The afternoon session kids in my primary school had to line up near the bus stands and recite the 三字经 along with the audio broadcast before we went to our respective classes. We were pretty obedient in reciting but of course we would sometimes get sidetracked and start chatting with our friends instead. For this purpose, there were prefects on duty to catch us out. In primary 2, there was a short and fierce primary 3 prefect (I can still picture her face- she had the most gorgeous silky brownish hair) who was in charge of our class. For some reason, she would ignore all the other students who were talking and single me out for scolding. And I didn't even talk much! I think I was pretty guai le. Anyway one day she scolded me really badly and I started to tear up (for the record, I wasn't scared of her or anything- I just tear up easily) It was so hilarious because she started staring intently at me with her big round eyes- because she was so short and I was quite tall, she had to tilt her head backwards to look at me- and I just kept quiet and stared back ( with tears streaming down my face), she ordered me to stop crying, but I continued. Then she must have got scared or something because she went away and never came back to bother me for the rest of the year. LOL. Crying power!
I went to my sister's class to see her before, so her classmates all knew I was her sister. One day I was using the pay phone and this girl beside me was watching me open my blue-striped Hello Kitty purse to get my coins. Now I was very paranoid as a kid, and I used to bring like, RM30 to school everyday because I was scared that I might one day forget to bring money to pay some fees. (I just remembered something completely irrelevant: in primary one I would only buy sandwiches in the canteen even though they were huge and I could only finish one out of the two- because they cost RM1 and I could hand them the exact amount without having to calculate how much change I should get if I bought anything else- yes I was very very bad at maths) Anyway this girl asks me if I'm 珍梅的妹妹 and she tells me that she desperately needs some money (I forgot what her excuse was) and could I please lend her (I think it was) RM20? I wasn't dumb, but she really looked so sad and needy so I asked for her name and gave it to her. I don't remember if I told my family when I got home. A few days later she came to my class to see me and she was really panicky and asked me to return her the money she lent me! I was like, WTH?! Don't speak nonsense with me, woman! She started crying and said her aunty was downstairs waiting for her to get her money back and she would be really angry with her if she didn't. I refused to back down so she threatened tell her aunty and so I told her I'll be informing my parents before I went back to my class. The next day my parents brought me to the vice principal's office to settle the matter. Before we arrived (my sister was in the morning session, I was in the afternoon session) I think my outraged sister confronted her and had already scolded her. The vice principal called her to his office and she continued to deny that she borrowed money from me. I don't really remember how it ended but when she left, the vp told us that she was a problem child from a broken family, and that this wasn't the first time she caused problems in school.
In primary 4 we had a mini chinese test and I got a C. The form teacher told the class that if you got a B, you should work hard towards an A for UPSR. If you got a C (the worst grade in class because we were the 精英班), you have no hope of getting an A for UPSR. I was pretty upset. In hindsight, how could she just assume the worst of us like that? Heck, we had two more years to improve our chinese before our UPSR. Anyway I was in Kuching for primary 5 and 6 and had the awesomest, fiercest, most pushy chinese and maths teacher- she would make us stay back after school two days a week for those two years to give us tuition free of charge, and I respected and was in awe of her, so I pushed myself partly for her sake and my two most dreaded subjects improved greatly. When I got an A for chinese in UPSR, I really felt like flying back to Kajang and waving the results slip in that teacher's face.
The only other thing left that I remember about those days is that my mum would take our exams so seriously (she still does). When I was in lower primary, throughout the exam period my mum would bring hot milo in a Jacob's biscuits cup for me during breaktime every single day, sometimes she would send my sister. (We lived like, 3 minutes away from the school) She would be standing in the doorway until the recess bell rings and I would go and take it in front of the whole class. Weirdly, I never felt embarassed- just very happy and honoured that my mum cared so much about me. =)
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| Random picture during Children's Day- I drew that cake! |
*atm*
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