But it was a part of the science curriculum which everyone had to take part in.
That and physics.
Physics?
I could barely spell the word let alone try and fathom how certain amounts of magnetism and energy could alter the state of matter and dimensional structure...at least that's what the teacher once had written on the blackboard.
I wanted to do art but I wasn't allowed to.
And so it came to pass I showed Mum and Dad the note and Dad smiled and simply said a frog with more than two legs would be worth a fortune in a restaurant in Paris.
I didn't work that out until years later.
All Mum could say was "I hope the frogs were dead" and I assured her they were.
So I went through school as aimlessly, I mean ambitiously, as I could and it was determined early in my sixth form year that a visit to the "careers adviser" was well in order, seeing as how I had no visible direction at all as to what direction I should head off on when the time came to leave school.
He was a fine old chap.
He would sit and read notes and written summations and opinions of my educational journey over the past three and a bit years and occasionally look up.
He would either nod or allow his bottom lip to curl downwards as a frown took charge of his aged face.
"Frogs," he whispered quietly at one stage and I looked innocently out the window.
After some, shall we say, interesting banter along the lines of "what do you hope to achieve" and "what are your ambitions for adulthood" and all that sort of flannel, he came to a simple conclusion.
"You should join the armed forces," he said.
"They will assist you to learn a trade, and a spot of discipline is jolly good for the spirit."
So, accordingly, having listened to his extremely sound advice, I left school at 16 and went to work in a grocery warehouse where I earned $38 a week.
Do they still have "careers advisers" or do kids these days simply have to work out their compass direction for a working life themselves?
It is a serious time to dwell upon the question of acquiring a regular payroll, given that robots are taking over manufacturing and electronic wizardry is moving faster than an eight-legged frog.
I daresay if the careers adviser (should he or she still exist) still exists today they will be confronted by several young faces who would declare that they would like to embrace the world of information technology and accelerating software.
"Splendid," the adviser would reply before inquiring what sort of role they would ideally like to take on.
"Online hacker," some would confidently declare.
There would be snorts of immediate disapproval accompanied by the standard response of "why on earth?"
"Because you don't need to embark on violence to get some cash...and you don't have to use missiles to wreck a target...you just hack into their files and accounts and messages and correspondence and the job's done...infrastructure shattered."
The careers adviser would, of course, declare ferociously that such a pursuit was purely evil...and then suggest maybe taking a look at a job with the armed forces maybe?
This has been a convoluted literary voyage to the heart of the subject which has hacked into everyone's fears and concerns.
Nothing, in this formidable world of IT, is safe from the remarkable skills of bad people who can sit in a room half a world away and go shopping at someone else's expense.
The latest global hack was a major one and raised everyone's hackles (pun intended) and fears.
And then I heard someone state the obvious...the worryingly obvious.
"What'll they do next?"
Until that potential IT Armageddon I daresay I'll get a few more phone calls (at the usual tea-time) declaring "we can help you protect your computer..."
