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WHEN I WAS about 9, I saw an episode of Home and Away where one of the characters tried to avoid an exam by drinking a pint of salt water shortly before he was due to sit it.
Agog, I stared at the television screen and wondered how that bizarre move might play out.
A few scenes later, a pale-looking Tug, played by Tristan Bancks, was presented with his exam paper in a Summer Bay High classroom and promptly vomited all over it.
Weak with the fecking effort, Tug was helped from the classroom on unsteady legs, and the exam was no longer his problem.
‘Christ, this is an absolute Godsend,’ I thought.
The Letterland crew could go and sh*te. I had found my Get Out Of Jail Free card and it had nothing to do feigning stomach pains, but instead delivered evidence of my ‘ailment’.
I had seen American TV shows where the kid at the centre of the storyline might warm up a thermometer by rubbing it vigorously between the palms of their hands, but as I was growing up in an Irish household which relied solely on flat 7Up and Calpol, there wasn’t much chance of me getting my hands on an actual thermometer.
But water and salt? Water and salt, I could do.
As someone who spent most of their downtime hatching plans to get off school, I knew that the Tug method would be getting a test-drive immediately, if not sooner.
Sneaking around the kitchen in the days that followed, I carefully poured Saxa salt into a pint of water, held my nose and downed it.
And nothing happened.
Repeating the method every few days for the guts of a fortnight yielded absolutely no success, and I was starting to question the validity of that particular storyline.
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Giphy
I must have drank gallons of the stuff while crouched behind the kitchen door, and never so much as burped in the hours that followed.
In addition to what I christened the ‘Tug Trick’, I tried myriad other ways to avoid school – most of which failed miserably.
I pressed myself against the radiator to create the illusion of a rash only to be caught by my mother before I stuck fast to the damn thing.
I attempted to catch bits of masticated Polo mints at the back of my throat to create the illusion of Strep, and damn near choked while attempting to stop their descent down my throat.
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And on one memorable occasion I snuck my flask into the school toilet, made excessively loud gagging noises and then poured the contents of the container into the toilet bowl to suggest I had been struck down with a stomach bug. Upon emerging, the sub teacher asked me to hand over the flask.
Oh, and I wasn’t above requesting a painkiller from my mother for some random ailment and then asking if it was likely that said tablet would kill a person if they weren’t actually in pain.
Asking for a friend, you know?
There was no real reason why I became fixated with throwing sickies except I thoroughly enjoyed daytime telly, chicken noodle soup and setting up a makeshift fort on the couch.
In other words, I was lazy AF.
While my methods for getting off school regularly varied, I did have three hard and fast rules I adhered to once the sick-day had been secured.
1. One day just wasn’t believable.
I needed a minimum of two days off if I was going to be believed by anyone in school.
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Saturday 23 November, 2024
Saturday 23 November, 2024
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Let's talk about... my addiction to pulling sickies between the ages of 5 and 17
WHEN I WAS about 9, I saw an episode of Home and Away where one of the characters tried to avoid an exam by drinking a pint of salt water shortly before he was due to sit it.
Agog, I stared at the television screen and wondered how that bizarre move might play out.
A few scenes later, a pale-looking Tug, played by Tristan Bancks, was presented with his exam paper in a Summer Bay High classroom and promptly vomited all over it.
Weak with the fecking effort, Tug was helped from the classroom on unsteady legs, and the exam was no longer his problem.
‘Christ, this is an absolute Godsend,’ I thought.
The Letterland crew could go and sh*te. I had found my Get Out Of Jail Free card and it had nothing to do feigning stomach pains, but instead delivered evidence of my ‘ailment’.
I had seen American TV shows where the kid at the centre of the storyline might warm up a thermometer by rubbing it vigorously between the palms of their hands, but as I was growing up in an Irish household which relied solely on flat 7Up and Calpol, there wasn’t much chance of me getting my hands on an actual thermometer.
But water and salt? Water and salt, I could do.
As someone who spent most of their downtime hatching plans to get off school, I knew that the Tug method would be getting a test-drive immediately, if not sooner.
Sneaking around the kitchen in the days that followed, I carefully poured Saxa salt into a pint of water, held my nose and downed it.
And nothing happened.
Repeating the method every few days for the guts of a fortnight yielded absolutely no success, and I was starting to question the validity of that particular storyline.
I must have drank gallons of the stuff while crouched behind the kitchen door, and never so much as burped in the hours that followed.
In addition to what I christened the ‘Tug Trick’, I tried myriad other ways to avoid school – most of which failed miserably.
I pressed myself against the radiator to create the illusion of a rash only to be caught by my mother before I stuck fast to the damn thing.
I attempted to catch bits of masticated Polo mints at the back of my throat to create the illusion of Strep, and damn near choked while attempting to stop their descent down my throat.
And on one memorable occasion I snuck my flask into the school toilet, made excessively loud gagging noises and then poured the contents of the container into the toilet bowl to suggest I had been struck down with a stomach bug. Upon emerging, the sub teacher asked me to hand over the flask.
Oh, and I wasn’t above requesting a painkiller from my mother for some random ailment and then asking if it was likely that said tablet would kill a person if they weren’t actually in pain.
Asking for a friend, you know?
There was no real reason why I became fixated with throwing sickies except I thoroughly enjoyed daytime telly, chicken noodle soup and setting up a makeshift fort on the couch.
In other words, I was lazy AF.
While my methods for getting off school regularly varied, I did have three hard and fast rules I adhered to once the sick-day had been secured.
1. One day just wasn’t believable.
I needed a minimum of two days off if I was going to be believed by anyone in school.
2. Sacrificing daytime TV on one of those days was a necessary evil.
In order for my ‘illness’ to seem more plausible, I had to pretend I was too shook even for the couch.
As a kid, staying in bed is nowhere near as enjoyable as it is as an adult, but I knew it had to be done if I was to hoodwink everyone in my house.
3. Never miss a Friday
If I missed Friday, then I wouldn’t be allowed out at the weekend and what good was that to me?
Nah, I pulled it together in time for Friday, but there was no guarantee the excesses of the weekend wouldn’t strike me down again come Monday.
The devil’s in the detail, you know?
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pulling a sickie