The Day I Wore My Slippers To School

The Day I Wore My Slippers To School

One day, at the age of nine, I accidentally wore my slippers to school.

"Hey! Duck!" shouted Steven B, "You're wearing your slippers to school!"

I looked down, saw a red pair of carpet slippers, panicked, remembered we were allowed plimsolls instead of outside shoes in class, and came up with a bare-faced porkie: "No. No they're not. They're my new school plimsolls."

From that moment on, I was doomed. To avoid ridicule, I had to sneak them out of the house every day, and when challenged on the fact that I appeared to be wearing a pair of red carpet slippers to school reply "No. No they're not. They're my new school plimsolls."

I also had to wear them in PE, and my feet were agony.

Then, one day, the ultimate humiliation - a familiar figure in the door of the classroom. My mother. My mother had come into school.

Deathly quiet as one of the great taboos was broken. Your mother. In class. It couldn't get much worse.

Then, it did:

"I saw you wearing your slippers to school this morning, so I thought I'd drop off your shoes."

We had recently discovered a new word, and as my mother disappeared into the car park, thirty voices (including, for some reason, that of my teacher) echoed as one: "WANKERRRRRR!"

And there goes another repressed memory.