Remembering School

Would you like to know how many schools I attended thoughout the 13 years of schooling? I'll tell you anyway - they were two primary schools, two secondary schools, and one for Form 6 (pre-university). That makes five altogether when others might go to two or at most three. And that is why I have no significant feelings of attachment for any of those schools although I thoroughly enjoyed my time in all of them.

I loved to go to school. Somehow those days the brain was like a sponge, absorbing everything the teachers dished out, though that didn't  mean that recall wasn't a problem during exams. I didn't like exams especially public ones where you had to sit at a desk in a huge hall with a huge clock up on stage and bored invigilators sitting in front, day-dreaming. But I was OK at sports and  I had lots of fun representing the schools in athletics and netball except for in Form 6 in a boys' school, where football and rugby reigned.

At the first primary school, the Jr. Methodist Girls School, the pupils were mainly children from middle-class families who get ferried to and from school in cars. Some who lived nearby either walked it or hired trishaws for transport and I used to envy my friends who got to ride those trishaws everyday. For my sister and I, either my father or my mother would do the ferrying as we lived about 3  km or so away by road but only about half the distance walking. Which was via a shortcut the last maybe 80 metres of which was a path on a hillslope, of course accessible only on foot.

There was a day when dad couldn't pick us up after school and mum was in confinement yet again, so we were instructed to walk home together. Me and one of my bestfriends Ai Gaik, being teacher's helpers at the time had to help carry our class teacher Mrs. Lam's books to her car after school and so I wasn't present at the rendezvous point to meet my sister at the agreed time. Sis then set off for home by herself.

When I told Ai Gaik that I had to walk home alone, she offered me a ride in her hired trishaw. I was elated for I had never ever ridden in a trishaw before. It was such a joy to feel the wind in your face and so much fun to be jolted by every bump in the road as the old apek pedalled towards my friends house which was along my walking route. Having enjoyed the ride and being halfway there already, I practically skippety-skipped the rest of the way home, not knowing that back at home there was a commotion brewing when sis arrived without me in tow. Mum alerted dad at the office and when I reached home it was to to a very relieved mum asking me all sorts of questions.  An anxious dad arrived some time later when I was wolfing down my lunch and wondering what the fuss was all about. After a futile search dad was about ready to call the police I guess.

Now being a mum to five myself I can imagine what must have gone through mum and dad's minds at the time. Who knows... I could have been hit by a car or bus or lorry, or kidnapped for ransom (not likely for a child of a govenment servant), or got lost on the way home, or got chased and bitten by a dog, or followed a paedo home.... I was only in Std. Three.

However that was to be the first and only time we had to walk home after school but in my childhood I fondly remembered it as the first time I had ridden in a  trishaw.

The school percussion band 
me standing in the centre 4th row, 
Ai Gaik on the extreme right