I always fancied myself as something of a ‘class clown’, and by the time I transferred to an English secondary school at the age of 11, I thought I had pretty much perfected my act. I was adept at disrupting lessons with off-the-cuff remarks and could divert teachers on unrelated subjects for minutes at a time, much to the amusement of my classmates.
My behaviour didn’t go entirely unchecked, of course, but I inwardly shrugged off reprimands and got on with my work for long enough to de-escalate pretty much any situation.