It’s my kid’s birthday today and I think he’s missing out not getting the bumps at school.
When did it die out? Was it because it got too violent with the added kicking and dropping? Never did me any harm!
Did you have the bumps?

Birthday in Summer holidays meant I never had proper violent bumps 🙁

This has probably affected your personality in some way, DD.

yep we had that as well, with the added kicking and dropping as well. Ahh the good old days of school, makes me go all misty eyed thinking back 😆

i wonder what other things have died out. How about the ‘smell the cheese’ joke or that one where you get someone to twist their arms over then you pull down on the fists shouting ‘bingo!’ Both classics that you only fall for once!

we invented the ‘birthday box’ for my friend richard, a cardboard box would be put over his head and he’d be hit as many times as possible before the box fell to bits.

This has probably affected your personality in some way, DD.

😀

You’ve hit on something there I reckon.

we invented the ‘birthday box’ for my friend richard, a cardboard box would be put over his head and he’d be hit as many times as possible before the box fell to bits.

Happy days….

he was a nutter

i miss him 🙁

During murder ball games. If you got hit three times in a row you’d get extra hard beats, if you were the last hit before the end of break you’d also get extra hard beats. My mate managed to be the only person in my 5 years of senior school to combine these two forfeits into one. He was still lying motionless in the playground whilst the rest of us were a good 10 minutes into the next lesson.

There was no long term damage, character building is what it was.

Getting beats was fine, getting wrapsys (thumped repeatedly across the knuckles with the end of the deck) from a deck of cards if you lost at chinese slam was painful!

Wedgies! The hedge rows of our school bus route were littered with the tattered remnants of Y fronts.

and posting. Posting is when the victim is carried by arms & legs like a battering ram and swung crotch first at a post. Happy days indeed, probably no permanent damage….

It’s comforting to know that there were regional variations on extreme violence and cruelty. To the best of my knowledge we didn’t have posting and whilst wedgies happened every so often they certainly weren’t of the epidemic proportion described above. It’s the sort of stuff that made this country great.