The Value of Money

that last post got me thinking about school again so thought I’d impart another memory.

They say school is the happiest time of your life and while I didn’t think so at the time, I do remember most of my time at school fondly. One of the things that did always bother me though, was being one of the poor kids. My family wasn’t actually that poor. Both parents worked, there were three of us boys and our needs were quite simple, but the problem was I went to a public school. For any American readers, that’s the same as your private schools (I know that’s confusing, but that’s how it is). So the thing about a public school (or Grammar School as mine was) is that you have to pay fees to attend, unless you get a scholarship. If you’re under a certain income level (or rather your parents are) you can apply for an assisted place, provided your mark in the entrance exam is high enough. As my older brother had got in on an assisted place, and as my parents couldn’t afford full fees, there was quite a lot of pressure on me to get an assisted place. Suffice to say I managed it, but never did I imagine what a difference it would make.

More or less all of my peers were better off than I was. All of them had fancy calculators and watches, and new uniforms, bought for them, not handed down from an older brother (though mum was always careful to ensure it was my  name in everything, not my brother’s). If they played a musical instrument it was their own, not one borrowed from the school. So I was always conscious of being less well-off than pretty much everyone else.

Before too long I managed to get myself in Saturday morning detention (unsurprisingly, for failure to do homework) and on the day, found myself in an unheated portacabin on the edge of the school grounds, in the company of ruffians, bounders, cads and ne’er-do-wells, and sat next to a boy who was in my year but in a different form. He asked to borrow a pen. I had two, a fountain pen and a calligraphy marker. I was very particular about the fountain pen but knew I’d get into trouble if I lost the calligraphy marker as it had been expensive. Thinking I’d probably get in more trouble for handing in lines written in thick marker, I handed the calligraphy pen to my fellow detainee.

I never got it back, but over the years I came to be good friends with the boy in question and one year I was invited to his house, over Christmas. I didn’t really understand the trust that was being placed in me until I got there, and realised that here was someone who was actually less well off even than me, and realised that my friend was very slightly embarrassed by how sparse everything was, and how little they had. He was one of 5 or 6 kids, I forget exactly how many, but I remember being envious of how well they all got on (me and my brothers seldom saw eye to eye when we lived at home). My friend’s parents were divorced, but got on ok, and so at Christmas made a concession and Dad came round for the festivities. Very seldom have I been made more welcome than I was that day, and was fed to bursting point, though this weighed on my conscience, feeling that I was depriving them of a helping that would have made their own go that bit further.

If it all sounds a bit Dickensian that’s because that’s a bit how it felt. I’d known all my life we were poor, but didn’t realise how fortunate I was until then. I saw what it was like to just get by, to just make ends meet. And then the really surprising thing happened – they started giving out presents. It wasn’t actually Christmas day, just a meal in the Christmas holidays, so I hadn’t been expecting presents. I felt a bit awkward as though I was intruding on a private family moment – I hadn’t brought anything to give them, not even my friend, as I hadn’t know it was expected. And it didn’t seem logical for them to have got me something because it had been a bit of a last minute thing, so I was just kind of watching this private thing. Then my friend’s Dad said “and this one’s for Paul” and handed me an envelope. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. I made intrigued gratitude noises and carefully open the envelope. Inside was a puzzle. A hand-made puzzle. the instructions read:

1. This is another wall (without any half bricks)

2. It is 6 bricks high.

3. There are 48 bricks in the wall.

4. There are 16 pieces of three bricks.

5. No brick of the same colour is next to another of that colour either horizontally or vertically in the correctly built wall.

My friend’s Dad had made me a present. My friend was a bit embarrassed, but he needn’t have been. Of all the friends he could have made at school, I was one of the few who really understood what it meant to have less than everyone else. What it meant to have home-made and second hand stuff. To have to bring your P.E. kit in  a carrier bag instead of an adidas boot bag. To have a no-name blue blazer with the school badge sewn on the breast pocket because we couldn’t afford the proper blazer. I thought the present was ace. I love puzzles, but I also loved the fact that it had been hand made, and his Dad had given it to me so I’d feel included. And I did. A fool knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That puzzle is a few bits of cardboard in a brown envelope but it’s one of my most valuable things, because it changed the way I look at the world, and at other people.