1. Sitting at the back of the bus, obviously
The bus food chain is as follows:
- Seats 1-8 were reserved for teachers, parents who came to help and the kids that did something bold during the week and weren’t allowed sit with everyone else.
- Seats 9-20 were for the sensible children who wanted to read a Jacqueline Wilson book or something while the bus drove somewhere like the Japanese Gardens.
- Seats 21-32 were people of moderate social standing, the type of people who got on with everyone. But seats 33-49 was where the party was really at.
2. Showing visible signs that you had recently been on a holiday
Any kind of henna tattoo, from tribal print and skulls to Playboy bunnies. Braids? Tanned? These were the kids everyone was envious of. Bonus points if your parents brought you on holidays during term time. Still not sure why this is so frowned upon in primary schools, the holidays are considerably cheaper and you’re hardly missing out on any significant amount of work.
3. Being injured
There are a number of reasons why kids with injuries were cool. It meant that they got up to some wild shit outside of school like jumping off of things and cycling very recklessly. It also meant that they were going to be allowed to sit out of P.E. and allowed to choose a friend to keep them company from the sidelines.
If they had crutches, kids from all over the school would be lining up to get a shot of them and if they had a cast, everyone wanted to sign it.
4. Having a cool lunch
You couldn’t pay me to eat the meat from a lunchable in this day and age, but when you’re a child, being able to construct your own horrible crackers from the comfort of your germ riddled school desk (which was likely coated in decades of random children’s sneezes) is the ultimate novelty.
Capri Suns, Iced Gems, Dairylea Dunkers, Frubes, Cheesestrings. These were all the best lunches for a child’s social status. They were all indicators that your mam was cool enough to keep the house stocked with so many novelty foods that you could afford to bring them for lunch. If my mam got any of these products, they would be gone before sunset on shopping day.
5. Knowing how to draw a star properly
Star no. 1 was enough to get you by, but not enough to make you stand out. Star no. 2 probably meant that you had an older sibling who liked Avril Lavigne and showed you how to do this, which gives you a little bit more social capital than the drawers of star 1. Being able to draw star no. 3 however, meant that everyone would be dying to be in your group when it came to poster making.
6. Deviating from the school dress code
A pair of those Nike Cortez runners with your school uniform? Sounds terrible now but at the time it was a sign that you did whatever you wanted. Making up some excuse like “my shoes got wet” to wear runners in was very liberating. Wearing your P.E. polo t shirt with the collar popped? Very slick. Wearing earrings bigger than the school dress code allowed? Also extremely cool.
7. Wearing your bag over one shoulder
This looked effortless, like you didn’t even want to be in school. You just happened to be half carrying your bag, because who wants to look like they care enough about school to carry their bag properly? Probably set you up for some back problems later in life, considering the weight of primary school books but this eventually became a very geeky thing to do in secondary school.
8. Bringing in a heavy Trocaire box
It was very important to come across as a philanthropist to your peers in third class.
9. Having an older sibling
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As noted earlier, an older sibling in the early 00′s meant you had access to a lot of Avril Lavigne and System of a Down CDs. Even if your sister/brother was more likely to share Ministry of Sound CDs with you than terrible early 00′s nu metal, it still made you feel more cultured and mature than your peers. You probably sounded like Avril Lavigne in that video.
10. Having a pencil case in the shape of a fizzy drink can
I think today kids are too woke to go for a Pepsi can pencil case and actually have considerably better taste than any generation before them, so they don’t have any interest in putting their pens in a big fake fizzy drink can anymore.
11. Sneaking a mobile phone to school
Kids would be so paranoid of being caught in possession of a mobile phone that it would be turned off in the bottom of their bags in case the teacher ever decided to randomly engage in a random bag search. Some people even took the batteries out. But the point was that they brought their phones to school.
12. Novelty stationary
You need something cool to put inside of that Pepsi case. Gel pens, blow pens, millions of Crayolas. These were all things that were likely to be stolen on you in school, but if you were cool people respected you enough to not take your markers.
13. Bringing a toy in to school
Everyone’s jealous of the kid who brings Barbies out to the yard. In fact a little bit too jealous. They will want to take you down a peg by doing something like ripping the sewn on beret off of your Barbie. Think before you bring a toy to the yard. It’ll make you cool but it will most likely result in a grudge you will hold for the rest of your life.
14. Ringing the bell at lunch
Adults see it as giving a child a small taste of responsibility, but children see it as either being like the town crier or the Angelus. Ringing the bell is serious business.
15. Having an iPod, discman, walkman etc.
It’s very important to be able to listen to music during the five minute drive home from school so you should bring one of these to school with you. I remember when iPods first came out, people would walk to school together both listening to music either on a shared iPod or on their own individual iPods, ignoring each other and not even talking. This was a very normal thing to do in sixth class.
16. Your parent/guardian bringing your scooter when they picked you up
Nothing like scooting away from school after a long day of spelling tests and harassing the teacher to find out what her first name was.
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