Kostya

The wacky world of the all boys private school is a very difficult one for outsiders to appreciate. Like any institution, our school had its own set of quirky traditions and cultural values, the fact that the student body was entirely male certainly ensured that school held very little resemblance to actual society.

I was glad to discover that there was no ‘most popular boy’ or any kind of ultra elitist ‘cool group’ which lorded over the school with their illusion of power. There were those who were loved by all, and those who were loved by few, and it basically depended on what kind of person you were. A boy who was a stellar athlete who acted like a thug wasn’t respected or particularly liked for long. On the other hand the boy with poor motor skills and no athletic ability who was good natured and witty was far more likely to get along with almost everyone. Of course, in the early years the ‘cool’ people tended to hang out together, but there was none of the sickening entourages of sycophants following the best rugby players around the halls. Of course, the issue of status became largely irrelevant by midway through Year 10, and after the entire grade got along without the currency of popularity. There was however the overarching issue of popularity within the entire school community, how popular were you with the entire student body, it was good to be liked, but not essential, and in the privacy of a senior classroom, the most loved and respected 1st XV Rugby player could be playing noughts and crosses with a nerdy chess team boy.

If I were to meet the boys who were Seniors at my school in my first year there, I am sure they would seem like average normal guy just like me, but in my memory they remain giants. As the lowest of the low, we grade 8’s lived in awe of the Senior body, idolised them, in fact deified them, they were literally demigods to us. When Woomba and Gumby got into a fight with a rival school’s mascot and were suspended after a teacher found them pummelling a polar bear like Jay and Silent Bob, there was nothing cooler than that for us, and we would forever reminisce about it, even into our own Senior year. ‘Remember when Woomba and Gumby beat up the mascot?’ ‘Yeah that was fuckin brilliant’.

In our school it helped to be endowed with sporting prowess, unusual toughness and a spirit of rebellion, but in order to be truly beloved by your peers the most important thing to be was funny. Wit was the premium prerequisite to popularity with both students and teachers, and those who possessed the magical ability to make others laugh were the most universally loved. Of course at thirteen, wit for us consisted of placing ‘Kick me’ signs on teachers backs and making ‘Your Mum’ jokes. Few fist fights broke out while I was in school, and generally more disputes were settled with an unofficial duel of tongues, may the most caustic and quick prevail. A half gibberish dialect known only to the students which was basically using the insurance value of euphemism to say what one needed to say. There were however many social concepts which I do not believe existed anywhere else which also applied to verbal sparring. In the traditional manner, one could be ‘burnt’ by his opponent, and until Grade 10 this meant a ‘ride on the bone train’, or if you were less decisively defeated your attempts to ‘make a comeback’ would be drowned out by a cacophony of ‘Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ or ‘Merski’ or ‘Mer ya bourkit, boned ouuuuuuut!’ To anyone else this ritual must have seemed somewhat insane, but I would content that lewd and puerile content aside it was an intricate dance of linguistic warriors facing off in a duel to the ‘bone out’. There was a very specific and sophisticated set of laws surrounding the entire process, and anyone who attempted something unacceptable was instantly subject to disqualification as specified in the Giant Book of Unwritten Payout Laws. Using one call repeatedly in a certain way was Ok, but in a different context it was seen as poor form. Also the use of ‘Janzies’ (named after an Australian TV chef: ‘Here’s one I prepared earlier’), was looked down upon, and generally attempts to make such prepared gags look natural were shot down by the audience who were exceptionally good at spotting a fake. A call coming from the mouth of a seasoned veteran who was renowned for cutting and witty remarks was met with approval in the form of cheering of the veteran and jeering of his opponent, but the same call made by somebody known to be unimaginative and slow was spotted as a premeditated call and met with derision and dismissal. It was Ok to make a call like: ‘Oi Johnno, tell your mum I want my jocks back ya gigantic wanker’, if you were not Johnno’s mortal enemy, and Johnno would take it as a joke and not be insulted in the least by this slight against his mother, and the jester would not be credited with any kudos for such an uninspired and formulaic joke anyway. However if during the course of an argument Johnno were to say ‘What do you think you’re doing’ and the jokster replied off the cuff ‘Ya mum!’, then he may in fact illicit a few laughs from the crowd, though it wasn’t a very inspired insult, then Johnno would be insulted not about his mother’s honour, but by the fact that points were scored against him, and would have to rise to the occasion. In this case it was always best to attack a boy’s sexuality, since in a conservative, all boys school full of hormonal emotional mutants, homophobia was rampant. Also, since the call made against him was not very imaginative, Johnno is under no obligation to come up with something stellar himself and could in fact use a well known gag like ‘Least I got a mum and not two dads ya poofta!’ and then the onus would be on the originator to come up with something better and so on. As the years went on, and we grew out of adolescence, ‘Ya mum’ jokes and attacks on a boy’s sexual orientation came to be looked down upon as juvenile, and were in any case largely ineffectual since by now we had actual self esteem. Hopefully this has given you some kind of understanding of how every boy depended on the speed and sharpness of his wit to live in a world of cutthroat insults. Even now, three years later, I am amazed that when I trip on a step people offer me empathy and help me up or ask if I am OK instead of a callous choir rising as one with harmonic backing with the single word ‘Taxiiiiiiiiiiiiii!’

Related by entirely different to this was the ability to make jokes, as opposed to payouts. A payout was a direct insult against another boy, delivered one’s acidic tongue planted firmly in one’s cheek. A joke was a remark or action that was not insulting any of your peers, but instead simply entertained the entire audience present. This of course did not mean you were not allow to belittle the teachers or students passing by out of earshot. The most highly regarded were those who would martyr themselves on the Alter of Laughter for the sake of a gag. One of the most bold examples of this senseless heroism was in Grade 9 on the first day. I was not there to see it but I was told what happened by eye witnesses. We had a new member of staff who unfortunately for her was an attractive young lady, teaching in a school packed to the gills with frustrated socially maladjusted boys. One the very first day of classes, this new teacher was setting out the rules of her classroom to 9B, the worst of all Grade 9 classes, and at the end having finished she asked ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ A solitary hand waved in the air in mock urgency, it belonged to Squeaky, an attention-craving troublemaker who did little more than say the wrong thing to everyone for his five-year tenure there. ‘Yes’ said the teacher. ‘Miss,’ Squeaky replied in a calm deadpan voice ‘you do know G-strings are prohibited by the School dress code don’t you?’ Why on earth the woman had actually chosen such an ill advised undergarment to teach physics at an all boys school is a mystery. Nevertheless, Squeaky was put through the meat grinder by the administration, emerging with 6 strokes of the cane on his behind and a gigantic smile on his face. His audacity and genuine kamikaze attitude were admired by all for weeks, and his story went down as one of many days of infamy in the history of the B class.

Until my final year, the school was run by an ancient Ukrainian man, who had been on the staff for almost 5 decades and wanted everything to remain as they did when he arrived. We were quite literally ‘Oldschool’. There was an interesting cohabitation of authority. There was the School’s Code, and there was the ‘Boy’s Code’. The two seemed to work alongside one another, overlapping often, despite the massive contradiction in values. The easiest way to divide where the imperium of the administration applied and where the organic unwritten code of students applied is this: Inside school grounds, where there was no public eye to worry about, our code held sway, it was important to be boisterous, garrulous, loud and bawdy, and though general rules applied, the administration’s code of restraint and maturity was only important outside where the public could see us. Both sets of values shared essential foundations, but many ideas, especially abstract values like honour, which was most important to both systems suffered from a giant difference in conceptualisation. Honour to the administration meant being loyal to the school, the institution and its public image. To us it meant solidarity between the students. The chasm of understanding that divided us was most apparent when somebody was falsely accused of a crime and knew who was in fact responsible. To the administration the boy had a clear cut duty to reveal the actual culprit or face harsh punishment himself: ‘For God’s sake boy, we know it wasn’t you, so tell us who the real perpetrator is and we’ll make sure it won’t come back on you.’ Of course, to the kid standing on the plush red carpet on the other side of the very intimidating desk, with the pale white cane gazing down on him menacingly from the shelf it was a clear cut case of not ratting anyone out. So, many a boy came down with selective amnesia and suffered the wrath of the administration, but received the unreserved respect and gratitude of the boys. Generally the actual culprit was a close friend of the accused, and so it went down as a favour between friends, but when a boy took a fall for a stranger or somebody indifferent to him, it was customary for him to receive more acclaim and for the culprit to give him some token of gratitude. However, if it became apparent that a boy was going to be punished exceedingly harshly, such as expulsion or a ban from competing in sport, then the guilty party was expected to turn himself in and vindicate the accused. It was a peculiar dichotomy of ideas, and many a boy took six or twelve of the best for somebody else’s crime, but in the end it generally evened out. Those who were known to have informed were not ostracised completely, but their status as a dependable companion was forever lost. There were also those that informed willingly, though their identities were never known, everyone knew that some boys went to the administration willingly to inform them of major events. Little went down in the student body that nobody knew about, almost all breaches of school policy were done in groups, pairs or en masse, and once the secrets came down the least trustworthy end of the grapevine, the informers obviously told the administration heavies the fragments that had survived long enough to reach them, and this was how they got their leads, and worked their way back to the usual suspects. It was all very thrilling at times, especially when a giant event such as the food fight of 99’ was pulled off without so much as a inkling filtering through to The Man.