Lessons From Elementary School – Part 3

This week I’ve been sharing some funny stories about events that took place while I was in Elementary school. These stories helped me learn lessons that have stayed with me for a lifetime.

Today is the final part and just a quick disclaimer. Sorry if this story is a little crude or if it’s too much information, but the lesson has stuck with me.

Lesson Three

There was a guy named Sean who went to our elementary school who was very aggressive. He was a little bigger than everyone else and also a little stronger. To put it mildly, he was a bit of a bully. However, while many of the kids found themselves on the wrong end of a Sean beating, he actually treated me like a friend. I even went to his house from time to time to play video games (he had a Spectrum 128K Plus 2 after all, a little similar to the Commodore 64).

Most kids watched their back when Sean was around, not me, I didn’t feel threatened, so I didn’t feel the need. That was until one day. I remember sitting in class and the whole, I need the bathroom pretty quick feeling came over me. I raised my hand to ask the teacher if I could go (they didn’t always let us go to the bathroom during class). This time the teacher let me go, so I ran out of the room and went straight to the boy’s room. Now our bathrooms were pretty ugly. We had two stalls that the locks didn’t work and instead of a line of urinals we had what I can only describe as a pig troth. It was one big urinal designed for up to five or six guys to stand there doing their business at once.

So I ran into the bathroom and went straight to the pig troth. As I stood there doing what you do in a bathroom, Sean walked in. I said hi and carried on emptying my bladder. Then suddenly Sean comes right up behind me, totally unprovoked and pushes me forward. As he stood their laughing I had just pee’d over all my clothes and was dripping wet! I am just thankful on this day I remembered by PE Kit (check Part 2 of this blog to find out about PE Kits), because that is what I spent the rest of the day wearing. Oh, I always watched my back when Sean as around after that.

So what’s the lesson? I discovered that day how important it is to look at how people treat others when deciding if I can trust them. Some guy maybe as nice as pie to me, but if he tries to control his wife and those around, one day he’s going to try to control me. One woman may do me right, but if she is dishonest with other people, she will one day be dishonest with me.

You cannot use how someone treats you as a benchmark as to whether you can trust them, trust should only be given when you how a complete view of how they treat the other people in their lives. Imagine if David had done this exercise when he decided to trust King Saul? He probably would not have gone through all those years on the run as Israels most wanted!

So who are you trusting that you shouldn’t be? Just remember the way they treat others will eventually be the way they’ll treat you!

Lessons From Elementary School – Part 2

So this week I am blogging a three-part series about lessons I learned as a child from my early school days, the first was to do something always having the right motive, see that post here, Part 1.

So today is part two, so let’s get straight into it:

Lesson 2

Without a doubt the only reason I could get up in the mornings to go to school was because most days in Elementary School we had PE (Physical Education). We got to play all types of school and sports was my thing!

We did not have personal lockers at school and we wore uniforms, so I had to bring my PE Kit on the days we had PE. If you did not bring your PE kit something terrible happened, and one day I found out what.

We were scheduled to play a game of Rounders (Kind of like baseball, but you hold the bat with one hand instead of two), and as we went back to our classroom to get changed (we didn’t have changing rooms, and we all got changed in the classroom, boys & girls together!) I started to panic! The bag with my PE kit was not there, I had forgotten it! So I told my teacher fully expecting to sit out the game of Rounders. As I told my teacher she shrugged her shoulders and said I’d have to do it in my underwear and shoes. What! In my underwear!I pleaded with her to let me off, but no, see made me strip down.

So the next 45 minutes went from being the most exciting part of the day to one of the most embarrassing moments of my whole life. I stood outside sporting no more than a pair of black dress shoes and a very white, very small pair of Y-Fronts! (this was Britain in the 1980’s, I don’t think boxers had been invented then!). Could you imagine having to do that? Well I still have nightmares to this day over that episode!

So guess what? I never forgot my PE Kit ever again!

So what’s the lesson, apart from the fact that making a kid do PE in his UNDERWEAR will scar him for life there was a deeper lesson I learned. I found out that day that unless you are prepared for all things that come your way you could find ourselves in a situation that exposes you in a destroying way that would affect you for a lifetime.

In Matthew 24:44 we are told to be ready and prepared for the return of Jesus Christ. The reason, for this is that it could happen any moment. There will be those who think they are ready, but when it happens they will look around and their spiritual PE Kit is not there, they had left it behind or forgotten about it. Make sure that you are prepared, and if you do not Jesus as a personal friend and live with him directing your life on a daily basis, then sorry, but your are not ready! All I’m going to say is a little boy standing there in white Y-Fronts is nothing compared to the punishment you will get for not being prepared.

So get ready!

Lessons From Elementary School – Part 1

This week I am going to blog about three lessons I learned at an early age in Elementary School (well it wasn’t actually Elementary School as there are no such things in England, but it was Primary School, but for clarity we’ll go with Elementary school). These three  lessons come from three different accounts that happened to me while growing up. I’ll be honest, they aren’t actions that make me look particularly good!

So here is lesson one:

I hated Tuesday mornings at school! Every morning we would have a 15 minute assembly. We would sing a very poor selection of songs, listen to some teacher yap on about something and then go off to class. However, Tuesday mornings were especially worse. After assembly, instead of going to class we would have to stay in the assembly hall for another 45 minutes having singing practice. The problem was that for the entire 45 minutes we would have to sit on the hard wood floor sitting cross-legged and you dare not move. By about 30 minutes my legs would have gone to sleep and all I wanted to do was stretch them out (only if you dared!!)

So I hated Tuesday mornings up until 4th grade. You see 4th & 5th graders had an opportunity to join the choir! If you joined the choir you did not have to sit cross-legged, but got to sit on benches at the back of the Assembly Hall. This was my chance to save my knees and my butt! So I tried out for the choir. Most people wanted to join the choir because they liked to sing, not me!

So the day of the audition came about, I couldn’t wait to sit on all those benches! The only problem was that I didn’t know I couldn’t sing! I had never practiced singing, nor did I really know the words. As I opened my mouth it must have been a horrifying sound of pre-puberty wailing!

Needless to say I didn’t get in and I had to spend the next two years in pain and also in shame!

So what was the lesson? Well the lesson was to make sure I did things with the right motive. I didn’t want to join the choir to sing, just to relieve the pain. I realized that if your motivates are not pure, then eventually it is not going to work out. There was a couple in the bible called Ananias & Sapphire who had the wrong motives and they died because of it. They sold a piece of property to give to the church, but kept some of it for himself. Their motive was not to please God, but to look good in the eyes of the church and also help themselves. So they died! Pretty crazy story, but it shows exactly what God thinks of people who have wrong motivates!

I’m glad I didn’t died for trying to join the choir, but I sure learned my lesson. Don’t do something unless your motives are pure!