About school .... oh my ....

Flogged from ozratbag2The School and Year you graduated:Ferdinand-Porsche-Gymnasium, Stuttgart-ZuffenhausenI didn't graduate. I got kicked out. ;-)Nickname in high school?Sibs (and don't call me so - I hate it)Sport you were into?Fencing and horse riding.Had a circle of friends?No, actually not. I was a loner.Best subject?Germanworst subject?Latin, English and mathematics. My English and the Latin teacher were convinced, I'm a total failure when it comes to language ...A teacher you owe life lessons to?Most of my teachers I didn't like - and it was mutual. But my teacher for religion was a wonderful, very elegant and warmhearted woman and I remember something she told us as we were 14 or 15 years old. It was - roughly translated: "Girls, you have a big capital in love. Don't spend it in small change."Describe in one word...The German system is a bit other as the American, therefore ...Freshman (year 6): outsiderSophomore (year 8): strugglingJunior (year 9): out of schoolYour best friend was?Freshman (year 6): Sabine, Catherine (but she never was in my school)Sophomore (year 8): Sabine, Ilse (two years my senior), CatherineJunior (year 9): Ilse, CatherineCatherine (actually her name's "Ekaterini" because she's Greek) are still friends. We were in contact during her studies in Oxford and we visit us regularly though she lives now in Bruxelles (there's her job) and Kreta (there's her husband) and I in Stuttgart and London.Ilse and I lost contact after she married and moved from Stuttgart to Frankfurt. A short while after I moved to Duesseldorf and for years we didn't hear from each other. But two years ago a local newspaper in Stuttgart wrote an article about me and two days after my phone rang and a still familiar voice laughed in my ear: "Bylle, here's Ilse. I'm back in Stuttgart and I read this article ..." She's now living only 10 minutes away from my place in Stuttgart und whenever I be there, we see each other.Worst friend:Actually two - the girls with the "B": Britta and Beatrix, nickname "Trixi".Britta was my "favourite enemy" - she always tried to get the boys I was interested in and she never let slip an opportunity to talk lousy about me behind my back. So I took my revenge in flirting with the boy she was heavily after - and unfortunately I got him! He looked great, but he was an absolute bore, always only talking about soccer, himself and his great doing in the last soccer game. Trixi was actually Ilse's "special friend". She lived next door to Ilse, their mothers were friends and therefore Ilse's mother always demanded Ilse should spend time with Trixi. Besides we - Ilse and I - were always told by her mother and her grandmother, how nice Trixi always looks, how polite she is, how wonderful she does in school and how great her success once will be. We couldn't stand it because we knew, that Trixi is a snake - always smiling one in the face, always just waiting until one shows the back for talking badly. And so I have to admit, that Ilse and I even today like to talk about how an idiot Trixi is - and that I really enjoy, that oh-so-wonderful-clever-pretty Trixi got her first child as she was 19, that she's now a single mother of three, divorced, still living at her parent's place and that I, the person she named more then once "a born loser" is obviously a bit more successfull then her.How was the prom/Year 12 Farewell?I wasn't there. I had to leave school after my 8. year. As my class celebrated their "Abitur party", I was already having a job.Any achievements?[grins] Actually the only thing one could see as a kind of "achievement" was an essay of mine which got my German teacher in some trouble. She didn't want to give me a note for it because she meant I couldn't have done it all by myself. It was - so she said - much too good for a 14 year old girl. My father - mostly not on my side in matters of school because he adopted my teachers opinion about me - went ballistic as he heard that. He went to the school gouvernors, he wrote to the newspaper and in the end I got my "outstanding" for the thing.Were you popular?Yes and now. On the one hand I got some "admiration" from my class mates for being courageous with teachers. I was for two years speaker of my class, elected by the class mates. But on the other hand I never felt "popular" and close to the other kids in the class. Mostly I felt as an outsider - and I certainly was one because I didn't like popular music, I wasn't wearing the "right" clothes (courtesy of my mother - she hates jeans and she wanted her girl to look "like a girl". So I got always silly dresses and skirts - and hated, hated, hated it. I don't know how the other kids thought about - I wasn't one they would have dared to make jokes about. For this my sharp tongue was to much feared. But this didn't change the fact that I felt lousy in this clothes - and one of the happiest day of my unhappy youth was the day in my 14.year as my wonderful grandfather came in the shop where my mother and my grandmother were just buying new clothes for me - dresses and skirts of course. Grandfather looked to the stuff they had selected, he looked to me and he said: "Sibyllia, let's go." He took my hand, looked again to the ladies and said: "You don't like jeans. I don't like jeans. But it's not our taste what counts. Therefore I go to buy the girl a jeans now." And so he did - and even more: On this day I got a compliment from him for my eye browes. It was the first compliment I ever got about something on my appearance and it came from a man whom I admired and loved with all my heart) and I even dreamed other dreams as my class mates.Best song that reminds you of high school?As funny as it may sound: Bach's Christmas Oratorium. I sang it once with the school's choir and it was one of the moments I felt happy during my school days.