Bad hair days and playing hooky

In my eleven years of compulsory education, my parents went up to school three times, I think.

The first occasion was when my mum went to find out which infant malcontent was weeing on my socks in the toilets. (It wasn't me. It was just some kid who hadn't perfected aiming yet. Or maybe he had.)

On the second, years later, my dad and I were called in to explain why my hair was offending so many teachers, and what we intended to do about it. Apparently teachers were under the mistaken impression that my hair was an affectation, a permed explosion, and they did want to share classroom space with it. My dad sat bemused while the huge figure of the headmaster, swathed in black and indignation, strode angrily around his office. He would not tolerate it. Nature was no excuse. It must be trimmed, and if that failed, eradicated. He suggested sprinkling it with petrol and setting fire to it. I hope, in retrospect, that this was a joke. It did not make me laugh at the time.

Forty years later, this experience made me very sympathetic when bloganonymous younger son was suspended and sent home for having what the school described, with grave seriousness, as a "disruptive haircut".

The third occasion was when my dad and I were invited to explain why I was so infrequent a visitor to the school. The simple answer was that there were a million things to do with my time, all of them more interesting than school, and most of them more fun. The headmaster was incredulous. Not that this should be the case, but that someone should dare to suggest it. At that stage neither he nor I knew I had Aspergers. But being frank was not so much a decision as a compulsion. The Head did not like it.

But when I was at school, nobody thought to challenge the teachers. Or ask them anything taxing. I do not remember any invitations to parents' evenings, but I do remember that my parents and school were strangers. They just accepted what the school said, usually in the form of reports. In some cases the teachers had clearly struggle to remember me, as well they might.

All I can say is that my hair and I were largely absent for very big chunks of time in secondary school. In seven years there I took part in only one of the weekly compulsory cross-country runs, which were both miserably unnecessary and necessarily miserable. I then put all my energies into avoiding any repetition. I became the wispy master of truancy both internal and external, and could become invisible in a trice, even with the haircut.

It was a great preparation for life.

Oh, and my sock problem went away eventually, too.