- Oct 20, 2022
- 6,941
The seminal moment I gave up vandalism was after a heinous act of wanton vandalism in my first year of Primary school 
The teacher kept a large black ink pad and several 4 inch clock stencil stamps in her drawer which she would get out every so often and stamp in our study notebooks so we could fill in the big hand and little hand on her command to learn how to tell the time.
One milk break, she left them out on her desk and I stayed back and organised several impressionable co-conspirators to stamp multiple clocks (about 200) around all four walls of the classroom in an orderly pattern from the ground up to about our head height - (4ft). We had just sat down to admire our handiwork when the other kids then the teacher returned from break. I’d never seen anyone turn white with rage before then (I came from quite a calm family) - it was quite scary.
I guess I didn’t see it as vandalism (not even sure I understood the concept at that age) - more a necessary decoration I thought of a 1960s mustard yellow chip paper that was already peeling from years of masking tape and kids picking at it with sticky fingers.
The school didn’t see it like that - they said it was vandalism - they shut me in the Headmistresses study and called my mother to come and pick me up which she did from her nursing job at the hospital, armed with a massive pile of yellow xray packaging paper as a present for the school for the kids to stamp clocks on
Despite my Mum’s wry knowing smiles, I never “vandalised“ anything again.
The teacher kept a large black ink pad and several 4 inch clock stencil stamps in her drawer which she would get out every so often and stamp in our study notebooks so we could fill in the big hand and little hand on her command to learn how to tell the time.
One milk break, she left them out on her desk and I stayed back and organised several impressionable co-conspirators to stamp multiple clocks (about 200) around all four walls of the classroom in an orderly pattern from the ground up to about our head height - (4ft). We had just sat down to admire our handiwork when the other kids then the teacher returned from break. I’d never seen anyone turn white with rage before then (I came from quite a calm family) - it was quite scary.
I guess I didn’t see it as vandalism (not even sure I understood the concept at that age) - more a necessary decoration I thought of a 1960s mustard yellow chip paper that was already peeling from years of masking tape and kids picking at it with sticky fingers.
The school didn’t see it like that - they said it was vandalism - they shut me in the Headmistresses study and called my mother to come and pick me up which she did from her nursing job at the hospital, armed with a massive pile of yellow xray packaging paper as a present for the school for the kids to stamp clocks on
Despite my Mum’s wry knowing smiles, I never “vandalised“ anything again.
