Did you get traumatised by school "talks" when you were a child?
Posted by InviteAromatic6124@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 456 comments
I remember having a to of talks by visiting guests in both primary and secondary school. relating to things like bullying, visiting authors, drugs, road safety and fire safety. In particular, I remember a talk from a fireman in primary school talking about all the various things that can start a fire in your house. Even though nobody in my house smoked and my parents didn't use chip-pans, I was traumatised by the idea that a fire could start in my house for weeks and had nightmares as a result.
bebedumpling@reddit
i hated when theyd say 'some of you have done something wrong' but then be punishing all of us for it, made me really start blaming myself for others actions and worrying on behalf of others. obviously this wasnt the only thing that contributed to this, but definitely part of the complex.
Smooth-Purchase1175@reddit
Occasionally, but I was usually more irritated than traumatised (most of the speakers had a smug attitude to them).
eraserway@reddit
Same here with the fire one. I was convinced that a house fire happened to everyone at some point in their lives and it was only a matter of time before we had one.
gyroda@reddit
I was convinced as a child that at some point I would have to stop, drop and roll.
Playful_Stuff_5451@reddit
I thought I'd be offered drugs. I was right.
Ze_Gremlin@reddit
I thought people would try and bully me into doing drugs.
First time I was offered, it was like they were offering to make me a brew. I just said "nah, not feeling it" and they just said "cool, no worries".
Was fully prepared to have to fight my way out of the situation, wrestle people from forcing joints into my mouth etc.. but no.. it was pretty much "you want?" "No" "k"
Those drugs talks were not authentic
Former_Wang_owner@reddit
Personally, I thought the drug talks were counterproductive. Telling a load of 14-15 year old about all the drugs and what they do is ridiculous. Especially since they talked about hash, most of my mates had come across and at least tried hash by 14, so seeing the blatant lies made us think other things were probably safer than they actually are.
By 25, I'd lost 4 close school friends to addiction.
Miserable_Wonder_619@reddit
I think they just made half of it up or only focused on the negatives. I remember being told magic mushrooms will be amazing at first and then will always descend into your worst nightmare. I always thought it was odd people would take them if that always happened. The reality is quite different.
Former_Wang_owner@reddit
Yet all these years later it turns out magic mushrooms are good for you!!
Ze_Gremlin@reddit
Mmm you're definitely right there.
We had an expert come in and spout all sorts of stuff, and half of the kids very matter-of-fact-ly corrected them.
Eg:
Expert: "drug 1 will cause xyz the first time you try it"
Kid 1: "No, that's drug 3, and only if (specific circumstances)"
Kid 2: "drug 1 definitely doesn't cause that"
Not a drug guy so, dont want to embarrass myself. Fill in the blanks
SuzLouA@reddit
Me too. Still waiting to have them offered me for free though, unfortunately.
ShortArugula7340@reddit
OMG yes! But it came into it's own for me years later at a hen do in Ibiza when the sister of the bride got too close to a candle and set her hair alight. I shouted the 'stop, drop' part really loudly because she was panicking and I think all the folks on drugs thought the place was getting raided. Can report that it worked a treat though - only mild singeing. She needed a patch of her hair cut off, which looked a bit weird, but otherwise all good. She was leaning in for a photo when the incident occurred, so we actually have a lovely snap of us all grinning with an ominous flame coming from the top of her head!
Possiblyreef@reddit
I was convinced that acid rain and quicksand would be a far bigger issue than they've turned out to be
gyroda@reddit
TBF acid rain is something that we've worked hard to reduce, as a society. That's why it wasn't just a big deal. Just like the hole in the ozone layer.
Quicksand though, yeah...
Nonbinary_Cryptid@reddit
And puppies in the backs of vans.
moppykitty@reddit
I’m still really paranoid about plugging an extension lead into another extension lead
chabybaloo@reddit
We were not taught this. What was the reasoning? I'm guessing to prevent going over the 13amp.
I think these days we plug in many low powered devices.
moppykitty@reddit
I just remember the fireman showing us pictures of a burnt down house and holding up the two extension cords and telling us this is the reason the house burnt down
shgrdrbr@reddit
that's good sense, not paranoia
LadyFinduillas@reddit
To be fair, we had one of those free fire safety check visits a number of years ago as a result of some issues we were having with some very unpleasant neighbours, and the fireman still said you shouldn't plug an extension into another extension, so it's just something I've never done.
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
Did they fill a random portacabin with smoke for you too, that you had to try and find your way out of?
Mammyjam@reddit
Excuse me, what the fuck?
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
I thought this was a universal right of passage! The fire department came and did a fire safety talk, then did the how to navigate in smoke bit. They used the drama room which was black carpet floor and black fabric wall hangings too, so you couldn't see anything.
I still remember you need to get low, find a wall and follow it along to the door or you'll get disoriented/die of smoke inhalation, so it obviously worked.
Mammyjam@reddit
Was this in the 70s? Sounds like the mad sort of shit my parents/grandparents would have to do
I mean getting the RAMS signed off post HSE act would be tricky…
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
Im 30 XD So like, mid 2000s.
Tumtitums@reddit
Are you in the UK?
Mammyjam@reddit
Christ you’re younger than me then! Were you in gas masks?
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
No fake smoke, it was safe to breathe. It was just meant to demonstrate how easy it was to lose your bearings, and how there was better visibility near the floor. I don't know what they put in it, it was like a fog machine but dark.
Puzzleheaded_Drink76@reddit
I am guessing it wasn't real smoke? Like when Anthony Gormley did Blind Light and filled a room with mist so you couldn't see anything.
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
Yeah fake smoke, they weren't setting 12 year old on fire. It was dark though, not like the white stuff from smoke machines. I'm guessing it was made the same but with dye in there or something?
Kuddkungen@reddit
With us, it was a bus. Loaded it up with kids, started the (very weak and slow) fog machine, told us to sit still until the fog was sufficiently thick. Then we would be given the signal to evacuate. And then we were supposed to try and find our way through the thick fog to the exit and operate the emergency door opener. Except inevitably, some kid would panic after like 10 seconds and bust out. They never managed to build up more than a barely visible fog in that bus.
Impossible_Bet_1456@reddit
Yeah In 2022 I had to crawl through a camping Tent filled with smoke at scouts I was incredibly funny when one of my mates got stuck at was considerably scared-after I had gone through the Tent in ten seconds
WeekendWithoutMakeUp@reddit
Our school took us to a local park and they'd set up the smoke room in one of the small buildings there, and amongst other things there were men in a van who offered us sweets to teach us stranger danger... lots of the kids were pretend abducted that day.
Specific_Cow_Parts@reddit
But did they get sweets?
Ravnak@reddit
It's lead to me uninstalling the gas fire in both places I've lived because I'm convinced they'll burn the house down...
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
It didn't help that not long before this talk a friend of mine's house burned down (thankfully, nobody was hurt).
Ok-Secret5233@reddit
Maybe if your friend had had those talks, his house wouldn't have burned down.
EmperorsGalaxy@reddit
My cousin actually helped prevent a massive fire in his house as a teenager. Mum put some chips in the chip pan an went to lie down and fell asleep. It went up in flames and she was woke by the smoke alarm going crazy. Obviously panicking she ran the backdoor to get the hose when my cousin told her not to spray it with water and to instead smother it. They tried and didn't succeed so they ran out the house and called the fire brigade.
Pretty sure if she had sprayed the fire with water she would have some nasty burns now.
SuzLouA@reddit
With the best will in the world, who puts chips in a chip pan and goes for a lie down??
According to the fire brigade at a recent event I took my kids to, they don’t recommend people smother them any more for exactly the issue you encountered, it’s tricky and dangerous to do. So now they recommend exactly what your family did, just get out and ring the fire brigade.
Historical-Car5553@reddit
Back in the day many fires were caused by folk who would come back from the pub drunk, fancy some chips and heat up the chip pan. Then fall asleep / pass out. And this was before smoke alarms.
Former_Wang_owner@reddit
If you can turn off the hob, your consumer unit is the safest way.
Remarkable-Wash-7798@reddit
For an electric hob yes. For gas that wouldn't do anything.
Former_Wang_owner@reddit
Well, obviously. You can turn the gas off away from the hob.
EmperorsGalaxy@reddit
Well yeah, she isn't the brightest spark in the bunch and I've always assumed from her appearance she has drug/alcohol dependancy but everyone in my family denies it.
Toasty_Monroe@reddit
I vividly remember a demonstration about putting a tea light on a crt tv and how dangerous it was lol
Nonbinary_Cryptid@reddit
It was when they showed the video of what happens if you put water on an oil pan fire. Instant trauma. The only thing that beat it was when I read a book belonging to my stepdad when I was 9 and was introduced to the idea of spontaneous human combustion. Thoroughly believed that I was going to randomly burst into flame one day.
PrognosticateProfit@reddit
I was also convinced everyone experienced one, and spoke to my parents about being scared about it, only to be told that we had 2 house fires when I was younger.
One was caused by my brother, who left the switch for his bedside lamp under his pillow, it turned on in his sleep, and he must have covered the lamp with the duvet, which caught on fire, spreading to the mattress and bed frame when he woke up and panicked.
The other was caused by my dad, who put a Tupperware lid on the hob while it was lit (unknowingly) and left the room, only to come back in when the smoke alarm went off to find half the kitchen counter on fire.
Luckily both fires were dealt with without the fire brigade using the garden hose and buckets, but both also left massive damage in my brother's bedroom and the kitchen.
Safe to say I didn't sleep well for a while.
Lemonsweets25@reddit
This terrified me!! You can imagine my horror when I came home and asked my mum where all the fire alarm were and she said that our one fire alarm had stopped working, I think I almost had a panic attack
Virtual-Guitar-9814@reddit
we had the railway cops shiw us that video where some rowdie kids attempt to cross the mainline track (filmed near Hornsey btw which wouldnt be the shortest cut fir whereever they are going) one of them collapses in fear and gets killed off by a once publicly owned method of transport.
it was weird cause our school didnt have a railway line near it like nothing. we envyed those kids, even the dead one.
Tom_FooIery@reddit
We had the fire one about 2 weeks before the thermostat went in our oven and my mother almost burned the house down cooking a beef roast.
Trick_Barracuda_9895@reddit
I didn't have any traumatising talks, besides watching a video about how you should sit close to the driver when you ride a bus or else you will be beaten up and robbed.
I do remember a cop coming in and teaching us that anything could become a weapon, and proceeded to demonstrate by putting an apple into a pair of tights and swinging it over her head. I might've taken away the wrong lesson, it was a while ago.
nightm4re_boy@reddit
we watched an internet safety video when i was about 9 years old that involved a man breaking into a kid’s house to steal a post it note that had the password to her email on it, and then using that to kidnap her 😭😭
i didn’t even have an email but that messed me up lmao, i’ve never written a password down or saved it since. i started writing my journals in ciphers and codes. did wonders for my memory though!!
Trick_Barracuda_9895@reddit
That is so hilariously convoluted. Ironically, nowadays it's considered one of the safer methods to just write your password down on a bit of paper, at least for home computers.
edyth_@reddit
We had a prison officer come to our school tell us how awful life is in prison. He told us about people making weapons and had a slideshow of the weapons they'd found concealed in people's cells and talked about getting shanked. He then went on to say even if you don't commit a crime you can be framed - for example if you're out somewhere and there's a raid a dealer can shove the drugs in your bag and you can get arrested and go to prison and probably get stabbed to death and bleed out on the prison floor. For a while I was paranoid about zipping up my schoolbag.
soverytiiiired@reddit
We had an ex prisoner come in who only talked to the boys as girls weren’t capable of committing crimes apparently
JavaRuby2000@reddit
Had a drugs talk when starting college in Falmouth. It was presented by a police officer who had a transparent briefcase with samples of all the drugs and told us it was worth over 100k.
He then showed us video and slides of people who had drug related deaths.
The slides included:
A decapitated naked guy and the story was his girlfriend was tripping, thought he was a snake and cut his head off whilst having sex.
A guy who's skin was flayed who supposedly climbed inside of a bin liner to huff glue and the bag collapsed on him and ripped his skin off whilst being removed.
A dead girl covered with a sheet in a blood spattered bathroom. Next to the sink were two smaller pieces of white cloth covering up something. Story was she was tripping saw spiders coming out of her eyes so she gouged them out.
A multi car pileup in the US with images of dead people inside them. The story was there was no real reason for the crash other than one of the drivers had been arrested for using Acid 20 years ago so they put the reason for the crash down to him having a flash back.
They also showed us lots of pics of Russian Krockodil and Barb injectors who were just rotting away like zombies.
soverytiiiired@reddit
We had an ex prisoner come in to talk to the boys about life inside (as girls weren’t capable of committing crimes) who was missing an ear. He told us it was sliced off by a dinner tray
UKdanny08765@reddit
I remember one about climbing electric pylons that really fucked me up 😂
ApprehensiveElk80@reddit
Our school just showed us the old PSA video from the 70’s and fuck me. Never been near one since
Kitchen_Part_882@reddit
They weren't "old" when I was at primary school. They were very much current!
😆
The electrocution ones stuck with me the most...
HPBChild1@reddit
We had to watch the one about kids dying from walking under low-hanging power lines with fishing rods over their shoulders. This was in 2006. Surprised the VHS tape hadn’t worn out.
ApprehensiveElk80@reddit
Gotta love the 90’s for scaring the crap out of kids with stuff from the 70’s.
Lonely water freaked me out. It still crosses my mind occasionally - they don’t make them like that anymore
WebDevWarrior@reddit
Watch this and prepare never to want to go swimming or take a bath ever again.
You're welcome. Happy Nightmares.
Scorpiodancer123@reddit
Those adverts fucking haunted me. They played a longer version of it at school and I cried so badly in assembly they had to call me mother. I remember thinking why the fuck are you surprised a 6 year old would find a video of multiple children being electrocuted/blown up/burned terrifying?!
pip_goes_pop@reddit
That and walking on railway lines!
blondererer@reddit
We had these too. My year 4 teacher took us to the local river (it was the main highlight of the village). We walked to a weir.
He threw a stick in the weir and pointed out how it disappeared (eventually resurfaced). He then told us that if we were the stick we would be dead.
CrentFuglo@reddit
Or the dangers of playing in ponds in quarries because you could drown, narrated by Donald Pleasence playing the part of 'Death'
Beckiintor@reddit
There was a kid at my school who did genuinely drown having swam in a quarry pond. Kid called Patrick Lambert, back in 2001, so possibly the trigger for your talk, as we definitely had a lot of them in the months following.
blondererer@reddit
I vaguely recollect something like this!
Eren-Alter-Ego@reddit
"tommy still keeps his football boots.... No one knows why"
WTF!!!!! 😳
Virtual-Guitar-9814@reddit
again, something us normal kids know not to do.
Eren-Alter-Ego@reddit
"tommy still keeps his football boots.... No one knows why"
WTF!!!!! 😳
Sea-Breaz@reddit
We had a train driver come in who had been driving a train when he hit and killed a kid playing on the lines. And if that wasn’t traumatic enough, we were then shown slides of people who had either been hit by a train or electrocuted on the live lines. Being 14 in the early ‘90’s - wild times.
prettybunbun@reddit
We had this one, and they always made up some kid who climbed the pylon and got electrocuted just last year!!! and do we want to end up like him?!!!
UKdanny08765@reddit
That sounds very familiar!!
cheebifred@reddit
Had a day at my school with each period being different talks from different groups, one went on about gang violence. Nearly 15 years later, I can still picture the image of a girl with a big spatter of blood and viscera where her head should have been. How it was signed off for them to show photos like that to teenagers im not entirely sure. Crime scene photos are something else.
Hot_and_Foamy@reddit
My primary school headteacher often reminded us that if we fell through ice, under the ice is a thin layer of air we can use to survive.
It’s not come up since.
InternationalRide5@reddit
So a very slow death from hypothermia is better than a quick death from asphyxiation by drowning?
Hot_and_Foamy@reddit
I think it gave us long enough to find a way out, but you’d have to ask him.
blaellis@reddit
We watched a documentary about carbon monoxide poisoning. Really harrowing, I had nightmares about it, and thought death by poisoning in this way was a really common thing. Even now, I insist that we have a carbon monoxide monitor even when there’s no gas to our flat.
InternationalRide5@reddit
Don't want to frighten you but ...
If your neighbour has a CO leak it could seep through gaps in the building into your flat too.
Keep the detector.
LavenderAndHoneybees@reddit
An ambulance driver and road safety person came and gave a talk and I remember them so vividly talking about motorbike accidents. Specifically, the ambulance guy said 'the fastest way to get bits of road out of your skin once you get into hospital is with iron wool' - that right there did it for me, I've never been near a motorbike 🙅♀️
_insomniac_dreamer@reddit
We were taught how to say "please help me" in sign language in case of a kidnapping. Scared me for years
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
What use is that if the person you're calling for help to doesn't know BSL?
TeetheMoose@reddit
Our lessons on the cold war and nuclwar bombs gave me nightmares for years.
Only_Me231222@reddit
Nah, we had short public information films on tv for that back in the day. We were all terrified of the possibilities of our kites getting stuck in electricity pylons, picking up the wrong end of a sparkler, getting hit by a train, and strangers offering us sweets in exchange for getting in to their car.
WhenItAllMeltsDown@reddit
We had a few videos that scared me over the years, but one that really stands out is a group of friends in a car. They were texting while driving and it was a very graphic crash scene. The video just went silent and zoomed in on their faces covered in blood. That one shat me up for a while
DevotedRed@reddit
Partner and I were talking about this yesterday. He is traumatised by the ‘don’t play on building sites’ one. The image of a kid’s bloody legs sticking out from underneath a digger has definitely stayed with him.
Alternative-Ad-4977@reddit
Back in the 1980’s - Someone from the meat board. He was very much proclaiming that you had to eat meat whilst pregnant. I was already a vegetarian. This horrified me and stuck with me. Even though I was a long way off having my own children. Two children later I am delighted to have proved him wrong.
JackXDark@reddit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0wDjWOnHcY
This is one of the weirdest and most terrifying adverts ever. It was probably the same person.
Alternative-Ad-4977@reddit
Creepy
Sea-Hamster7033@reddit
I had the same teacher and he told me what happens if you don't eat meat while pregnant I'm afraid.
You do know your children will grow up to be broccoli, right?
Puzzleheaded_Drink76@reddit
Is this why all the teenage boys have broccoli hair?
RevolutionaryPace167@reddit
I believed at some point that if a ate the apple seeds, then a tree would grow inside me
Ze_Gremlin@reddit
As a cider enjoyer, I can think of far worse fates
RevolutionaryPace167@reddit
😁😆😅
blondererer@reddit
Same. A kid at primary school also heard this, so decided to swallow loose change. He spent a while at the hospital.
RevolutionaryPace167@reddit
😄😁😆
Sea-Hamster7033@reddit
So you're telling me the NHS have a magic money tree, after all?
blondererer@reddit
Apparently so!
Mackem101@reddit
So that explains the haircut on all the young'uns now, vegetarian parents.
Sea-Hamster7033@reddit
Ironically I think they call it the "Meet me at McDonalds" haircut? For a McPlant, perhaps?
Virtual-Guitar-9814@reddit
i imagine a cery chubby bald man,white coat and sharp teeth saying 'now children, remember that not only des meat taste best raw, you can carry it in your pockets for handyness, good day'
LilacMages@reddit
Had a talk about gun violence
Showed us a photo of a shotgun blast to the head
Lots of traumatised teens that day lemme tell ya
Jolly_Constant_4913@reddit
Ah the 90s
Dirty_Default@reddit
Does anyone else remember the Sex Education van in the 90's? Ours was a crappy old van and I distinctively remember a Giraffe puppet for some reason and it being pretty dark. Maybe I was buggered by a bloke in a giraffe costume but my mind has blocked it out. I recall one lad that farted so loud it echoed through the van and he got kicked out. Still find farts hilarious to this day!
Hauntingbun@reddit
harold the bastard! he was still living the van life in 2005-10, i think he told us about eating healthy food though. i remember a model body that lit up and that was the only light in the van
LostGhost011@reddit
He's still around today 😞 I think you can still book him for teaching sessions but his company more does sheets for PSHE lessons.
virg0222@reddit
i remember an anti-smoking assembly in primary school, particularly the part where they dumped a full ashtray onto a piece of toast and said “you wouldn’t eat that, so why would you start smoking?”
prof-albertobalsam@reddit
I went to a catholic high school in the 90s and I remember a few talks on abortion, they were graphic too.
thestumpymonkey@reddit
We had a talk about fire safety, as well as having to go to a workshop-style thing where we went through various stages of a fire and what to do. I was about 6, and that shit messed me up. I ended up in therapy because I was so scared, I was having constant nightmares and hated both being in the house (because I thought I was going to burn to death) and being away from the house (because I didn’t want to lose all my things when it set on fire whilst I wasn’t there).
I’m not sure why that in particular had such an impact to me, but even to this day I’m still extra cautious about stuff like that (which I guess isn’t a bad thing and it shows the talks worked). The only thing that eventually ended up helping me get past it was a book called “The Big Bag of Worries”, or something along those lines
NarwhalsAreSick@reddit
Not a talk, but I'm sure anyone born in the 90s in Bristol will remember their trip to a place designed to teach kids about safety. Inside they had a bunch of hazardous situations to teach you.
There was a play park thing with stuff like (presumably blunted) 'used' needles and stuff and we had to go round and find the hazards. There must have been a few other things, but the one that sticks out was the mock up train track and tunnel.
I can't remember the exact set up, but they either just let you explore, or else made up an excuse to get a couple of kids on the train track, maybe chasing a ball or something. Kid runs onto the track which triggers a brutal, eardrum shattering train horn as if they train was on top of you. We all shat ourselves. Fair play, lesson learned.
Hauntingbun@reddit
i think i know this one! it was at the create centre
2012-4 or something though, so might be a different one, but i have a vivid memory of having to guess how far a car would stop once you hit the breaks on it and it was so loud and did not stop where anyone guessed. i think everything there was just unreasonably loud but that does make you remember it!
DimensionMajor7506@reddit
I went there and was born much later than the 90s! Life skills I think it was called?
NarwhalsAreSick@reddit
That's the one! Did they get you with the train as well?
JT_3K@reddit
Reminded me of a great moment in Air Cadets. We’d been lucky enough to get ~25 of us on a Hercules flight out of Brize Norton. 40 mins up, round and down.
We’re up and a bunch of Cadets ultimately end up sat on the tail door, like the school bus, with higher up the pecking order sat further up. Someone comes and asks everyone not to sit there, and people move down, but ultimately (not maliciously) just seem to slowly move back up. They come and ask again, and the same thing.
Until we turn on to final approach and the pilot drops the flaps. There’s a huge hydraulic noise, wind noise increases tenfold, the plane shudders and control cables start moving clearly in the roof area.
You’ve never seen 20 kids move so quickly in your entire life.
NarwhalsAreSick@reddit
What an awesome experience, and that sounds hilarious. You've actually reminded me of a Hercules story a guy I used to know had. He must have worked in the defence industry, I'm not sure what, maybe even for the MOD or similar, and he had to go to a base in Afghanistan for whatever reason.
This guy is like most of us, not military, desk job, cosy life.
He was in the Hercules with a bunch of very military people. As they came closer to landing he noticed lots of them were watching him out of the corner of their eyes or else just straight up looking at him. He couldn't figure out why and started to get paranoid, maybe he had something on his face or whatever.
Turns out the landing maneuver in active war zones involves a very sudden, sharp drop in altitude just before landing to avoid getting shot at. He absolutely shat himself and had a Hercules full of military guys pissing themselves laughing at him.
JT_3K@reddit
Sounds about right, love it
RoadDifferent4617@reddit
Hazard Alley?
NarwhalsAreSick@reddit
That does look really similar. But my memory is it being way more local than Milton Keynes, I thought it was a Bristol thing, that said, it was over 20 years ago, so could well be.
izbiz88@reddit
Not talks but actual videos!! Does anyone else remember that? They would show us videos of kids messing about on train tracks and getting hit by trains, or kids messing about with matches and burning their house down. I was always a sensitive soul anyway and they TERRIFIED me, I genuinely had nightmares about getting hit by a train.
But…something about trauma being character building, I guess?!
Daisies_forever@reddit
Had a weird one where we had to sign a promise not to have sex and hang it on a tree.
Also vaguely remember something about carrying your key in your knuckles self defence while walking to your car.
All girls catholic schools are wild
TwizzyGobbler@reddit
that fucking TFL video about not opening the carriage side doors while the train is moving
RoadDifferent4617@reddit
Did anyone else get the Frances the Firefly book from the local fire department when they came in for the fire safety and awareness talk?
I was literally 5 when I got it and I can still remember it almost verbatim because I found it so terrifying, I hated fire because of it.
TwizzyGobbler@reddit
Yes I found that shit scary too lol
blondererer@reddit
I did!
LittleMissMewtwo@reddit
I just commented about that, funnily enough. I got shown the video of it when I was in nursery. Terrified me as well.
RoadDifferent4617@reddit
The scarring of our young minds clearly worked!
turingthecat@reddit
My mum still doesn’t understand why I get so upset when she talks of the chip pan (a literal pan of lard, on the hob), that she an my uncle had in their first flat,in the 70’s
Mid_July_Diamond16@reddit
I have to share this.
When I was 10, a lady was speaking to us about periods (showing pads, tampons etc...). I already had mine at this point. So when she said that you had to wash your hands every single time you applied a new product, I thought she was being excessive and asked why.
This grown woman looked a 10 year old girl dead in the eye and said: "Well say for instance you were playing in the grass and had a bug on your hand. The bug might crawl into your vagina, get stuck and die."
SHE TOLD ME A BUG WOULD CRAWL UP MY VAGINA AND DIE THERE 🤣
Active-Midnight4884@reddit
Yes. And the UK had some horrific safety ads on TV in the 80s. I was terrified of railways, electricity roads. Even a stick and glass bottle. ☠️
bluejeansseltzer@reddit
When I was about 10 the police came to our school to talk about drugs. They warned us not to take steroids because it shrank your penis. Not sure I was traumatised but I can say I've never taken steroids.
thefloatingpilgrim@reddit
The drugs ones definitely got me, we were told if you did acid you might lose your mind there and then but if you were really unlucky nothing would happen but 10 or 20 years later it would suddenly kick in and you'd have horrific visualisations, honestly frightened the shit out me and took me a long time and research to finally realise that was bollocks
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
In the 1970s, LSD was going to make us think we could fly, and jump off balconies apparently.
Different-Courage665@reddit
I knew a guy who walked out a 3rd story window if that counts. He lost his legs but he's alright.
gownautilus@reddit
Wasn't that a storyline in Brookside once? Some kids spiked someone's soft drink at school, with inevitable consequences
rebeccawithgoodhair@reddit
Well we’re consistently top of the balconing league so poss they had a point!
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
Alcohol is often involved.
JoeyIsMrBubbles@reddit
Ironically, every Brit who jumps off a balcony is on every single drug BUT acid😅
Basic_Simple9813@reddit
It didn't work though. My class mate Andrew Wakefield tried it from a high rise. He didn't do that again.
The_Final_Stand@reddit
Drugs one got me as well. When I got diagnosed with Asperger's a few years later, I had a meltdown about the idea of having some drugs to help mitigate the situation.
chickendippers90@reddit
Lol, I forgot about that story. I'm sure when I was in primary school, the police came into school to talk about drugs, and they had a little plastic box with small bits of said drugs in them so you could identify them.
adamneigeroc@reddit
We had the LSD can spontaneously reactivate talk, as well as the guy that hallucinated he was an orange which was fun til he peeled himself or some other nonsense.
Happylittlecultist@reddit
We never got told anything about drugs beyond they're illegal. So if you take drugs you will end up in prison.
sayleanenlarge@reddit
I was traumatised by an advert about fire as a child. It said that kids hid in cupboards and died in house fires, and I took that to mean that I had no choice and I would get in the cupboard if there was one. I'm definitely scared of house fires now.
360Saturn@reddit
In retrospect, it was perhaps poor planning by the teachers to schedule the fire safety talk with the firefighters in the same week that we were learning about - and watching videos about - volcanoes and lava.
I wasn't the only kid in the class that left school totally convinced any small fire in the house would quickly lead to the whole thing blowing up like an eruption or, if we were lucky, just gassing us all in our sleep!
culturerush@reddit
I remember that video about electrical substations when I was in primary school in the early 90s
The one where the kid gets electrocuted, that scared the shit out of me
Then before that I remember the thing about "if your friend offers you bubblegum with a temp tattoo don't take it as it might be drugs" and now I'm wondering why I didn't just take the temp tattoo and have an LSD trip anyway
Scorpiodancer123@reddit
I used to make my Mum walk on a massive detour to school because I was afraid to walk past a substation. That hum.... 🤣
HesitantHeck@reddit
I think I saw similar in the early 2000s! It was a selection of clips of kids going into substations and one girl using her tennis racket to get her ball back off a wire over the garden that turned out to be an electric one. At the end they asked us how many people died as if we weren’t all traumatised for life. I still don’t like wires over gardens or being near substations.
The same day out at the fire station included a group of us being left outside asked to wait for the person to come back and a fireman in civilian clothes comes over and asks us to go with him to look for his dog. We all said no but asked for a treat to give the dog if it came past which was then promptly eaten by one of the boys in the group 😂 I’m not sure they saw that one coming.
Chevalitron@reddit
Who would be handing out LSD to kids anyway? My understanding is that it's not the sort of experience that a free sample would have you immediately reaching for your wallet.
culturerush@reddit
I know, this was primary school though, we weren't well versed in the economics of the illicit drug market
dospc@reddit
Yeah the first thing that came to my mind was the video about kids playing on a pylon/substation. Would have been late 90s for me.
schemmenti@reddit
Oh yeah our fireman told us at length and in visceral detail about finding children's bodies under beds and in wardrobes, in the kind of manner that perhaps suggested he should have been in intensive ptsd treatment rather than talking to a room full of 13 year olds
redyankeecandle@reddit
Not at all.
Had lots of these talks on various topics, but I understood that they were warnings and calls to be careful, not guaranteed happenings.
I never played on the railway lines as a result
Miss_Type@reddit
I'm still traumatised by the slides the nurse showed us - close-ups of genitals of people with gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts, and crabs. Over 30 years ago.
looneytunz101@reddit
A man came into our secondary school and did a talk about being HIV positive and not having too much time left. He ended the talk telling us he was a paid actor and it was all just to show what unprotected sex can lead to!
New-Restaurant2573@reddit
I remember the endless fear being put in is about drugs and how dangerous ecstasy is. Almost they even looking at it would kill me. God forbid taking it. Sounded like you'd have to be lucky not to get addicted or die from it.
This really hit me hard when I came up on my first pill and realised I'd been sold a lie.
Ribbonsocks@reddit
Yes for the road safety one. Not only did we have the reenactments at school, but parents of deceased students came and did talks and then they took us to the large college with lots of speakers who had lost loved ones. Instilled a phobia of driving into me.
Agreeable_Fig_3713@reddit
No. I grew up rural in an agricultural setting. We just tend to crack on with stuff
No-Accident6125@reddit
In primary school, we once had to attend this event run by the fire service and the police. It was all about safety. It included things like a staged room full of fire hazards, and we had to point them out and discuss. We saw a massive fire being put out. It was all very cool and engaging to 9 year old me.
Then they..... STAGED THE ABDUCTION OF A CLASSMATE BY THROWING HER INTO A CAR BOOT AND DRIVING AWAY. 2 men pulled up asking for directions then proceeded to get out and drag/carry a girl to their car and put her in the boot before speeding off.
This was during a Road Safety part where we were out on the street counting cars. We had no idea it was fake! One of my classmates actually got a few punches off on one of the kidnappers. They were actually police officers.
The lesson there was stranger danger. Absolutely wild 🤣🤣
No way you could do that today.
ceilingfan1010@reddit
Just remembered something similar from my childhood. I was on a school trip to a place that taught about road/fire/knife safety. Someone approached our group and asked to take half of the group away to a different area for an activity. We, as children, didn’t think anything of it till the activity leaders were like “where’s half the group??”, then pretended the other half must have been abducted as there was no other activities planned that day. Put the fear of god into me.
Then, to teach us about fire safety they pretended to lock us in a burning building. This would have been around 2008
Charming_Edge8015@reddit
We had this too! Including the fake strangers which someone did also walk off with when they approached their group, I don't think they were thrown in a boot though 😂 probably in about 95/96
JT_3K@reddit
The actual fuck? What year was this? Had she been prewarned?
No-Accident6125@reddit
I can't remember the exact year, but I'd say 1992-1994ish. I honestly can't recall if she had been prewarned, I don't think so. I remember trying to run after the car as it sped off!
JT_3K@reddit
In. Sane.
No-Accident6125@reddit
Nothing was ever said about it by school, parents etc. It was just accepted as a thing that happened ha ha. Different times.
Admirable_Holiday653@reddit
We had a drugs talk at school and the speaker was an ex- drug dealer and he told us how he had killed somebody by cutting the drugs with something really toxic. If it didn’t hit home with anyone else in the huge assembly, it worked on me. I’m 45 and aside from a smoking a very small amount of weed as a teenager I’ve never done drugs and never forgot what he said.
Next_Commercial_5458@reddit
We had an ex London ganster who had since found Jesus come and speak to us and put us on the "right path."
The joys of a catholic education!
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
We had one too, maybe it was the same guy? Did he talk about the initiation to the gang involving approaching a random stranger wearing red and slashing them across the face with a Stanley knife?
Next_Commercial_5458@reddit
Yes! We had a pretty tame session with him but my brother who was a few years above had much more gritty details in his session
gardenhippy@reddit
Someone came and talked about the dangers of walking on an electric rail line. Now all the trains around us were coal powered and we had no electric lines, and most the kids walked home along the line because there was only one train a day and it hooted on its way and was very slow. But yes that scared me silly and I refused to walk home for a while 😅
Fuzzy-River-2900@reddit
I wouldn’t say traumatised but a policeman coming into middle school and telling us about the dangers of LSD and stories of what people did whilst they were high, put the fear of God in me. To this day I’ve never tried it.
What can I say? The talk worked.
Screaming_lambs@reddit
The only one I really remember is a firefighter telling us not to pick fireworks up or touch sparklers as they were hot. I think the way it was described gave me a life long fear of fireworks, though. Still don't like them but at least they'll not blow my hands off.
bucklerlb@reddit
I was terrified by the talk on train tracks, they showed an episode of the bill when someone gets hit by a train, had a train driver who had hot someone come and do a talk and showed us this picture of a train tracks with 2 electric snakes coming off of it for the 3rd rail. I would never go on a train crossing on foot as a result as I thought I may accidentally step on the live rail and and still paranoid about falling between the gap between the train and platform
AubergineParm@reddit
I went to an international school for British overseas students. We only ever had one “talk” which was from someone at the British Embassy, saying “Stop throwing crazy house parties. You’re all underage, alcohol is illegal and we can’t get you out of jail if you get arrested. If you don’t have wasta, you’re on your own.”
Not exactly traumatising. A few kids had been caught drunk on their way home in a taxi and handed in to the cops, they all seemed to be under the impression that “I want to talk to the embassy” was equal to a get out of jail free card.
eatingonlyapples@reddit
It was the fireman visit for me too, only mine was at Rainbows (4-7 year old girls, I was on the younger side). Videos of how to throw mattresses out of the window for a safer landing when you had to jump. I had nightmares for weeks that were so vivid I still remember them 30 years later.
New_Expectations5808@reddit
No, not at all.
BipBapBop28@reddit
In sixth form, we had a monthly series of careers talks where someone would come into the school and talk about their profession – usually something we might not otherwise have considered up to that point.
For some reason I still don't fully understand, the school invited a coroner to come and talk to us in the double period before our big Christmas lunch. It was fascinating, and it might not have been so bad if talking to us was all he did – but it wasn't.
Instead, we spent the hour or so before our turkey dinner being shown increasingly graphic on-scene photos. The two examples he used that I still remember were an autoerotic asphyxiation victim and some poor soul who died of blood loss in their own home after their leg ulcer burst.
The whole talk was punctuated by the sound of the doors at the rear of the hall swinging open, then shut again, as various students reached their own personal limit of what they could stomach and simply walked out.
I remember being grimly fascinated by the whole thing, but also very aware that the coroner was someone who had become utterly detached from the horrors of the job.
For what it's worth, I think I still managed to eat my Christmas dinner.
InternationalRide5@reddit
Did you grow up to become a coroner though?
BipBapBop28@reddit
This story would be so much better if I had! But no.
acabxox@reddit
This is the best (and most insane) one by far. Lmao. Genuinely could be a scene in a comedy show.
GlowTeeth@reddit
So I had already experienced a house fire when I was like 4. In year 5 I remember our class getting a fire safety talk and showing videos of a house fire. I was not allowed to leave while the video was on, despite teachers knowing how bad I reacted to anything fire related. I couldn’t think for the rest of the day if there was a fire drill
RichardNotJudy@reddit
This one time our head teacher bought a sex worker in for a talk to a year of 17year olds. He wanted her to discourage pupils from that line of work.
Did not go how he wanted.
IDidAShitOnYourMum@reddit
For some reason they made us sit crossed legged in the school hall and watch the entirely of Schindler’s List.
fluffycatapillar@reddit
Had lots at primary school and some at secondary school on various things. The only one that ever got to me was during the sex education lessons in which we got shown a very graphic video of a woman giving birth which gave me horrendous nightmares for months and absolutely terrified me.
I’m in my late thirties now and I still haven’t had children and won’t. I’m still very uncomfortable around heavily pregnant women too, it just brings that video straight back in vivid glory… It sounds rediculous but pregnancy/giving birth is utterly terrifying to me due to that video.
I did find another woman at uni who saw the same video and that also confirmed to her she didn’t want children. She even threw up from it so I wasn’t the only young girl traumatised by that sex education video! She also still hasn’t had children.
Chevalitron@reddit
See, they showed that horror film to us, but we were 16 at the time and better suited to handle it. Not that I would have had to deal with the giving birth part.
jaimefay@reddit
Yeah, me too, I'm almost 40 and while I now have other reasons for not having kids, that video was the first thing that made me think "oh, hell no!" on the subject.
anabsentfriend@reddit
We were all ushered into the hall to watch this. A boy from our class was one of the kids in the film.
Looking back, the least scary thing about it was the possibility of drowning.
https://youtu.be/t2VvcOHi2E8?si=B9k_EC-IYobyvRri
DebraUknew@reddit
Still remember the black tarry smokers lung on display to schools
Had the desired effect on me!
The_Final_Stand@reddit
I was (still am, tbh) a rather squeamish sort, so I walked out of the driving safety video when it got graphic about a fatal car crash. Didn't help that they pre-emptively twisted the knife with cuts to the worrying parents.
Chunderdragon86@reddit
You Americans and your flammable house's gobrick or pay the price.
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Might want to check what sub this is buddy
Chunderdragon86@reddit
Good shout
Mr_Biscuits_532@reddit
Only the fire one
They showed us pictures of degloving
Do NOT Google that it is very gory
cutielemon07@reddit
Yeah. Fires for me too. Had nightmares almost every night for about 8 or 9 years. Packed bug out bags. Screamed and cried at every subsequent fire safety talk because I couldn’t handle it and knew what was coming. Even had NHS counselling to try and get over it, but I didn’t, so CAMHS gave up.
It only really stopped when I turned an adult - but I still had panic attacks at fire alarms until into my mid-20s.
Apidium@reddit
For reasons I still do not understand we were shown the delivery of a baby. Recorded in what I saw as horrifying home movie style with the highlights being it was a water birth and we saw the head being born the only mercy being it was obscured by the fact the water was red. Not opaque by any means but red at least.
Primary school.
That was considered our 'sex education'.
They should have played it at Halloween. I don't know anyone who wasn't traumatised. Even the lads who would take the piss out of everything refused to speak about it. Nobody spoke so much of a whisper about it.
Polz34@reddit
Never traumatised but I do remember a time they did a talk on respecting nature and they bought in two tawny owls, who promptly flew onto the wooden gym equipment and pooped down the wall for a solid 5 minutes 🤣
The_Final_Stand@reddit
I was traumatised by a falconer guest when immediately after letting the bird off the leash it flew straight at me and my shiny new watch.
dogdogj@reddit
I think you mean... r/TheApparatus
Polz34@reddit
Ours was way bigger than that it was like two storeys high, I always wondered why more kids didn't die on that death trap!
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
We were never allowed on the apparatus presumably due to risk of death, so I dont know why we had it. It was a newish gym, they'd paid for it recently
theraininspainfallsm@reddit
We got to use it once. what a glorious day that was.
VardaElentari86@reddit
Cause they never actually let anyone use The Apparatus.
JanisIansChestHair@reddit
Imagine my shock when I moved to another primary school at 7 and they didn’t have an apparatus 😭
Tabubua@reddit
That is against the laws of nature
JanisIansChestHair@reddit
It is!
Happylittlecultist@reddit
On two occasions they brought in a peregrine falcon called Wednesday in our school. It liked to land on kids heads. Both times it landed on my head. It also pooped on some other kids head each time.
Chunderdragon86@reddit
Theygroupedallthatriskkidsinmyyearand we didpse together it was ar iot Arguing with the teacher about the dangers of Ecstasy it's notaddictivemissthatswrongoutgerwisehalfthisclaswould be rgurningnow
NaturalSuccessful521@reddit
I got traumatised by the theatrical group that came in to assembly to talk to us all about foreplay. There was a big problem with teen pregnancy when I was about 15, but I was so naive and I remember the people taking us into small groups and asking us to come up with ideas of what we could do besides intercourse.
Fast forward a few years and now I'm 40. Managing a cafe for an operator. That guy was the guy from the theatre group, as it would emerge.
At least I get to tell everyone that my boss taught me everything I know about blow jobs
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Lol, I can't think of the word foreplay without thinking of "Bottom" and saying it like fo-ree-play
NaturalSuccessful521@reddit
Classic!
hannahbeliever@reddit
We had amnesty international give us a talk around torture methods. Very weird and left me feeling uneasy.
We also had a knife crime talk where they showed up images of people who had been stabbed, including one man who's back had been slashed and he had died from it. Very messed up!
Sea-Hamster7033@reddit
My headteacher at school used to say things that scared the students into compliance.
When we started using bunsen burners, he told us in assembly that human hair and clothes were among the most flammable items in the world and would instantly combust. Just wanted the kids to be super careful I guess.
He was one of about 15 teachers I had through my education (1990s mainly) that was awful to me/others and very unprofessional. I do hope those sort of people aren't so prevalent in the school system anymore.
Kitchen_Part_882@reddit
Hair kind of was extremely flammable in the 80s when I was at high school, especially the girls, with the amount of hairspray used.
Chunderdragon86@reddit
Power lines railway tracks herionpeadophiles
bronsonrider@reddit
What traumatised me was the talk of nuclear conflict and being, as all households were, sent a booklet on what to do in case of the bomb dropping. Fucking terrified me at the time and made me lock everyone out as what was the point if we were all going to die. Fortunately we didn’t, well not yet anyway, but the feeling of “we’re all fucked” has never really left
i_dont_believe_it__@reddit
The only talks I recall are
(1) the green cross code man and as he was also Darth Vader it was great. I don’t recall anything about crossing the road but I knew there would be Star Wars prequels as early as 1985 or something.
(2) the poet Carol Ann Duffy before she was poet laureate. She was grumpy and didn’t seem to like classroom noise which was unfortunate when visiting schools
dawngarda@reddit
Traumatised is a strong word lol.
Limitedtugboat@reddit
I remember the joke that went round 20 plus years ago about the police passing out 3 joints for kids to look at, and warning that if he didn't get 3 back he was locking the doors and searching everyone.
End of the talk he got 23 back 😂
69AssociatedDetail25@reddit
The guest talks you speak of never bothered me a whole lot.
However, each year the PE teachers would give a presentation on safety, where they'd show images of a torn earlobe to demonstrate what happens if you leave piercings in. I still think of that and physically wince every time I see anyone with large hoop earrings.
elstoggy@reddit
We had a cop come in basically telling us not to carry knives cause we’ll get stabbed by our own knife. Some of the photos he showed and just his overall vibe and attitude completely changed me from that point onwards. Did not need to see the scar from a kitchen knife on a child’s head with a detailed explanation of the picture at age 11. (This is one example of many pictures)
Absentmined42@reddit
Infant School, I must have been 5 or 6 years old. They illustrated what could happen if you put your fingers in a door hinge by putting a pencil in there and slamming the door. I’ve never put my fingers even near that part of a door for my entire life, even the thought of it still makes me shiver! (I’m 39 years old)
methofthewild@reddit
In fairness this actually happened to me as a kid - my (baby) sister tried to close the door on me multiple times with my finger in the hinge. My nail turned black and it hurt like insanity, so I think you're right to be traumatised (I know I am).
slimboyslim9@reddit
I was about 8 and a boy at my school died. I believe with my years of experience now that he was probably very ill and they somewhat saw it coming but at the time they sat us all in the hall and told us he just died in his sleep one day.
Cue an assembly full of 5-11 year olds now terrified to go to sleep in case we just… died. 😧
SamTheDystopianRat@reddit
We lost a classmate in year 1, when he was 5. I remember the teacher saying 'on Thursday we're going to be doing some creative writing', something along that line, and him replying 'I won't be there because I have surgery!'. We all knew but we were expecting him to come back. I wonder if that's just what his parents told him though, and I wonder if the teacher knew and had time act normal when he said things like that in class.
Anyway, they brought in a woman to give us therapy on death since he was in our class. I remember she made us pass around a dead leaf, and some dead insects in glass boxes. I don't think it made anyone really feel much better, haha
Rhubarb-Eater@reddit
Er, more likely a risky operation that he didn’t survive rather than covert euthanasia that the teacher was in on…
SamTheDystopianRat@reddit
Well, yes I know that, but I mean I wonder if the teacher knew he probably wasn't coming back. I mean it was a heart issue I think, idk, my memory of it is very patchy since at the time I didn't really understand it, I suppose
Rhubarb-Eater@reddit
The teacher probably knew he was pretty poorly, but generally speaking the odds on paediatric heart ops are that you’re more likely to survive than die - so it would still have been far from expected. I am sure it gave the child and his parents great joy that he was able to attend school and be welcomed by his classmates though.
General_Ignoranse@reddit
This really tickled me
sotongirl88@reddit
I had the same thought!
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Similar thing happened with me, but it was a friend who didn't go to the same school as me and she was only 7 when she died.
lemon0o@reddit
Only kind of related but I was really scared by the Iraq war as a kid because my only prior knowledge of war was limited to the blitz and evacuation, because world war 2 was the only thing we ever bloody studied in school history. I thought I was going to get to bombed or shipped off to the countryside
cherubkiss444@reddit
Not school but I remember my mum telling me about fire safety when I was very young and I convinced myself that should a fire happen I must be prepared for escape.. by wearing shoes to bed.
Ghostpilgrim_9863@reddit
I remember having someone called in for bullying and whenever they mentioned american, they’d spit on the ground…Made my last couple of years at secondary school fun…Thanks UK education; for grinding my self worth, respect and esteem into a nub
gotta-get-theroux-it@reddit
Same with the house fire one - I’m still traumatised 20 years on I think!
One_Map9670@reddit
We had a lady come in to talk about knife crime in year nine. She talked about her dead son who was a victim and showed us some confiscated weapons. A couple of months later we learned that she also was stabbed to death.
Cyclesteffer@reddit
I remember one from my first year of secondary school in 1989 that was about the dangers of messing with Ouija boards and trying to contact the dead! It was a VHS video! Scared the life out of me! Anyone remember that one?
cutdownthere@reddit
there was one about playing on construction sites. The naughty kid jumped into a puddle that happened to be deep enough to engulf him and drown him in. And then straight after that came the funeral scene, and then the final scene was the teacher calling his name out on the register and hte camera panning to all the horrified kids faces when they realised he was dead, and then zoom in on teacher crossing out his name on the paper register. Spooky...
Devilonmytongue@reddit
No. Only by the man who used to come and paint all the bible stories. Traumatised me right to sleep.
BeanOnAJourney@reddit
Definitely fire safety, it instilled a so -far lifelong fear of fire, flame, fireworks and sparklers in me. So extreme was this fear that when we used to visit my gran, I would sit on the stairs right next to the front door and refuse to go in the sitting room where everybody else was because there was an open fire in there and I was terrified of it.
Ricky_Martins_Vagina@reddit
I loved em 😂 my favourite TV show was 999 so I was well versed in all of these disaster scenarios!
heilhortler420@reddit
I remember one in Secondary and I was like year 8 where they showed stab wounds
I'd already started going on 4chan at that point so it didnt really bother me tbh
BigPecks@reddit
When I was infants' school, we had a dental nurse come and teach us how to brush our teeth properly. I still brush my teeth the way she taught us and I've never had a filling.
CherryBlossoms004@reddit
Our school {which was in the middle of an English beach town} had an Australian guy with a hook hand and digeridoo come in to talk to us about Australia {or something like that, very unsure as this was 14 years ago}.
Vividly remember him telling us that deadly meant 'really cool' and that if you wore silver you would get arrested and that skeletons can come to life, I didn't like cemeteries after that and became frightened of my silver cardigan.
jugsmacguyver@reddit
The Quentin Blake illustrations in the train safety leaflet. I was convinced I would get on a train and see decapitated heads on the side of the tracks.
BigPecks@reddit
My favourite was the piss in a hat story.
NeedaVent286@reddit
My primary school did a talk on healthy eating which was so traumatic, all the kids refused to eat anything and would only drink water. They had to bring the speakers back to tell the kids to eat a week later!
inevitable_dave@reddit
We had quite a few, but the one that sticks either with me is having a born-again christian call us all murderers who should be ashamed for having had negative thoughts about anyone.
Turns out he'd been a bouncer and boxer who had actually killed a few people and been involved with class A drug distribution, then gone to prison and found Jesus.
GuaranteeCareless@reddit
Two buckets at the front of the class, in the 70s (I was aged 7 or 8) holding two lungs. Right one was from a non smoker and when lifted looked healthy and dripped red. Left one was lifted out of the bucket and dripped with black blood and tar.
Traumatised but never smoked
oliviaxlow@reddit
Anyone else go to Crucial Crew? It had all that plus farm safety for us countryside kids. I have such a vivid memory of a video about a kid that got crushed by a combine harvester after messing about on a farm yard.
PomegranateWaste8233@reddit
No.
My schooling featured far too much violence for ‘a visit from an expert’ to be considered traumatising.
If these visits were your worst school experiences, then count yourself lucky.
I do remember such visits, I found them fascinating, so pleased to hear about different experiences and from passionate people.
That_Northern_bloke@reddit
I was the same with the fire one, I remember it was year 2 and we were shown a video of how quickly a house fire could start (it was from a dishwasher as I recall) and I remember being scared for ages that the house was going to burn down
rivieradog@reddit
My friends brother developed a phobia of fire from the school video
That_Northern_bloke@reddit
Honestly I'm with them, I was terrified of it for years afterwards, and even now if we go away for any length of time, I will check and check and check all the internal doors are shut! So I guess in that sense the video did it's job!
FantasticWeasel@reddit
A woman in her 50s came to talk to us at school about being an alcoholic in recovery when I was about 16.
At the time (and now) I think it was very brave of her to stand up and speak about it because she was nervous and shaking but so dedicated to discouraging anyone else going down that path. Scared me though.
Spottyjamie@reddit
No we were all in hysterics as the charver was so deadpan
sparksqueen@reddit
We had a man from the council speak to us about what started about housing and the cost of rent, and then it led to a talk about we were privileged if our parents let us stay with them after sixteen as it meant we were adults. Then the whole talk progressed to talking about if we didn't do well in our exams . How we might end up with no job prospects and we would be homeless and end up having to be drug mules and sell our bodies for money.
The man was meant to come back the next week but it never happened. We had this talk the day before our higher English exam ( arguably one of the most important exams you take in Scotland )and it absolutely traumatised me and the other girls and many of us burst into tears after the talk was done. Ten years on and I'm still traumatised from it.
OnceAHermit@reddit
We watched the hardcore 70's PSA films when I was at primary school. Including Apaches (kids all die gruesome deaths on a farm). I didn't get over that for a long while.
Valuable-Wallaby-167@reddit
Not the talks but I do remember a video on not going on train tracks that still has me nervous when crossing at actual crossing points
Leeno234@reddit
I remember this! The boy getting his foot or bag stuck on a track then it paused. For years my brother told me the older classes saw what happened when he got hit. I was always a bit mentally scarred by the thoughts of what I didn't see 🙈
Kathwino@reddit
I remember this and I swear they put posters up round the school of kids with real injuries, I remember one of a boy holding his arms up in the air but he had no hands, just stumps. Fucked me up that one
ViridianKumquat@reddit
Unrelated to the original question, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone who was involved in or adjacent to the alleged railway game of chicken which apparently was enough of a problem in the 80s and 90s to warrant several assembly talks.
Basic_Simple9813@reddit
All 3 of my schools where border of railway line. In Junior school it was a cane-able offence to do over the fence.
pollyrae_@reddit
Was that the one with the pictures of dead electrocuted kids? And the video of the man picking up body bits? That one traumatised me. I couldn't walk on anything with lines for at least a year - I had to long jump across the hallway to avoid the carpet between my bedroom and the bathroom lol
Valuable-Wallaby-167@reddit
No, it involved a kid getting his foot caught under the rails while playing and then getting run over by a train
CrentFuglo@reddit
In the mid-to-late 90s there was a guy who used to come in and give talks about his missionary work in Africa, and we called him 'MyNamesChrisThanksForListening', because he always ended his talks with that line. He seemed like a nice bloke, wiry frame, goatee, maybe late 20s/ early 30s. They were always like, little cheerful anecdotes about how 'some insects are a lot bigger than you think over there', and how the local kids he was teaching would tease him for being scared of a few giant bugs, or 'we had to move the village well, and watching and helping a community come together to build something was an inspiring sight'. Stuff like that.
Towards the end of my school career I was missing a lot of mornings due to oversleep, and I came in one day and asked a friend if I missed any important announcements from yesterday's assembly, and he says...
"Oh my god, you wren't there? We had a talk from MyNamesChrisThanksForListening!"
"Oh that's a shame, I always liked those. What did he talk about?"
"No. Dude. He starts talking about something or other, then he started taking his clothes off!"
"What the fuck?"
"He got down to one sock and his underpants before the teachers stopped him and he was escorted out!"
And that's how we discovered that the reason he became a missionary (if that part was true) was because he was a recovering drug addict who was still prone to having 'episodes'
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
🤣
crashthemegan@reddit
I still get anxious by fire after a year 2 fire safety talk but I am autistic and I think it just hard wired that fear into my brain.
BackgroundGate3@reddit
I remember a talk in the sixth form by a police detective about personal safety for girls. He talked about a girl who'd been raped under a railway bridge not far from the school. The girl had her period at the time and the detective told us the rapist removed the tampon and tied it in her hair. I'm in my 60s now, but that has stayed with me all these years.
KatVanWall@reddit
We didn't seem to get much in the way of those 'talks'. I remember having two clowns called 'Bozo' and 'Zizi' come to talk to us about not littering, and a dance performance of 'Firebird', very small scale to fit in our school hall! We also had someone in Year 6 talking to us about being an air traffic controller, of which the main point I took away was that it's very stressful. (Clearly it's not for everyone and it seemed they were well aware of that but were so understaffed they were hoping one out of every class of 10/11-year-olds might be cut out for it and remember that talk and become the air traffic controlling workforce of the future! Tbh I probably should have; I'd be earning a helluva lot more now!)
We got a talk from 'the period lady' in Year 7, who didn't tell us anything I didn't already know by then but seemed to be a rep from Tampax and promoting them above everything else. Those were the days when the only options were pads or tampons - no cups, discs or period underwear in the Stone Age.
SnooBunnies1185@reddit
No my only memory of one of these was the green cross code man David prowse who visited our school he was Darth Vader in the original Star Wars
nikrib0@reddit
We had an alcohol awareness one, where the speaker showed us a load of photos of dead people in horrendous conditions and said it was because they “mixed drinks”. I can still picture the dead bodies now
not_today0405@reddit
We had one about knife crime that definitely scarred me. Was some kind of one man play where a kid carries a knife and gets killed by his own knife.
IsisArtemii@reddit
My autistic son is going to be traumatized this week with an active shooter drill.
iamhoneycomb@reddit
Being carted to a theatre in 6th form for a whole hour (or two?) of chat on the horrors of car crashes, including a survivor of one now severely disabled by it telling his story, left me with a fear of being in cars and an absolute aversion to ever getting behind the wheel myself.
JoeyIsMrBubbles@reddit
The fireflies one!
MiddleAgeCool@reddit
The only talks I can recall from school were:
The upcoming exams will determine your future. If you don't put the effort in now then you won't be able to do anything about this later in life.
All of the girls has a special one that was about some "girl only" secret. Us boys were sent to play football and have an afternoon long break that day while they were stuck in the hall.
C0nnectionTerminat3d@reddit
it might’ve been different in your school, but for mine the “girls only” talk was about female genital mutilation torture. Found it weird how that one was a girls only talk - in our school all sex ed was done together so girls would learn boy things and vice versa.
MiddleAgeCool@reddit
I would assume it was but teenage us really didn't know or care about those things. That was witchcraft as far as us 80s snotty teenagers knew.
HazyVape@reddit
Oh I've got to know now you said it like that, what was the big secret for the girls?
C0nnectionTerminat3d@reddit
in my school it was about Female genital mutilation :/ found it weird how it was girls only
Reasonable-Horse1552@reddit
Did the woman make someone try and pull the string out of a tampon?
MiddleAgeCool@reddit
They weren't allowed to tell us. We didn't care, we got an extend break! :D
Lewis19962010@reddit
My class got what sounds like an identical talk in about 2010 after doing pretty much the same thing with the unattended roll of magnesium the teacher cut the strips from
sellis80@reddit
It was probably regarding periods and the variety of products available. Also how to handle stomach cramps during your period, etc.
bucketofardvarks@reddit
It was about periods hun, I wasn't there and I can tell you that lol
Virtual-Guitar-9814@reddit
some kid told me that if you opened a gas valve and lit it the fire would whoosh into the pipe abd go the way to the north sea blowing up everything till it gets to the gas reserve itself.
a few days later some kid took him up on that claim and i was relieved yet disappointed.
Overseerer-Vault-101@reddit
I remember this in year 5/6, except we got the talk about keeping our dicks clean for the first half of the talk. the other half was about how everyone develops at different times and rates and has different results and how it’s absolutely fine no matter what we roll as such and we should just except what we get lol. This stuck with me, they had this weird comic following some boys on their way from school, one dude was holding a teaspoon and another a ladle with the caption along the lines of “how much everyone produces changes from person to person, but what ever we produce it’s okay” lol. Weird how much emphasis they put on those points.
JoeyIsMrBubbles@reddit
“By the ladel you say?”
MiddleAgeCool@reddit
Yeah, we had none of that. We were just expected to be born with all the knowledge required to reproduce.
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
I'm guessing it was set alight by splashing water onto it?
AnonymousOkapi@reddit
Out highly specific one was the dangers of abusing the key you had for the chemicals store to nick a bunch of phenol (corrosive, can be toxic) and rub it on your hands to see who could leave it there the longest and was therefore the most macho.
I went to a girls school. Boys were allowed in the 6th form though, so there were like 20 in the whole school. Shit like this convinced me they really were a separate species, and it took until nearly the end of uni to shake that.
mamoncloud@reddit
I hope it was helpful lol in school the boys had their own assembly too but if they were anything like ours the teachers just fumbled and spoke about "changes" and it's "normal" with no specific details or advice. - but I did go to a school that banned reproductive health lessons and ripped them out of text books.
rmc1211@reddit
Leah Betts was a girl who sadly died after taking ecstacy and then drinking too much water. Her dad visited our school and gave an anti drugs talk. I'll bet you the rest of my classmates are like me and have never gone near any kind of drugs. It was so harrowing.
gloomfilter@reddit
I sympathize.
EmbroidedBumblebee@reddit
There were some really graphic videos we watched about fire safety and they had proper sfx makeup and those ones always shook me up for a few days.
When I was at 6th form we had to watch stuff about road saftey and drunk driving (most of us couldn't drive), they had parents of victims there who did and it really shook me up, I was scared to even get on the coach afterwards.
AmberWarning89@reddit
I had a similar experience. We were shown this in Year 6 and it made me really paranoid that we were going to die in a house fire. Be warned, the clip below is terrifying!
https://youtu.be/j7GcBZCML-o?feature=shared
As it happens, we did have a fire literally right on our doorstep house a year or so later, when some twat set our wheelie bin on fire in the middle of the night.
DameKumquat@reddit
They didn't have video at my primary school, which was just as well - they did have a projector so I remember the Assembly where they thought telling us about the Holocaust with all the traumatic photos you see at GCSE was a good idea.
The one with two lungs, a smokers one and a non-smokers one, had some people running away. Luckily none of my family smoked but it was upsetting for those whose parents did (maybe a third of them, early 80s).
Then there was the school chapel service when I was 11 or 12. Visiting chaplain goes "Do you have faith in God?" and there's a murmur from 500 pupils, 'not really/maybe' etc. Then he took out a gun, pointed it at various kids in the front row, then fired down the aisle into a pile of hymnbooks, which fell over. And yelled "Now do you have faith???"
We all went wtf? and three staff went up and suggested it was time he left. It was never mentioned again.
WerewolfNo890@reddit
I saw the chip pan demonstrations so many times, yet I had no idea what a chip pan was until much later.
lalalaladididi@reddit
Just got traumatised by school
chasing_jenny@reddit
I remember being in primary 1, so around 5 years old. and having a school Easter service assembly, where they went into great about Jesus and the Crucifixion. I was terrified! I had nightmares for days…
Admirable_Candy2025@reddit
Oh my gosh, I remember we had a group of people come in to school and talk in assembly about the fact that our playing field was being sold off for building a new factory or something like that. Then at the end they said it was all just a joke and they were a travelling theatre company and it was about exploring our feelings or something or another. Totally unethical!
YuukiAliceMS@reddit
Yes. The talk around fireworks night had me terrified of fireworks falling down the back of my jacket for years!
Less_Pie_7218@reddit
My daughter who is in year 2 had one of those sessions around fire safety and that is all she spoke about for nearly 2 days. She nagged her dad till he tested the smoke detectors and didn’t sleep in her room for nearly 2 days..
breadcrumbsmofo@reddit
Grew up along the coast. Every year someone from the coast guard would come in and put the fear of god in us right before the summer holidays about riptides and inflatables. I feel like primary school me took the wrong lesson from that and I just ended up being scared of inflatables for a while.
Virtual-Guitar-9814@reddit
first day at secondary school the school/council gave out fliers selling life insurance for a school related injury/death.
worst thing about it was the teacher telling us the money 'would be to help you rehabilitate' it wasnt supposed to be like winning the lottery etc, i mean if i did sever a finger at school 5k insurance payout would be just enough to get a lawyer intrested in sueing the school into oblivion for baziliuons.
DarwinPaddled@reddit
Pretty sure I didn't get traumatised by anything growing up.
Apparently now this makes me a god among men.
meatballs2022@reddit
This was late 80's all our year (aroung age 11/12) was suddenly called in to the assembly hall and we were all sat there wondering wtf going on? Then these 2 middle aged fat blokes wearing white shirts and ties came in, pushing this big projector screen and told us they were from the railway police or somthing like that. Then the next 30minutes we were all forced to look at mangled dead bodies on the railway tracks.
CharlesHunfrid@reddit
A flamboyant Scouse woman once gave a 30 minute long lecture describing in perfect detail how her son was excruciatingly mowed down by a drunk driver
forfar4@reddit
We had a Royal Navy captain come to do a recruitment pitch in a working class Black Country school.
When he said, "I live in a hice, just like you!" we all fell about laughing, an assembly hall of 150 kids. We then asked questions about anything, just to get him to "talk posh". When he started answering, in his posh tones, and kept asking 'Is this entirely appwopwiate?" it looked like the teachers would need to break out the oxygen masks for the kids.
We got such a bollocking off the head teacher, the next day...!
schmoovebaby@reddit
My head of year loved giving assemblies on various traumatic subjects, two I remember were Anne Frank and the Aberfan disaster. I swear every fund he took an assembly it would be on a really depressing topic. He was an odd man.
carlitobrigantes@reddit
i remember in primary school some guy from i believe the RSPCA came in to speak to us and told us that he had witnessed a video of someone chopping puppies’ heads off with an axe …. like why would you tell us that ??!
fussyfella@reddit
We must have been real ghouls at my school - we used to think those educational films were hilarious. I remember the very explicit one about motor accidents being talked about like it was a horror movie with great gusto after!
It might have been a strange coping mechanism, but it meant we were never traumatised, but it also meant the messages never really landed with us either.
HoraceorDoris@reddit
At one point in my childhood I was convinced that we had to hide under a table or the stairs if a nuclear bomb was detonated nearby. (Child of the 60’s when nuclear war public information films were all the rage).
My problem was that we had a drop leaf table and open plan stairs!😱😱😱
BananaHairFood@reddit
We got played a anti-trespassing video where some kid climbs into some electrical yard and gets fried. There was one right by where I lived back then and I was absolutely terrified that I was going to end up in it, so much so that I started having nightmares about being stuck in there.
BlockCharming5780@reddit
I refuse to unplug something without switching it off at the plug
I used to go around the house and switch off every plug in The building before going to bed (primary 4)
For 3 years, every time I went to the toilet, I held my breath the entire time I was in there to make sure I didn’t inhale bacteria 🤣
Yup, I think the trauma might be the goal 🤔
_Pathos@reddit
As someone that's been through some horrendous shit I don't see the trauma here.
Sleepyllama23@reddit
Yes I’m still anxious standing on a train platform.
AstraofCaerbannog@reddit
I had a talk about wearing your seatbelt and they showed a woman with scars all over her face as being life ruining. It hugely scared me. When you’re told you main worth is being pretty the idea of losing it in a second is terrifying. When I was a teenager I got attacked by a random dude with a bat, who cut my face badly enough to need a whole bunch of stitches. I recall putting my hand to the cut and feeling the blood rushing down my face and my 17 year old brain went “it’s happened, you’ve lost your looks” and I screamed. Not because of the blood, not the pain, nope, that didn’t make me scream, it was that I knew from that bloody talk that face scars as a girl would be life ruining. My hypothetical modelling career was over. I was really fortunate that the scar is in a place where it’s not hugely noticeable.
fbbb21@reddit
I remember one about the dangers of MDMA (I think) and a mum came in whose daughter had died due to the drug making her really thirsty and that she effectively drowned by drinking too much water. It worked on me tbf, I never took it. I did take a myriad of other drugs during my teenage years without much of a second thought but always remembered to stay away from MDMA because I didn't wanna drown myself.
Swimming_Possible_68@reddit
Growing up in a rural area in the 80s we were subjected to some particularly intense public information films.
The one that sticks in my mind was from the 70s, called Apaches, its aim was to teach kids to be aware of the dangers of farms.
What followed was a 25 minute horror film, where kids were killed off one by one, on surprisingly graphic scenes, in various farmyard accidents.
It gave me nightmares for ages afterwards.
MrFeatherstonehaugh@reddit
God that film messed me up. There was another one, similar premise, but on a building site, and equally gnarly.
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
Slurry pits looked particularly awful.
Swimming_Possible_68@reddit
That's the one that stuck with me the longest. The fact that the young narrator is speaking to you from his own funeral too...
Still, I never died on a farm, so it did its job.
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
We did some dumb stuff, like climbing on straw stacks. My brother once threw dried chicken shit at me.
My main fear was geese. I got trapped in a stable with a pair of white geese not letting me out.
Caligapiscis@reddit
We used to constantly be climbing the big piles of grain in the drying sheds. No concept that it could drown you even crossed our minds. And now my friend runs that farm.
Swimming_Possible_68@reddit
Running through the fields when the farmers were burning the stubble (as they did back in the day) resulted in one of my mates melting his brand new trainers... Not sure how he explained that one to his parents!
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
We worked on the farms aged 14 and 15. My brother got to do the stubble burning. (1979). We were all envious. We were checking sugar beet for plants gone to seed. I also did potato sorting. No way they let teen-agers do that now.
Psycho_Candy_@reddit
Farmer's daughter. After Apaches, the only thing I was ever scared of on the farm was drowning in the slurry pit. We didn't have a slurry pit.
gintokireddit@reddit
Wouldn't say traumatised, but a guy once came into our primary (was in year 1 to yr3) with a bent back and gave an assembly on the dangers of dolphins and how they can beat sharks, because apparently his back was fucked up from being headbutted by a dolphin (makes me laugh to type it because it's so random for an assembly topic). So I've never been keen on dolphins.
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Now I've heard everything!
txteva@reddit
I'm traumatised by the Sex education visitor in Sixth Form who brought in photos of what happens to your bits with STI/D's and flash cards with names of sexual acts.
As an all girls school I'm pretty sure we did not need to know what >!fletching!< meant or why >!straws!< were involved.
SamVimesBootTheory@reddit
Not so much the talks but I remember we had to watch a film that's called Dangerous Up Close about why you don't mess around in substations
Still haunts me to this day
Good-Statement-9658@reddit
Does anyone else remember the video they showed in sex ed classes of the naked family playing tennis on the beach? As much as I totally accept the human body, that video is still burned into my mind 🤣🤣😭
nfoote@reddit
First week of university our halls of residence scheduled a "sex" talk. All the residents assistants said they'd attended the year before and it was really good, made it sound like it would be really salacious or something.
Cue a room of young men and women all quietly excited to hear how to best... "make use"... of not being under constant parental supervision, or at least interference, for the first time in their lives.
Only it turned out the main message was a very aggressively delivered "everyone here with a penis is a rapist and everyone without is going to get raped". Obviously consent and sexual relationships is a big issue in universities but boy did this swing the pendulum the other way. Possibly the intention was to shock everyone into keeping their pants on to at least delay any issues arising, which I suppose did work for a few days.
malcolmmonkey@reddit
Yes. They told us that drugs made you end up shivering and sweating on a mattress in a squat. Then when we tried weed a few years later we realised that was bollocks, and thus assumed everything they told us about drugs was bollocks.
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
They told us LSD would make us think we could fly.
down-4-u@reddit
It doesn’t?! (I’m very naive and sheltered apparently…)
Old_Introduction_395@reddit
Catholic nuns, so I'm not inclined to believe anything they said.
Bearded_Viking_Lord@reddit
I use to make sure I turned off all Xmas lights when nobody was around. The fireman showed a video of what could go wrong and it stuck with me
MisterWednesday6@reddit
Not at school, but the TV ad about drowning feauring the guy in the black robe gave me nightmares. When I worked at a boarding school and four 17 year old boys almost died due to being in a car where the driver was drunk, the headmaster herded the entire student body into the auditorium and played this ad...half a dozen students vomited, and several passed out.
TheBeatlesLOVER19@reddit
Francis the firefly is etched into my memory
OliB150@reddit
Not school but at the start of my apprenticeship we had to do an H&S briefing and that included a video showing the horrors of “de-gloving” and I still see that image when I close my eyes.
TurbulentPen364@reddit
My sister attended an assembly about the dangers of smoking. She cried to my mum for weeks and my mum eventually quit smoking because of it lol. Sometimes the trauma helps?
down-4-u@reddit
Didn’t work on any of my family when I tried, ha
crickety-crack@reddit
Got shown a video of a bunch of lads fucking about in a field. One of them climbed up a pylon, got electrocuted and died. Moral of the video - don't climb up pylons & to get better mates (the lads ran and left their friend, it was a staged video but still horrific at the time)
I don't think I've climbed up any pylons since then...
ringadingdingbaby@reddit
There was this old mac 'game' we played in Primary School.
You flipped through the pages and it told the story with sounds ect.
Starts off normal, then the girl climbs on the ledge of a railway bridge, trips and mum grabs her only for them both to fall off and only the electric rails.
Girl dies and mum becomes this superhero warning people about the dangers of railway bridges.
I still remember the sound of all the 'zapps' as they fell.
down-4-u@reddit
This thread has reminded me about the pylons talk, but in the late 2000s I remember someone coming into my year 5 class to tell us about solvent abuse - I was convinced just applying aerosol deodorant normally was going to give me a heart attack. I went onto roll-ons for a few years after that!
Psycho_Candy_@reddit
Catholic convent all girls' boarding school - in sixth form (1991 ish) we had the more "serious" versions of the usual stuff. They brought in a guy dying from AIDS to talk to us about drugs and safe sex. It was devastating - I don't know if he was a part of an organisation, I suppose he must have been, but it felt exploitative, largely because of the nuns' approach of "watch out - don't touch a boy or a joint or you'll end up like him - look at him! Look at him!!"
I think of him often, I hope he was safe and warm and loved when he died.
DrowsyIris@reddit
The only talk I remember having is one about road safety and road traffic accidents (importance of wearing seatbelts etc) the reason why this one is so memorable is that a girl in our year had been killed by a drugged up driver, and in this assembly were three of the survivors from that incident, apparently there were lots of rows about our year group not being given this assembly, despite it being because we were at driving age, but from memory within the first few minutes half the year group were taken out for crying, and then at the ten minute of an hour and a half assembly it was called off because of the state of those who remained. Classes for the rest of the day ended up having no real learning involved as everyone was basically just in shock, and talking about how she must’ve died like that girl in the first video. Very fucked up day.
SmokyBaconCrisps@reddit
No but I remember one that really missed me off. When I was in year 7 all girls in my year were taken into the school hall to have an assembly led by our head of year about skirt length and chewing gum and stuff like that. The head of year said she'd do a similar assembly with the boys in our year. She never did, and she moved to Wales the summer after that assembly.
rivieradog@reddit
There was one that went through all the schools in my area that I had to sit through twice as I changed schools. It was a road safety one and about wearing seatbelts etc. We were told a story about a baby that wasn’t strapped in properly and ended up in a car crash on the motorway. The baby apparently flew across onto the other side of the motorway and then was run over so many times before the cars on the other side could stop that there wasn’t a body to identify. That will stick with me forever.
Basic_Simple9813@reddit
Anyone remember the building site, or the farm, films? So many dangers.
qqqqtip@reddit
the police would come every summer, to do talks about not swimming in the reservoir. the videos they played freaked me out
SadPomegranate1020@reddit
I remember in the 80s watching those scary adverts where people got electrocuted and all sorts - either by fishing or loitering around an electrical substation. Scarred for life lol
KickIcy9893@reddit
Farm safety (grew up in a rural area). The video showed the dangers of a Victorian farm compared to a modern farm. A girl drowned in a pond, another nearly drowned in a grain silo. Someone had their arm ripped off in some sort of machine. I was still in primary school....
9stackedcups@reddit
The police came in for an afternoon when we were 9 or 10 and taught us the phonetic alphabet and how to dial 999 blindfolded. I think it was so we could call for help in a smoke filled room but I just assumed we might be kidnapped.
AmphibianNo8598@reddit
We had a play in year 10 about a girl that didn’t wear a seatbelt in the middle seat, flew through the windscreen when everyone else was fine, fucked up her face for life and then killed herself from bullying and body dysmorphia. I was removed from the assembly for sobbing being a suicidal teen myself, but apparently after that they then went into a talk where they asked everyone to imagine a loved one having something similar happen in vivid detail. My sister had the same assembly a few years before, remember her randomly running up to me crying telling me to wear a seatbelt. Who the hell doesn’t wear a seatbelt in this day and age? This was maybe six years ago?
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
My crazy ex girlfriend didn't wear one because she "wanted to be thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly than be paralyzed".
AmphibianNo8598@reddit
Did you consider telling her that instead her face would be fucked up and she’d kill herself? 😭
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
I told her all kinds of things about how ridiculous that belief was but she refused to take anything I said to her on board.
Reasonable-Horse1552@reddit
Not a school talk but those awful cautionary videos about a boy getting his legs cut off by a train. That traumatised me a lot.
NorthernOrgan@reddit
Not so much the school visits per se, but my mum worked in the fire service when I was younger and as such I ended up seeing all of the videos, even the ones they don't tend to show kids due to their more graphic nature...
Turbulent_Welder_599@reddit
I used to volunteer with an organisation that primarily ran sports clubs etc in schools but they also done various ‘talks’ and events and someone had the fantastic idea of teaching the kids about the horrors of the holocaust
A couple of the guys entered one of the classrooms dressed as SS officers with a register of names and one by one read each kids name then said stuff like “your parents have been murdered” “you will be send to a labour camp” general things that actually did happen to Jewish kids, however no one had told the kids this was going to happen, they actually thought the third reich had uprisen and invaded this primary class, kids in tears, parents had to be called, made the front page of the local newspaper, absolutely sensational carnage
I’d image it took a few a while to get over that
Levi-jade@reddit
shiiii, thats PTSD
Forsaken_Extent7992@reddit
Tom from McFly was in one of them around sex education. Clearly filmed pre-McFly and we must have seen it around 2005, peak McFly era. I was totally obsessed with them (still am tbf!!!). He was playing a character who has unprotected sex and announces at the end that he has HIV and even though he was obviously acting it devastated me!
CaptainMikul@reddit
I thought mad cow disease was waiting for me in every burger.
ans-myonul@reddit
I actually got traumatised by sex education in year 9, this was because I went to a church that promoted purity culture. So I went from genuinely believing that sex outside of marriage was illegal straight into being made to put a condom on a model penis. I also remember going into this room with the word 'contraception' on the whiteboard and the educators asking the students to name types of contraception, and everyone knew what that word meant except me.
In hindsight I really think the school should have considered that not all 14-year-olds know everything about sex and some of them know next to nothing, so it's probably not the best idea to throw all of them in the deep end.
mamoncloud@reddit
It would be nice if we got informative sex ed which wasn't like "contraceptives! Nothing wrong with any of them." And "this is a dildo. Put a condom on it. Don't try to take one because they're all expired" before you even knew about self pleasure, sex toys, hormonal side effects, your own sexuality, or the actual anatomy of a vulva and penis.
Sex educators should be included in the curriculum imo
Personal-Listen-4941@reddit
Is it not part of the curriculum?
I remember covering it 3 times. Once in my last year of Primary school. Then when we were in secondary school it was covered alongside drugs and other stuff in PSHE (personal sexual & health education?) which we had once a fortnight. Then we covered it in science at key stage 3 level.
I assumed that the secondary school lessons at least were mandatory
nl325@reddit
Disagree tbh, it's a perfectly reasonable assumption to make of teenagers. Church or not that stuff just naturally starts being talked about.
Personally I don't even see how it's legal for any organisation, religious or not, to peddle that shite.
idk if you're talking figuratively or not ofc, but if they made you actually think that, that's on them, not the following sex-ed
PsychologicalNote612@reddit
My headmaster convinced me that I'd die in a quarry, there are no quarries anywhere near me and it wasn't until I was 39 that I even encountered a quarry. I was with my mum and she suggested a walk round the quarry. I made her drive away immediately.
Before every school holiday we were told that we wouldn't all be alive after the break, we always were, but usually someone returned with a broken arm, which was used to reiterate how imminent our demise was.
Turbulent_Ebb9589@reddit
Two stick in my mind…
One about fire safety, where we were shown the aftermath of a kid who’d messed about with petrol (managed to set themselves on fire…was left with basically no face).
The other was an in-person talk with a holocaust survivor, who now lived in the UK. His name was Mayer Hersh, and he didn’t pass away until 2016 (he would have “only” been about 75 when he did his talk with us). That was quite emotional, to say the least.
snarkycrumpet@reddit
yes, the one about if you fall off a motorbike/scooter at x MPH you will burn through jeans and skin to bone in x feet. horrible. I can't even watch people riding motorbikes in normal clothes
cadburyshero@reddit
We had one in our first year of 6th form about the dangers of driving from a woman whose child had been killed in a driving accident. At least three people left in tears.
As far as I remember we didn’t have many driving accidents over the next two years as people learned to drive so maybe it worked.
LittleMissMewtwo@reddit
Mine was from nursery and was about fire safety. They showed us Frances the Firefly. That video traumatised me. It worked though I suppose. Took me until well into adulthood before I would touch a match.
There was also one from primary school about vandalism. The video they showed us there was a girl on a bus and these lads threw a brick through the window and it gave her a blood clot and she died. I was wary about standing near a window too long for about a year after that.
blondererer@reddit
I remember Frances. Did you have the book as well?
The bus thing happened to my parents and a couple of their friends in the 80s. All pulled through but one was touch and go.
LittleMissMewtwo@reddit
I can’t actually remember if we were given the book to be honest. I just remember the video. We probably were I’ve just memory holed it.
Actually my first time hearing of someone having that happen re the bus incident. Obviously knew it had to be a thing otherwise they wouldn’t have made the video, but hearing about a real case is a different thing. Glad everyone pulled through though. Absolutely horrible thing to have happen.
blondererer@reddit
To be honest, I was surprised that there’s a video on not doing it. The ones we had were pilons, substations and train lines!
Mackem101@reddit
A copper was nearly killed where I grew up due to that, kids used to twoc cars, get chased down a main road, kids would then throw bricks at the passing police cars.
This time the brick went clean through the windscreen of a police car doing very high speed, hitting the passenger in the head.
Luckily the road leads straight to Sunderland hospital, and they got there in literally 2 minutes, if they were further away, he would have died.
Just about every house with male youths got a knock over the next few days.
LittleMissMewtwo@reddit
That was very fortunate for him. It just goes to show if it’s not your time, it’s not your time. Still, what a horrible thing to go through in the first place. Glad he pulled through.
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
I remember Frances the Firefly!
Temporary-Zebra97@reddit
The police dog demo was cut short when one of the alsatians took a dislike to one of the kids and munched his butt cheek and had to be dragged away. Kid was quite the screamer he copped a slap from the head teacher for being dramatic and upsetting the dog.
The Vegan group who came and showed us distressing videos of animals being killed, had a massive impact on all of us, well until lunchtime at least when the majority of us tucked into shepherds pie, and was berated by 3 girls for whom the talk worked.
talking_heads_90333@reddit
When I was in year 9 or 10 we had a 'group' come in and do some mini-play about not doing drugs or something equally embarrassing
complete with 30 somethings wearing backwards baseball caps, trying to rap, and one of them said 'shit' in front of all the teachers to make us think they were cool
it was like that anti-smoking troupe episode of south park, pure double concentrated cringe
mhoulden@reddit
We had Robbie learning not to cross railway tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXDw3WOGQs
In hindsight:
AddictedToRugs@reddit
No. We had a few memorable talks, and they were all quite interesting. Highlights were:
Franky Frazer Vicount Combermere A man who flew gliders during WWII Andy McNab
RoadDifferent4617@reddit
Not Mad Frankie Fraser?!?! That's so much cooler than the Wycombe Wanderers, which was all we got in terms of remotely famous visitors
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Most famous we got in primary school was a moderately famous American children's author and in secondary school we had Graham Gooch open our new sports hall in Year 10.
RoadDifferent4617@reddit
Spill, who was the author? Had you read anything of theirs prior to them visiting?
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
I can't remember unfortunately
learxqueen@reddit
Randy McKnob?
AddictedToRugs@reddit
His talk was better than Chris Ryan "The one that ran away".
TescoGangsta@reddit
I wouldn’t say it traumatised me, but I’ll never forget one of the “Stay off the Railways”presentations we had. I can’t remember if it was the police, or fire brigade or whoever delivered it.
Started off the standard 90s dramatisation which ended up in electrocution or being hit by a train … and then the end was a montage which lasted about 15 seconds of actual crime scene photos of bodies of people who had died through misadventure on the railway. Fuck me!!!! I’ve beer forgotten that, and I don’t think I ever sat the classroom as quiet again 😳
bucketofardvarks@reddit
We had about a 45 minute performance/play by some students retelling the story of their friend who was in a car crash without a seatbelt and eventually threw herself off a cliff because of the scars on her face.
Which was impactful and powerful and good for them for turning their grief into something that was shocking enough to make a minor impact on the 14 year olds watching, but also I then took the bus home, no seatbelts on the seats. And continued to take that bus until I left school, along with a reasonable chunk of the school
Worried_Positive_419@reddit
The only one that really stuck with me was the one telling you not to go on the train tracks. My friends would always walk the tracks Kate at night but I was always too scared
Mystic_L@reddit
I remember there being some rail safety one in early secondary school where the guy brought along some pretty gruesome photos. And some even worse stories. The one which sticks in my mind 35 years later was someone being hit by a train and effectively skewered by the coupler, without the driver realising until he pulled in at the station 50 miles later.
He set the story up with an analogy to something like picture what happens to a pencil when you draw it back and forth over a rough stone surface.
There was also a session from an absolute bat shit crazy pro-life / anti abortion groups that was so absolutely insane it was laughable with all manner of gruesome imagery and stories of burning in hell. Even for our hardline nut-case of a religious education teacher, who set it up, it was appalling to think of exposing teenagers to.
AdThat328@reddit
We got shown a video of a woman running over her lawnmower cord and getting electrocuted. I still think about it when I'm cutting the garden even though I have a cordless mower...
dospc@reddit
I remember being totally confused as to what a 'chip pan' was.
My chips cooked in the oven or were from the chip shop.
InviteAromatic6124@reddit (OP)
Me too. I'd never seen anyone cook chips in a pan on the stove and wondered why anyone would do that when you could just buy ones that go in the oven.
Foxtrot7888@reddit
I remember someone coming in to tell us about kidney dialysis in assembly.
Bonsuella_Banana@reddit
I have a really vivid memory of going home after a fire safety talk and asked my parents what our escape plans were and if we had roll down ladders, and all that safety stuff, and they laughed. The person who gave the talk at school made it seem like you must have escape plans in place and my parents were like "we will just jump out onto the conservatory roof"
NoGoodDealsWarlock@reddit
I was that kid once, I swear I had that same conversation though we lived in a bungalow so ‘go out any window or door’ was pretty obvious. I guess I wasn’t that bright. A few years after the school talk my great-uncle who was firefighter in Hawaii scared me with a lecture about hotels where they couldn’t reach the upper floors. I still read those little maps on the back of hotel doors.
CalmClient7@reddit
We had one on getting kidnapped and one on not talking to the press if they asked about a member of staff who had groomed one of our peers :s
Burnleylass79@reddit
Was absolutely traumatised by the railway safety one, early 80s, video of a mangled body and someone burnt by overhead cables. It worked though I guess.
ohnobobbins@reddit
Yes, our stranger danger video. We had to watch a video where a guy tried to lure little kids with puppies and then what happens when you go with them. There was a terrifying moment where a tiny girl was in a dark room and a sinister figure appeared in the doorway.
We then had to recreate the story in a picture. So I drew a terrifying looming figure in a bedroom doorway. I got a gold star.
The 70s were pretty nuts.
JT_3K@reddit
And in all of them seemingly for 20 years, the stranger danger protagonist had aviator glasses and drove a Rover SD1. I’ve no idea why that seemed to be the go-to
capturingnland@reddit
So many warnings about fireworks exploding in your face that I’d actually rather swim in shark infested waters wearing a bikini made of BBQ sauce than even touch a firework
batty_61@reddit
A road safety man came and talked to us about cycle safety. I remember he picked up a rather battered cycle helmet, lifted it high above his head and bought it down hard on the edge of the stage, simultaneously shutting us up and getting our attention, then said, "Right, who's going to come up here and let me do that with their head?"
Good point, well made.
Which_Performance_72@reddit
I went to this thing where we basically had a day of different public safety things when I was about 10
Two traumatic highlights were a moving diorama (idk how to describe it) about a boy being electrocuted because his fishing poll touched a wire. I never moved more than a few metres without disassembling my rod after that.
A dark 'abandond building' which we had to walk through, guided by someone who pointed out needles, broken glass etc. all ending with the torch going off and a homeless man jumping out at us.
Honestly quite scarring
RadiantCrow8070@reddit
I cant remember a single one of them
So either no not at all or yes extremely traumatized to the point of blocking it out
Hope this helps
whatmichaelsays@reddit
I still have nightmares about Percy the Police Car (not me in the picture).
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0zfvIeYrsgih-WXIU1KcuJpY9qmUqdhjfZA0GppQf1B5E_ClQ5R3Twh3E3jJSKQB52JbDWmPCwnhS-_dIp_nrV8Zaw2owW472B8cYWmWXkBQVqVUFDe49_0B0WKOlwBL__p4Qg3q_g4/s1600/gen+provision+018.jpg
HarB_Games@reddit
When I (20) was in infants school, we had someone come in and talk about the importance of healthy eating and not eating junk food. But for some reason they were really aggressive about it and used me as an example of kids who "didn't eat enough" (I ate plenty but I was a 5 year old with ADHD and a park on the same street, I was just active).
This for some reason to my little 5 year old brain meant "well I'm not eating enough, but they said if I eat too much of the wrong thing I'll get fat‽" So I got scared of eating because I didn't want to be fat, and unhealthy. As a result I barely ate anything until I was about 9 because I was terrified of eating the wrong things or eating too much.
Looking back it seems silly, but god I was already such a thin kid. I've only just managed to hit 11 stone and I'm 6ft tall.
Fuck that woman, I'll eat as much pasta as I want and you can't stop me!
Mackem101@reddit
"Matches, matches do not touch, they can hurt you very much" - some bloke dressed as a massive red elephant called Elephant.
Also the chip pan fire demonstrations, all sitting on the freezing yard watching a fireman pour water onto a small chip pan fire.
Also some of the safety videos, Apaches comes straight to mind, amongst others about train lines, electrical substations, building sites etc.
rizozzy1@reddit
We had a police man come and tell us how to safely store and light fireworks. Why you never return to a lit firework.
He then showed us pictures of blown up hands from incorrect lighting and handling. Being a gory child I loved that part.
But I didn’t enjoy my dad’s home firework displays after that, he would always return to a lit firework.
Our poor neighbours could probably hear me screaming “DADDY NOOOO” more than the actual fireworks themselves!
dinkidoo7693@reddit
I remember when i was about 9 (so probably 90/91) some people came in and did a weird play about pylons and substations, then we had to watch a video about it, these boys were playing football and one went into an unlocked substation looking for the ball and got electrocuted and died and then some kids was climbing up trees near some pylons and they all got cancer and I’m pretty sure one of them died too.
I found it odd because it was a small community at the time and we didn’t live near anything like that.
whatmichaelsays@reddit
This one? https://youtu.be/7-qRbUrz4nw?si=uzPv7gnvj4XSsf45
There was also one with a frisbee.
Daisy_Spark@reddit
I think every kid remembers that one talk that just sticks with you. For me, it was a talk on road safety, and I became obsessed with looking both ways even when crossing my own driveway. The fear they instilled was a lot to handle.
SignalSleep8979@reddit
The weird puberty video they showed us in like 5th grade back in the 70s. Some moms felt the need to be there and they were actually giggling at the back of the room. Trauma for sure lol
ScreamingDizzBuster@reddit
This one is tricky to write about, but bear with me and don't prejudge.
When I was 13, we had one about the patriarchy given by two understandably aggressive women, both of whom looked the spit of Millie Tant.
The key takeaways were: "All men are potential rapists" and "Any non-consensual physical contact is sexual assault".
Now, I am 100% in agreement with those statements, but at the time (early 80s) we thought these were hilarious statements.
One of the lads put his hand up and asked "am a potential rapist then?" and one of them barked "yes!" and we all howled laughing.
Coming out of the hall after the lecture, a girl pinched my arse and I accused her of sexual assault and we all fell about laughing again. Then I said that the girl was a potential rapist and the hilarity increased.
I look back now and I'm honestly fully behind what they were saying, and their message.
The issue is that I'm the way the message was presented, we did not have the framework to comprehend them, and we also had hardly any prior exposure to people whose sexuality and gender expression were "queer". For us in a rural school the experience was that two freaks of nature had landed as if from outer space tell us boys that we were inherently bad.
Thinking about my mindset then and imagining if I were a teenager today, I suspect it would be pretty easy for me to go down the incel route.
It's vital, if we want a message to be effective, that we couch the message we want to send in ways that relate to the target, and that we do it slowly and with patience.
idontlikemondays321@reddit
A school nurse told us that if you have anal sex, your insides would come out. Not what I was expecting to hear during sex education
JT_3K@reddit
I worked in an inner city school in 2006-08. One of the students had been killed in a drug deal gone south and the police came in to tell the kids it was ‘bad’. They requested AV attendance to make sure things went smoothly and I volunteered as I wasn’t going to let my team have to endure what I suspected would be addressed with all the finesse of a brick launched out of a particle accelerator.
I asked to leave when they got going and it worked, and was refused. They showed pics of this kid as they found him. How the kids dealt with it I can’t say, but if I did that badly as a grown adult with coping strategies, I expect I’m not the only one that remembers that day.
I knew the kid, he was fine, not an asshole, just a bit of a tool at times. Sometimes fun. Just needed a little guidance.
That’s why I got a new job elsewhere.
Faerthoniel@reddit
Not really. It meant we were doing something interesting instead of dull schoolwork. But then I did not like my schooling at any point :D
LegoVRS@reddit
We had a talk about safe driving in sixth form done by the police. There were photos of fatal accidents. One of the girls ran out... The example they were showing us was the accident that killed her cousin.
Thestolenone@reddit
No, I loved them. Anything was better than stupid classes which I hated.
bellathebeaut@reddit
Oh yes, the drugs talks terrified me. There was basically two outcomes from taking drugs, you either died, or went bat shit crazy and then died. They told us about a guy who took acid then chopped his own legs off with an axe.
Violet351@reddit
I remember some odd or fun ones. We had the dad of one of the kids at school who was a police dog handler running across the school field with a giant puffy sleeve on so he could be taken down by the dog or a policeman came to the school with a briefcase full of drugs so we would be able to identify them (opium felt weirdly greasy)
Infinite_Edge1442@reddit
I remember being shown a documentary about smoking when I was about 14. It showed the difference it makes to your face (wrinkles, horrible teeth etc), they put a cigarette in a fish bowl, it killed all the goldfish, they pulled out a set of lungs out of a dead person who was a heavy smoker. Compared to another person who was a non-smoker. Not sure if human disection should've been part of an educational film for young teens. I still remember that scene quite vividly. A couple of girls fainted/vomited during that class.
Ill_Refrigerator_593@reddit
Our fire safety talks included Welliphant so it was trauma of a different sort.
CrystalQueen3000@reddit
I don’t remember a single one so I think it’s safe to say that I wasn’t traumatised by any of them
Happylittlecultist@reddit
Clearly repressing memories of these talks. You're super traumatized
learxqueen@reddit
Well I definitely got scared out of doing drugs 🤣🤣
cankennykencan@reddit
My dad was part of London underground safety so he went round schools and taught railway / tube safety so watched some pretty hard hitting videos
TimeCharacter3137@reddit
I used to have night terrors after the fire one. Even now I panic about leaving plugs on or people messing with electric.
Tabubua@reddit
Yup, those talks are the cause of two of my biggest fears to this day - train tracks and house fires.
Original_Bad_3416@reddit
Yes, like being chased by a giant Mars bar through the woods if I tried drugs
Realistic-River-1941@reddit
We had a policeman give a talk who really wasn't the right person for the job, and set back community relations by coming across as an arrogant uniform worshiper.
The next one was easy to divert from the "don't do crimes" message to describing the most gruesome fatalities he'd attended, which obviously primary school kids absolutely loved.
Happylittlecultist@reddit
Well I still haven't climbed into a fridge on scrapyard and have no intention to. I think the talk worked
EmbraJeff@reddit
Not traumatised but we did get the no-nonsense ‘I can’t be there when you cross the road’ shtick when the massive Dave Prowse did a primary school tour as The Green Cross Code Man, complete with his West Country burr. Little did we, or even he, know that we were in the presence of a post-surgery Anakin Skywalker…that would have been proper traumatising!
JanisIansChestHair@reddit
We had a talk by a fireman who told us that Tv remotes can burst in to flames… which actually came in handy when my kid’s Tv remove overheated and I threw it out of the window. The overreaction may have been that fireman’s fault.
Dydey95@reddit
When I was in high school a police officer did a talk on carrying knives and told us a story of a girl who'd taken a knife on a night out and had an argument with a girl, gone to use the knife and got it turned on her and got stabbed through the top of the head. The police officer then went on to pull some photos from the scene.
Ecomalive@reddit
Remember we laughed at the guy who brought in the smokers lung and we wanted a closer look. Was not the correct response.
I was (am) a little shit though.
chippychips4t@reddit
I was traumatised after a fire brigade visit. The dolls face melting in the fire in the video still burns a hole in my psyche. Didn't sleep for weeks afterwards as I was obsessed that a fire would start downstairs and I'd be trapped.
TheatrePlode@reddit
Mine was also the fire talk! My parents ended up having to throw all the leaflets and stuff we were given away I got so bad with it.
Chemical-ali1@reddit
I remember visiting a fire station as a Cub Scout aged about 8ish. One of the firemen was explaining how it’s really important not to take a motorcyclists helmet off after a crash, because he’d done it once and the guy was chatting to him then he took the helmet off and his head split clean in half and his brains fell out and he died in graphic detail.
Nowadays I work in a hospital, have looked after plenty of motorcycle accident patients and find his description implausible. But I’m impressed with the effort he went to just to traumatise some 8yr olds!
orbital0000@reddit
They never spoke about how awesome drugs are. On the plus side I got to meet Darth Vader.
blondererer@reddit
Yes, plenty. My school loved a visitor. Many similar to your list: authors, sports stars, police, police specifically about speeding (we were all under 11), the head of the health board, vicars 3x a week to cover different denominations.
The one that really scared me, and I remember to this day, was actually another kid at nursery. She was bought to the front of story time and had a massive bandage on her hand.
They asked her what happened (they must have known) and she’d touched a sparkler. We were then told that this was why we don’t touch sparklers as we’ll lose our fingers.
Rasty_lv@reddit
Not really a talk, but in latvia they were showing movies of fire, electric, gas, water safety. those movies were made in latvia and one about electricity, they filmed a kid who hid in transformer building and got electrocuted, he survived, but had his had amputated due to electric burns. I remember that i passed out during that movie. still makes my skin crawl when i see kids (and adults) fucking around electricity..
LadyNajaGirl@reddit
I remember those creepy immunisation adverts on TV and the posters around the school. I was convinced I’d get mumps or diphtheria 😩
EAGLE-EYED-GAMING@reddit
I'm 17, so most talks were all PG by the 2010s, but I have watched many adverts/public info films from the 70s to 00s, and they are scary. Effective, but scary.
JennyW93@reddit
I remember a talk from armed police where a police officer pointed his gun in my face, which I didn’t love.
The worst was the driving safety assemblies we had in sixth form. They showed a documentary about a lad that died in a car accident - a handful of us actually knew the kid, and hadn’t previously seen the graphic images of his mangled car. They showed this to us a week after a different kid at school died in a car accident.
misspixal4688@reddit
I'm not traumatized as such, but we had police visit about drugs, and I had a young family who were involved in the rave scene in the 90s. Drugs were around, and it felt normal to me, so I remember being shocked that it wasn't for others. I must have been about 5 or 6 when I walked to a phone box, as we didn't have a phone, and called the police to say my family had drugs called wizz, which was speed, and draw, which was hash. The police told me to inform a teacher, but I never did.
Even though I grew up around drugs, I never really did them myself. I had an odd childhood; my mum's side was very middle class, nearly upper class, while my dad's side was very working class. My dad was very young but loving. He was an awesome guy. Should I have been exposed to all that? No, but I don't think it had a massive impact on me and my relationship with drugs. I just never liked the feeling. It was the same with drinking, which the more middle-class family did a lot, although it is legal. I understand my experience is not the norm for most children exposed to drugs at a young age.
AdEmbarrassed3066@reddit
I remember a safety video that kids taking woodwork and metalwork had to watch. Several kids passed out during it.
Dismal_Birthday7982@reddit
I went to a private school so I think we were meant to have staff for that kind of thing.
zackjbryson@reddit
Yes. When I was in primary school they would often show the pictures of people injured by things like fireworks and chip pans.
dbxp@reddit
No but I remember the ones which were supposed to show other cultures which edged into exoticism
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