Throughout my life I've had moments where people simply nay-say what I've told them... This became a very real trope (until I took up a marshal art and became very good at it) in my life and lead to a loss of confidence on my part, today lets take a look at some of them which I still remember:
English (1991) AMBULATE
I used the work "ambulate" in a sentence, I was 12 or 13. My mother immediately said "There's no such word", and I said "there is, it means to walk, and it's where the word Ambulance comes from"... She flat refused to accept this and really made me unsure; she was wrong, she has been wrong about many things, but this was one of the earliest times I actively recall her being dead wrong. Her response also made me second guess myself, so much so that I sat and read the dictionary, other kids at school ribbed me about this for years after, but I read the dictionary. I was right, ambulate is a word, it does mean to walk.
Engineering (1985) METAL SPARKS
My Dad was in the door way of my Grandfathers garage, angle grinding part of the front of the family car, and there were metal sparks flying all over the place, to the left of the closed wooden door was a fabric cover over some garden furniture. The sparks were flying and landing on this dry fabric. And I said "that's going to catch fire".... I was 7 years old and I could see this cascade of burning sparks would set light to the fabric if it carried on. My Dad turned to me and said "don't be stupid, there's nothing in a spark". As though it was a zero weight particle an ethereal nothing, of course, we all know that a spark is a red hot but admittedly tiny fragment of metal, not only could it have set light to the fabric, but it could also have gotten into someones eye... But, I was seven, I was clearly wrong... No, no I wasn't.
Electronics (1992) CD PLAYER
I was sat in the library with a selection of the annoying, ignorant, bully children who were my class mates, when one of the boys Richard ventured something about CD's, about their spinning... of course CD's spin, we all know this, that's why they're round and the lazer is set to slide back and forth. Richard wasn't known as a braniac, but he was right. Immediately a boy called Zahid took the utter and total michael out of Richard, really horrible child this Zahid was and he was one of a bunch of morons in my class... Martin, Martin, Paul and Zahid were a group of utter moronic and bullies; each with their own insecurities; and they took it out most days on me, but this day they dragged this poor Richard lad into it, who looked quite abashed, I decided to stick up for him... Well, never had I been so quickly and thoroughly insulted by a moron who knew nothing but how to ride his mouth. Zahid, I hope your now very bald head knows just how wrong you were, and what a moron you looked flat arguing that CD's don't spin, because they do.
Computing (1984) TYPING
Sat before the first BBC Micro that the school had bought and the teacher was trying to explain LOGO to us, he was leaning over the computer typing one handed upside down, and I could tell what he was trying to type... For I had had a computer at home for the last year, and I'd been typing in simple BASIC programs, so this LOGO thing looked very rudimentary even to my six or seven year old mind. So I offered to do the typing for him, he was copying off of a sheet, he'd have been able to tell the class the command and then see me type it in and the turtle robot (or just the screen) complete the command. And better yet, I'd have been so much quicker making the class feel far more interactive. This teacher, Mr Allison, turned his eyes down on me like I was a dirty stinking urchin (which I likely was) who not only couldn't understand what he was doing, but it was far far beyond anything I could ever do with a computer; see we were a school intended to produce manual workers, no-one expected a kid from that school to end up being a programmer... I'd hazard a guess that a fair few are now, and I look back on that day thinking... Why did he say I couldn't possibly type? When I could and can....
Computing (1993) FLOPPY DISK FORMATS
I was always curious about computers and when my senior school created a "lab" with twenty Acorn A3000 computers I was eager to give these 2megabyte machines a whirl. My machine at home was an Atari ST and it's floppy format was compatible with the Acorn machine (they both being nearly perfect compatible matches with MS DOS's format on the IBM PC). But this lab was always closed, not always locked, but closed... But I started to let myself in; and one day I was caught in there, learning, programming and typing notes, by one of the teachers; I don't remember this guys name, he was never my actual teacher, but his lab was his coveted land and I think he was a little put out that I was there with two of his machines going doing different things at the same time, not just that, but I was doing things so much more quickly because I'd learned that the Acorn OS came with a RAM disk, and with 2MB of RAM I could assign 500-720K and basically copy the Floppy disk straight into RAM, work on it incredibly quickly, and then sync the data back to the disk... So I could do the work I was doing incredibly quickly. He didn't like this, he didn't want to learn, he just wanted to make me look a fool. So he asked me what the disks I was using were. So I showed him, "You have an Acorn at home?" No, I have an ST... Silence, he just stared at me, and he paced off to his desk and pulled a disk out his desk... "Go home and make me 10 copies of this".. and he handed me a box of blank disks... The disk was Lemmings... This teacher was literally giving me homework to commit copyright fraud... I didn't take that disk home, but I did return to his lab... turn on all the machines, and copy the disk once.. then with the two copies copied it on two more, then on the four machines I made the next four copies, and then I had the last two machines running the write of the disk as he walked back in... A mere ten minutes later. "That should have taken you all night!".... Why... it's binary maths... 1 becomes 2... 2 becomes 4... 4 become 8.. here's your last two... "Aren't you the IT teacher?".... he just stared as I handed him his contraband and left the room. I didn't like the man, but I was a black-belt in karate and knew who I was by then...
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