Primary School Confidential
Read Primary School Confidential Online
Authors: Woog
Mrs Woog is a mouthy forty-something housewife from the burbs. She writes the popular blog WoogsWorld, which is about all kinds of things but mainly what is going on in her head. She covers family, politics, food, travel, some very lame attempts at fashion, social issues, wine, cheese. And laundry. She is pretty much running late all the time, and will more often or not turn up somewhere with food spilt down her top. Mrs Woog is married to Mr Woog, and they have two gorgeous yet lively sons. In a former life Mrs Woog was a primary school teacher.
Visit Mrs Woog's blog @
woogsworld.com
.
Certain names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike.
First published in 2016
Copyright © Kayte Murphy 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian
Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:
(61 2) 8425 0100
Email:
[email protected]
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
ISBN 9781760113735
eISBN 9781952533594
Typeset by Bookhouse
Cover images: Getty Images, Shutterstock and Masterfile
For John
CONTENTS
Introduction: She who cannot, blogs
PART ONE: SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS
2 Smurfs, Swatches and Strawberry Shortcake
6 Young love (of the non-equine kind)
7 Puberty blues in a flesh-coloured bra
8 School camp: clogs, cordial and culture
12 How to be a pain-in-the-arse parent
PART THREE: AT THE SCHOOL GATE
17 Parents and citizens, unite
19 It started with an itch . . .
27 The (school) tie that binds
29 Please report to the office
30 Programming the perfect child
My name is Mrs Woog and I am a mummy blogger. I know this because I have two sons and I write on the internet. Originally known as a âmommy' blogger, we first became an acknowledged genre of writing back in the early 2000s in the United States, where bored moms began personal websites, or weblogs as they were originally called, to connect with others in the same boat (that being a boat often full of tediousness and monotony, which can come along when you are drowning in small children). All of a sudden there was someone out there listening, nodding along and offering advice. Communities were formed and continue to grow to this day.
In 2008 a well-meaning friend suggested I start my own blog. I couldn't see any reason not to, so that year I opened a blogspot account and typed in the title WOOGSWORLD. It was a nod to my husband's unusual Hungarian surname, and a nod to the brilliant and classic 1992 film
Wayne's World.
Armed with very little enthusiasm, I wrote six posts that year. I selected the moniker Mrs Woog because, at the time, I wanted to remain anonymous on the internet.
*
(And I believed that the chance anyone would read this mummy blog was very remote.)
The year 2009 was very quiet for my blog: I wrote one post. It was about my neighbours, who I suspected were swingers. You see, I was beginning to go quite stir crazy, and cabin fevery, and was desperate for adult social intercourse. I began talking a lot to religious folk who knocked on my door. When the two boys were down for their naps, I had forty-five minute conversations with Indian call-centre workers who would phone to sell me stuff.
Then something happened. Something that would go on to change the course of my career. Something that would prevent me from thinking about opening a bottle of wine at 11 am ever, ever again.
I was up at the local Blockbuster and rented a film called
Julie & Julia
. It was the true story of Julie Powell, who had also dug herself into a deep rut. Inspired by food and the work of famed cook Julia Child, she vowed to blog through Child's cookbook
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
.
T'was like a fire had been lit in my belly. Of course! I would resurrect my blog and write a story on it every single day for a year. But what would I write about? I wasn't doing anything particularly inspiring. I mean, a night down at the local beer garden with a pram and the old ball and chain was okay, but it certainly wasn't going to be riveting reading. So I decided just to write what was in front of me. I added a tagline âMaking the most out of the mundane', and dutifully wrote a piece every
day. But at the end of the year, much like Forrest Gump, I just kept going.
It's a funny way to find your real passion and your true calling. I ended up just where I needed to be: I am a writer. In the chapters that follow you will see how I needed to go through the other chapters of my life, before I could get to the start of this one.
She who cannot, blogs. And that is just fine by me.
But I am not only a blogger, I am also a former primary school teacher.
I finished high school in 1991, and to say that I was a disappointment to my parents is putting it very, very lightly. I had spent the last two years of school trying to avoid going. I was a disgrace to the establishment, as will become clear through the chapters of this book.
The day the HSC results arrivedâin the old fashioned way, via Australia PostâI stood in the dining room in front of my parents, whose faces were flushed with excitement. They had paid a lot of money for my world-class education and were expecting great things. My older sister had performed brilliantly (and, later, my younger siblings would all do very well indeed).
But I could not share in their enthusiasm, as I was quite aware that the envelope was not going contain wonderful news. Under their expectant gaze, I opened my results to reveal . . .
57.9
Those three little digits were to change the course of my life.
Earlier in the year, I had applied to Charles Sturt University to study journalism, as writing was my first love. My entrance essay, I was told, showed a lot of promise. But my dream of being the modern-day Dorothy Parker vanished as quickly as my parents' smiles.
I excused myself from the dining room to let them digest this news. Meanwhile, I rang my boyfriend Peter to tell him I was in some pretty deep shit. It turned out he was in some pretty deep shit of his own; his tone veering between fury and disbelief, he informed me that he had been awarded the lowest result it was possible to get: the mysterious â15 and under'. This meant he had scored less than 15 per cent, and the Department of Education was not going to humiliate him further by revealing his actual mark.
âThere must be some mistake!' he fumed.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that there probably was no mistake, for even I could barely read his illegible writing.
Perhaps if we hadn't spent every waking moment with our tongues shoved down each other's throats, we might both have ended up with more respectable scores. But that's a moot point. Clearly, I was not destined to be a journalist. It was obvious even then that I didn't have the focus and drive required to succeed in such a cutthroat industry.
And so I shall be forever grateful for that 57.9. Had I made the grade, there is a fairly high chance that by now I would be a raging alcoholic editing the obituaries section of the
Daily Liberal
in Dubbo. Not that I mind Dubbo at all. In fact, my oldies owned a pub there when I was young, and I have fond memories of the stench of stale cigarette smoke and the dregs of old KB beer. And, as it happens, my old love Peterâwith whom I reconnected many years laterâis now enjoying life as the owner of a very popular country pub with his wife and two daughters.
But back to that eighteen-year-old me. What the fuck was I going to do with my life?
It was highly unlikely that I was going to stumble into a young Jamie Packer's arms at the polo, my bosom heaving in a JAG
bodysuit and my long blonde hair rippling in the breeze created by the rush of ponies thundering past. Unfortunately I had boofy brown hair that could never be tamed and hips that came in at about the age of twelve, but not in an admirable way.
No. I was going to have to use my brain and not my body to get ahead. The problem was, my brain had not come into its own just yet.
My parents were adamant that their investment in my education was going to have to pay dividends at some point, and that meant university was non-negotiable. So I scrolled through the list of courses that I might possibly be accepted into.