Me and Paul
And Mr Gooden too
I made a new friend in the second year at Chis & Sid (age 12/13). Paul and I knew each other a little bit already, because we were always in detention together, but we sat together in Mr Gooden’s class, and we soon became best friends.
— 1979 —
We were always in trouble during those years, but I was just a naughty boy. I talked too loudly in class. I rarely did homework on time. My worst crime was arguing with teachers. I was just a naughty little boy; nothing worse than that. I never stole anything… or broke anything… or hurt anyone. Still, I got lots of detentions, and Paul did, too.
We both liked to make people laugh. In the first few years of school, we had to put on a play for the drama festival. My class chose a comedy about two football hooligans who were always in trouble with the law. Guess who played the hooligans!
But Paul was something more. He wrote graffiti on the walls and stole motorbikes. He occasionally came over to my house to give me a ride, but I was never interested in stealing motorbikes myself.
We had a rule at Chis & Sid: if you got more than three detentions, you got the cane. But our headmaster was a nice guy, and didn’t whack us, so Mr Gooden, our form teacher, did the whacking instead, with size thirteen tennis shoes. He’d make us come down to the teacher’s changing room and stare into his eyes while he gave us a lecture. Then we’d take off our purple blazers, and he’d hit us as hard as he could. Three times.
We were a bit rowdier in French class than we should have been one time. Miss Furey was quite young — probably new to teaching — and our class wasn’t the easiest class to handle. She would shout “Taisez-vous!” (“Be quiet!”), over and over. I spent much of her class writing “Le silence aide le travail” a hundred times in the corridor outside her classroom, because je ne me taisais pas.
One time, Martin and David caused some commotion — I forget what — and the whole class joined in.
“Asseyez-vous! Asseyez-vous!” Ms Furey shouted.
There was nothing poor Miss Furey could do to regain control. She just broke down and burst into tears. She ran out of the classroom and didn’t come back for several days.
The deputy-head master soon came in to tell us what naughty children we were, and Mr Gooden beat us with his tennis shoes. Paul and I had nothing to do with this particular commotion, but he beat us anyway.
Another time, he made us come up to the form room, long after everyone else had gone home. I forget what our crime was — maybe there was no crime at all — but Paul went in first, and I stood outside, waiting for my turn.
Back in those days, we put our wooden chairs on top of the wooden desks, so the cleaners could do their cleaning, and before long, Paul and Mr Gooden started throwing chairs and shouting at each other. I sat outside, naughty little boy that I was, terrified that I was next.
Mr Berry, Mr Gooden’s boss, came out of his office and asked me what was going on. Why was I sitting there so late in the evening? I explained that Paul and Mr Gooden were in there, throwing chairs, and that I was next.
“Oh,” said Mr Berry.
Then he grabbed his coat and went home.
After a bit more banging and shouting, the uproar calmed, and Mr Gooden drove me home. When we got to my house, he made me stay in the car while he went to talk to my mother. After maybe fifteen minutes, I went inside and told Mum that I wanted to go to a different school. “I know”, she said.
There was a military school in Greenwich. Maybe I could go there.
— 1980 —
I carried on getting in trouble for stupid little things, but Paul upped his game. He made a bomb with gunpowder and aerosol cans one time and tried to blow up a bridge over the river.
One weekend, Paul broke into the school chemistry lab and stole half the chemicals — sodium, phosphorus, sulphuric acid, magnesium dust — and a whole lot more. Boxes and boxes of dangerous chemicals. One weekend, soon after, he was hanging out with friends, and he threw burning phosphorus at someone. They called the police, and he went to the juvenile detention centre.
I never saw him again.
A lovely lady left me a comment to say she was having lunch with Mr Gooden next week, and “would I like her to say anything to him?” I wrote him a polite little note, reminding him what a great chemistry teacher he was, but what a hard time he gave us as a form teacher. Mr Gooden said he didn’t really remember me, but “wasn’t he the one who got in trouble with the police?”
This got me thinking: I wonder if he gave me such a hard time back in those days because he thought I was the same kind of juvenile delinquent as Paul?
Wouldn’t that be funny?
On the subject of school teachers: I had a wonderful biology teacher, Mr Jones for my entire secondary school and A level education. I too talked ‘too much’ and didn’t sit still in his class so he sat me in the back with a friend. We had an unofficial deal that I would be quiet while he spoke and I would get the work done and then wander the back of the classroom which was full of animals dead and alive. We had these personal whiteboards at the desks as he was a big believer in constant repetition (totally worked), when bored my friend and I would draw pictures and write stories on these boards. Once he walked by and saw us playing hangman and even took a guess on a letter.
Recently I reached out to the school in hopes of sending him a thank you letter and found out he had passed. Planning to write the letter and burn it, perhaps it will reach him.
I enjoy reading your posts immensely, thank you for sharing.
Though it’s possible that he had your interests in mind, I doubt he knew what he was actually doing. In a psychological sense I’d think there was far more chance that such treatment would make you angry and criminally rebellious. It should have mainly been good parenting that kept you straight. And surely some luck too!