Boy from School - Intellectual

Sometimes younger children pick up words and phrases they hear at home, especially bad words and harsh phrases. Here he could mean the girl had a rough family, and she claimed she picked up bad habits at home.

This gives praise to the mundane and standard moments in life. Ultimately, he sings about his childhood and how we’re all different breeds from an early age on. He somehow manages to magnify his emotions now that he’s grown older through the eyes of the same boy from school that started this story.

This is a tale about how rebels and conformists make the world whole. We all fall under different classifications and grow up with different attitudes, but our lives are serendipitously brought together in this world.

Based on the context of the song as reminiscent of growing up and changing, this line could refer to the tendency of people to lose touch with many of their childhood friends as they take steps to discover their path in their adult life.

Possibly “nothing costs”?

We try to remain youthful and foolish, but eventually we all grow up.

I love this song – I think it’s a genuine classic. Alex Taylor has a talent for droll, subversive lyrics that manage to smuggle in real feeling. And yet, I’m guessing this particular lyric took less time to write to than it did to record. It’s a list of cliches – school, rules, etc – and yet, it works. The melody is just so fucking poignant, he can afford to keep it simple and vague and tossed off. Bernard Sumner from New Order managed to pull off this trick as well more than once.

People and memories of our youth often can be found in our present lives, whether we like them to or not.

Often the people that we meet in our youth can shape who we turn out to be and character. Here they might be saying that these loves are temporary but the effect they have is permanent.