7 Things All Maltese Kids Did On The Secondary School Van On A Daily Basis
Waking up in the early hours of the day to look forward to a day of school was not always easy.
If you weren’t the kind of kid that got their parent to drop them off, you’d have the school van to look forward to. The Maltese school van experience was one not to miss, with some form of misconduct on the daily. Here’s our list of things we did while we went back and forth to school.
1. Annoy the public
We were kids.. what did you expect?
Whether this was randomly yelling at pedestrians, flipping a certain finger at the public, or tossing some sort of object out of the van and onto the road. We weren’t the brightest kids around, but being so wrong never felt so right.
In retrospect, though, that must’ve been all sorts of annoying (and wrong).
2. Crank up that CD / MP3 player
‘Geez mum get out of my room! Nobody understands me!’ you yelled as Linkin Park tunes blasted in your room.
As you go to the complexities of puberty, and school life, you only find peace in one thing; music, switching from genre to genre whilst you try to keep up with your many many mood swings.
3. Play Game-boy
Admit it, if you didn’t have one you were a jelly hater.
You’re either the one smashing through some edition of Pokémon while all your friends look on in amazement, or you’re the guy watching, waiting, pawing on your friend’s head, begging them to give you a turn. ’Just one minute…please’.
4. Gossip
‘Like OMG did you even hear about Andrew and Jessica!? They like totally pecked behind the lockers!’.
Our very own form of the school newsletter. With people of all forms on your bus, the gossip of the day spread around the van quicker than lice.
And if you went to an all-boys or girls school, then the gossip transcended even the very confines of the school bounds.
5. Do last-minute homework
For the kids that didn’t leave their homework to the last minute, but the last seconds.
We’ve all been guilty of doing our homework late, but there’s something extreme about trying to write a Maltese literature paper whilst your van driver hits every bump on the island.
Your fingers gyrate as your pen is gifted with a mind of its own to write wherever on the paper it likes. Good luck handing that one in.
6. Eat
Either you were starving and literally couldn’t wait the 20 minutes to get home where you could relax and eat, or you knew if you came home with the food you had prepared for you this morning still uneaten, the gates of hell itself would open and burn you to a crisp.
Either way, the real trick with eating on the van was making sure the driver didn’t catch you.
7. Trade cards
Every single year there was something. Pokémon cards, football stickers, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh… you name it, the schools had it.
Until of course, one parent would complain that someone stole their kids’ cards, and then the fun would stop. The trading would begin taking place in the dark parts of the school, where nobody was watching… or of course on the van.
Rule of thumb; A shiny is worth at least 2 normal ones. Never forget or play dumb.
