Part 1: Poopeye

POOPEYE
Written by Bert Plomp

With what was, at the time, not a particularly impressive set of shoulders, I tried in early September 1963 to gain access to the State Secondary School on Kruisstreet in Utrecht. As I pushed the door handle down, I pressed one of my shoulders with all my might against the gigantic front door of the school in an effort to force it open. At that moment, I realised that a new and exciting period in my life was about to begin. As soon as the door started to move and an opening appeared, a smell came towards me: a mixture of sweat, floor polish and cigarette smoke. In short, a blend guaranteed to produce a solid headache after prolonged exposure.
This Friday did not yet count as the first day of school. The building was only open for collecting the timetable and the book list. The book list contained all the textbooks that would be covered by the teachers during the school year. It was essential that, as a pupil, you had the most recent edition of these books. An older edition might well lead to some confusion in use. Publishers and everyone earning their living in that book trade had already realised, even then, that there was money to be made from that requirement. Any textual change, however insignificant, rendered an older edition worthless, forcing you to purchase the newest version of the book.
As I walked along Kruisstreet that day, I was still somewhat weighed down by the memory that, in my early childhood, I had been transported three times from a health centre opposite the school entrance to a miserable holiday camp. Be that as it may, I was now fifteen years old and that unpleasant period lay far behind me. I was about to enter the second year of the school. Earlier, after a rather unsteady start, I had already attempted to gain admission to this school by means of an entrance examination. In those days, however, it mattered greatly what background you came from and which school you had attended, whether those factors could guarantee success. In all honesty, I must admit that I had made a bit of a mess of the test as well. The motivation simply wasn’t there, and there had been no real encouragement or solid support in preparing for the exam. So, like many of my classmates, I ended up going to a High School instead. I found this school rather easy. After two years, I left that education behind and finally made my way to Kruisstreet after all.
When I had pushed the heavy door open far enough, I slipped inside. However, my passage was immediately blocked on the other side. An individual dressed in a dust coat had positioned himself squarely in front of me and stopped me in my tracks. With considerable display, he pointed out that he was Van der Kuile, assistant caretaker of the State Secondary School. Although this made little impression on me, I was not yet so outspoken as to tell him straight away that I was Bert Plomp and that my father was an insurance agent: in other words, who did he think he was, Van der Kuile? In truth, I had no real idea what an assistant caretaker actually amounted to, or how important his role was. Much later, when I heard that he was nicknamed ‘Poopeye’ and I found myself dealing with him almost daily, my interactions with him became much smoother.
The assistant caretaker instructed me to report to class 2A on the first floor, using the staircase on the left not the right, as that one was reserved for members of the female sex. Halfway up to the first floor, I hesitated about how to proceed. The two separate staircases merged into one at that point, continuing upwards in the opposite direction. If you couldn’t peek under a skirt during the first half of the climb, you could still make up for lost opportunities during the second half. Eventually, I ended up in a classroom with a sign reading “2A” hastily nailed to the door. The room was full of boys and girls, the very people with whom I would embark on the school adventure in the coming year. I didn’t know any of them, while most already knew one another from the previous school year. After a brief introduction, I promptly left, timetable and book list tucked under my arm, heading into town in search of an inexpensive shop dealing in second-hand schoolbooks.