The Old School Tie

The Old School Tie....only this one isn't, in order to protect the protagonist in my blog. I felt that if I posted a photograph of his real school tie, it would be recognised by someone and all hell would break loose in his scholastic institution. Or worse.....we might be called in for another one of those unpleasant 'interviews'.

Parents have so many reasons to be proud of their children, and for us our son is no exception. Perhaps yours was Head Boy or Head of House or Captain of Cricket. Perhaps yours was the winner of The Beazley Medal or Dux of School or Fairest and Best for the footy season. Maybe he plays three different instruments or is the youngest boy to have sailed single handed around the world in a yacht.

Ours did none of the above, but boy are we proud of him. And why, I hear you ask?

Because our son, as he moves through his final year of school, has single handedly manged to get through five gruelling years of secondary education seemingly with the original set of school uniform we bought for him at the start of Year 8. That's right, one set of uniform.

Does he have some sort of growth disorder? No, he does not. He was 152cm when we sent him away four years ago and he is now 186cm.

Is he abjectly shuffling around his school in shorts that constrict his nether regions, long pants that finish mid calf, and shirts whose sleeves finish at his elbows, whose tails are too far from his pants to tuck into anything, and whose button holes have elastic attached to them so that they can connect with their buttons on the other side of his rapidly growing, well muscled, manly chest?

No, he is not. Our boy is quite simply entrepreneurial. Our boy is going to go far. Our boy may be no Rhodes Scholar, but by God he was quick off the mark with his visionary powers when he first came across........... The Boarding House Lost Property Box.

He has quite simply dressed himself out of this receptacale by recycling his school uniforms. He simply takes out his name tapes from his school clothes, drops in a size 10 and pulls out an un-named size 12. Then the follwoing year he drops in his size 12 and takes out a size 14. I was horrified initially.

"Darling! Isn't that theft?"

"No. It's recycling, Mum. None of the stuff I take out has a name on it and it's been in there for ages. It's not as if I'm not putting anything back in either. It's sort of swapping stuff, that's all"

Perfectly harmless, isn't it? So I relent, and realise that is one trip to the school uniform shop I won't have to make at the start of the new school year, and one more trip for me to the frock shop. The boy has saved us hundreds of dollars.

And Madam, before you get irate with me because my son is possibly wearing your son's rugby shirt, might I politely remind you that you should have put a bloody name tape in it or marked it with an indelible pen! I'm starting to sound slightly school marmish now.

Oh, and if any one is after 'an old school tie', my boy might be able to help you out.....though with his entrepreneurial skills, it might cost you!