Things I wish I'd been taught at school

Obviously I'm a little out of touch with the school system these days, having left nearly 7 years ago and I confess my memories of school are extremely hazy. Mainly it was just a question of battling through the angst, counting down the days until I would be able to not give a shit any more that Speed = Distance over Time and thinking of a decent excuse to get me out of having to do the Cross Country Run.

However, I do of course remember the most basic parts of my education and on the whole, I have no complaints. It's set me in the right direction of at least having the basic skills and knowledge required to be a functioning human being who can get through each day relatively unharmed.

There are, though, a number of things which I wish I'd been taught about. Important, life sort of things which  I just have no idea about and yet somehow it seems I'm expected to be all knowledgeable on. There was no handy "Boring but important" practicalities class when I was in school and...actually I wish there had been.

I've been thinking about this for a while now and, intrepid blogger that I am, I've spoken to some (1) friends about it and we've agreed that there are some essentials out there which it would it would be good to have at least some basic form of understanding of.

I'll start off with an anecdote before I dive into a boring list. The first item on my list of "things I wish I'd been taught at school" is the mysterious thing...GDP.

What is this? Gigantic dead parrot? Gory Dorrito Packet? Generous Dotty Patron? Generally Dangerous Politician? I could go on.

Fortunately I didn't think it was any of these when I found myself talking about it in a noisy pub. In fact, I didn't think we were talking about GDP at all. I thought I was having a conversation about GBK. As in, Gourmet Burger King.

You can probably imagine my confusion when my companion started saying things like

"If it doesn't increase soon we could be looking at a decade of misery and doom."

A little extreme, I thought - I've never actually eaten there but I've heard pretty good things. Certainly no one has ever mentioned "Doom" in the context of a burger to me before, but you live and learn. Being brought up as I was by my parents never to admit defeat in conversation and to battle on at all costs I found myself looking at an expression which implied I was expected to respond to this statement. With which I told him that:

"Well I'm no expert, but I've always though they're pretty out there with "extras". I don't want an onion ring on my burger, I'm straight forward like that and I think they risk aliening a lot of customers by pressurising them into ordering things they don't want. It can be very stressful!"

To be honest, I think I would have said pretty much exactly the same thing if I had a) been aware that we were talking about GDP and b) known what the bloody hell GDP is. Except I maybe would have replaced "onion rings" with "inflation rates" in a pitiful attempt to sound more credible.

So, number 1: GDP

Others on the list include:

2) How does inflation work?
3) TAX.
4) MORE TAX I REALLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT TAX RETURNS. My approach is incredibly similar to Bernard Black's approach. I too, would like a fashionable jacket made out of receipts.
5) Pension - How do I get one? Can I download one from the internet?

All this..is really rather taxing....

I'll get my coat.