Back in the '80s and '90s, school computer clubs were the only way most pupils had access to the sort of computers that their parents could never afford to have at home - the BBC Micro, or a nice PC for example. Well, unless those parents were posh parents. The less said about them the better.
Here are ten things that happened in every Computer Club throughout the country.
Often, the forlorn Computer Club Teacher (CCT) would wander from child to child asking if it was possible for them to hack his ex-wife, seemingly without really knowing what that meant.
When members of Computer Club would look blankly, or say things such as "Huuruuuuuunnhhh-ah?!?", and "You mean like in the film called War Games?", and "Specify exactly what you mean, please", teacher would simply slither off his chair without saying a word, and - with his arms motionless at his side - somehow continue sliding along the floor and out of the classroom, to the accompaniment of a sort of mournful slide whistle-type noise.
Do you remember when somebody was unexpectedly grabbed by the witch and got so scare that the skellington jumped out of their skin and started dancing around the classroom, with its teeth chattering, and then it'd start singing "Dem Bones"?
Yes. Yes you do, because it happened at least once every Computer Club.
With each computer processing a single note - which in itself would take upwards of an hour - it sometimes required as many as twenty computers to play a single bar of music. If any orchestra member had inputted the code incorrectly, it could ruin everything - and thus would ensue a dull and time-consuming task to find the error.
The pupil responsible would then be banished for one standard month - no more, no less - to The Well of Screams.
Pupils would spend hours inputting the evidence into the computer, only for teacher to storm over and pull the plug before any satisfactory conclusions could be reached.
The second he was out of the room, everyone would quickly tap their personal data numeric into the computers and press the big brown button marked "duplicate". When he would return, he'd have no idea who the original students were! He'd lose his temper, begin huffing and honking like a distressed goose, then start battering the semi-mindless clones with a lacrosse racquet until all were smote.
Yes, you'd get a detention or two, but it was worth it for the LOLOLs!
A few lines of code was all it took to grant you the power to detonate life-giving plasma spheres many thousands of light years hence. Admittedly, the cosmic destruction would be catastrophic - but your vantage point behind a computer monitor shielded you from a comparable and appropriate level of guilt.
Answer: many times, usually followed by Teacher giving you a full and necessarily detailed account of how he came home from work to find the two of them dancing lewdly in the shed, while he blinked strangely, and a little hat kept appearing and disappearing on the top of his head as if by magic.
Anyway, sometimes the naughty interloper would misbehave - perhaps by typing a rudey into a computer, or doing racism - and need to be punished.
Relieved that they had shown their true colours and given him the excuse he needed, Teacher would sit them in a corner to play computer chess against Korky Snapperz, The Grim Reaper. Failure would mean but one thing: INSTANT DEATH.
Of course, we all know now that the Cool Kids were only really cool kids because they were a bit middle class, and had nice hair that behaved, and were sufficiently repressed/insecure that they never really did anything to stand out enough to get bullied. Frankly, they were the cool kids because they were so utterly nondescript - and good for them.
Cool Kids L-R: Brock, Pippin, Lames, O'Brames and Tot.