet, do as I say.
Else I keep you in at the end of the day.
Stop the talk, start to write
The topic is, ‘Light’. 
Laughter, a remark from the back of the class
If you want to leave here, start to write fast. 
Stop tapping, pay attention.
Or I'll keep you in detention.
Beep goes the buzzer, but we aren't allowed out
The kids rebel and start to shout 
I’ve got to go to the dentist, I'll miss my bus.
The teacher is calm, he doesn't fuss. 
Then there is a shout and suddenly quiet
Look says the teacher, you'll be here all night. 
Like hell says a girl, never says a guy.
Stand up, shut up, and I might say goodbye.
But before you go, stop that noise, listen.
Today some glasses from the box were missing.
Too bad said a boy, who spoke was teacher's reply.
But it's a quarter to four, so I'll let it go by.

[GM: The poem above is the one Trenna refers to in this recording. It is dated 19 June 1972 and it is hand written in her poetry book, a spiral bound note pad that contains 18 poems.]