Thursday 8 December 2022

Public Enemies Series: Grammar v Forrest

It's a jungle out there

"Grammar Grubs! Grammar Grubs! ...", went our frantic refrain as the packed Girls' Grammar School bus sailed past our bus stop of a morning. The posh tinies at the Church of England school became momentarily like rabid, small green dogs as they pressed their sweetly snarling faces against the glass and clambered over each other to stand on seats, squeezing their rosebud lips into the sliding openings atop the windows to scream back their abuse, "Forrest Frogs! Forrest Frogs! ..."

And so went the morning ritual. As far as insults go, "frog" didn't really sting (and who ever heard of a red and yellow frog?) as it was merely an alliterative rejoinder to the Grammar girls' much more scornful label "grubs", for they were clad all over in larval-green. But it was a time-honoured ritual, nonetheless, passed along to the emerging generations of children along the primary schools' bus route in Our Nation's Capital, like all playground traditional knowledge.

There was a bus for a local Catholic primary school, too, but since our driver most often scooped us up before their frazzled driver passed us on his route, we only occasionally got to yell at them and the mysterious Catholic epithet was never thus ingrained into memory.

No girls from the Grammar school used the bus stop at the end of our street, as it was merely walking distance to their school at this point, so the bus was fully laden with green-girlies and on its final leg by the time it went past. In spite of the apparent avowed enmity between them and we Forrest frogs from the local public school, any grubs in the 'hood were still playmates at home.

But something tribal and territorial happened to us of a school morning. One minute you would be squatting in the dirt near an ant nest, fixated upon poking at it with a stick, or busy with hopscotch scratched onto the footpath, all childish innocence. The next we'd spring to our feet as one when their bus hove into view, screaming mayhem for the several seconds it took for the almost listing vehicle to sweep past, and then blithely turn back to whatever we were up to, Forrest's Public Enemy #1, the Grammar Grubs, immediately forgotten until the same time the next day.


Image credit: City of Sydney Archives


24 comments:

  1. Not only was there a class difference between government and private schools. I think in NSW, there was a gender difference as well. My beloved went to Sydney Boys High and used to climb the fence to see what knickers looked like at the girls' school next door.

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    1. Ha! What shenanigans, dear Hels! I dare say your beloved wasn't the first to scale that fence and there may well have been a worn path.

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  2. YOU TOOK ME BACK IN TIME!THAT TREK TO THE BUS STOP........those days when no bus arrived!HOPSCOTCH!I DOUBT KIDS OF TODAY EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS?WHAT DO YOU THINK?
    XX

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    1. No bus, dear Contessa? How very dare they leave the kids playing in the dirt at the bus stop all day! Yes, I do wonder about hopscotch at the bus stop fading from the collective memory, and not least because so many kids get driven to school these days. It did seem that we spent an eternity kicking around idly waiting and that could hardly wash with today's busy busy kids.

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    2. sometimes it would not show up!I think they had few drivers even back then in the 1960's!!I would have to walk up hill back home to get my mom to drive me across TIBURON BLVD!!

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  3. I was a Grammar School girl in England - and an all girls school at that. I walked usually as it was close by, perhaps a 10 minute walk, sometimes rode my bike.
    I loved wearing uniforms, but not the baggy navy blue knickers! Even to this day I like to see private schools' uniformed pupils - the county/city school kids do not dress appropriately much of the time!
    Happy holidays dear Pip.

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    1. Dear Mary, I am with you on the uniforms and I did love wearing mine, too, even though I may have been a bit on the, ahem, scruffy side after much scrambling about in the playground over the week. Pyjamas and school uniform basically covered my entire wardrobe for 5 out of 7 days! ... And a Grammar School girl about this comments department? Smart and charming, I might have known :)

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  4. Enjoyed reading this, and glad I never had to wear a uniform.

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    1. Dear Anon, thank you. No school uniforms in your neck of the woods? Mothers do rather love them here as it keeps the weekly washing down to a bare minimum, and while hemlines may need letting down each year, there's never any fussing about keeping up with the fashions!

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    2. Uff! Don't know how, but the data octupus mutated me into an Anon, again.
      And yesterday night's comment it let even vanish after I had pressed the send button. Next attempt then.
      I see the points supposedly in favour of uniforms. It's just easier to put children in a uniform than to convince them that you don't have to have everything that others have.
      As for me, from an early age I was not susceptible to what nowadays is called peer pressure. And when I hear the term "influencer", at best I think of a new form of influenza.
      My good thoughts are with you, Signora Pipistrello.

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    3. Wrestling with octopuses now, dear Sean?! And how very apt, the virulence of influence :)

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    4. Ah, the term "Datenkrake" (data octopus) apparently still only exists in German. Trying to translate the first paragraph on German Wikipedia:
      'Data octopus is a buzzword from the political discussion on data protection. The image of an octopus is associated with numerous, far-reaching "arms". The buzzword stands for systems and organisations that exploit personal information on a large scale or pass it on to third parties and violate data protection regulations or personal rights in the process.'

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    5. "Release the Kraken!", they said. And they did!

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  5. Dear Pip, I'm back from Berlin (thus my uncharacteristic silence for a while :-).
    I always envied school uniforms - in Germany we don't have them. I know that even with a uniform you can express that you are "different" - but not as much as otherwise - and poor teachers have to endure quite a lot to look at, presented by "innocence" that is ready to cry "#me too!" Well - playing hotchpotch and other games I do not see very often now - the poor children are glued to smartphone or TV, but even if they burst with energy and want to play, they do not have much space in the roads with dangerous cars.
    hui - all this sounds very gloomy - yet I am convinced young people have other ways to express themselves and find their own ways to do so - they have fun too, I am sure of that.

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    1. Dear Britta, welcome home! I well remember the excitement of fitting for school uniforms as a tiny tot and brimming with pride for the obligatory first-day-of-school photo, posing by the car with a little school bag and looking probably the neatest I would ever be for the next 13 years, hahah.

      Uniforms are a clever notion for one is typically thrilled to be wearing something to signify to the world graduation from infancy, and by the time of any adolescent rebelliousness, uniform-wearing is so "normal" that personal expression really only manifests in the accessories department or cheeky hemlines. Not too shocking, generally. And yes, kids will always have fun - even if they can't play on the roads anymore.

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  6. Stinko. I swear I left a comment here but Google or Blogger ate it.

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    1. Dear Urspo, it seems you're a victim of the Kraken like dear Sean. These are treacherous waters in which to dip a toe.

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  7. I told you, the data octopus is around.
    Only a few minutes ago I took notice of the following.
    It read
    Ur-spo has left a new comment on the post 'Public Enemies Series: Grammar v Forrest':
    "Stinko. I swear I left a comment here but Google or Blogger ate it."

    I got to have a look, and no Ur-Spo-comment on the post 'Public Enemies Series: Grammar v Forrest'.

    Go and release him from your spam folder, dearest of all signoras Pipistrello.
    Release the Ur-Spo!

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  8. Ah! Too late.
    I wrote: Release the Ur-Spo!
    You did. ;-)

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    1. Indeed.
      Coming to think of treacherous waters, before falling into the feathers, I shall leave you with what I read only an hour ago or so:
      An elderly Australian man owned a large property through which a stream ran. He had built a dam some years before to create a pool for swimming. 

      One evening he strolled down to check that all was well and took with him a bucket to collect apples from the trees that grew nearby.

      As he approached the pool he heard voices shouting and laughing and when he drew closer he saw that a number of young women were skinny-dipping in the water. When the bathers saw him they moved into deeper water and called out, 'We're not coming out until you leave!'

      The old man frowned. 'I didn't come down here to watch you girls,' he said. Holding up the bucket he continued, 'I've come to feed the crocodile.'

      The moral of this tale is that older men may walk slowly but they can still think fast!

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Bats In The Belfry