School and Books

I fell in love with books at a very tender age. I know I could read as soon as I started schooling. Since then what the teachers taught me was nothing new. I'd read most of Abang's books, and I yearned to attend English school. I can't read some of Abang's books. It was in English. And they had so many beautiful illustrations. One of them was Going to the Circus. I'd flipped the book over and over again, showed it to my friends, and treasured it.

One fine day a teacher asked us if we want to study in the English school. My hand was the first to shoot up. It was like a dream about to become a reality. I went back and asked my parents. They refused. None of us had dared asked such a thing before. Abang was accepted to study in MCKK at Form 1. I was still in Std 3. When school reopened for registration I cried my eyes out for hours. I refused to be sent to the old school. At last my parents consented. My sister borrowed the Penghulu daughter's school uniform to pattern out mine.

I never regretted having to walk two km in the hot morning sun and cross the railway tracks everyday to my new school. I became the student librarian. I had the priviledge to borrow three books a week. I started reading the Reader's Digest with the help of a dictionary.
The craze then were comics. I could never get enough of School Friends, School Girls, Beano & Dandy, and Wars comics.

Back then each cost 50 sen. I had to save save ten days to get that much. So I started a business. If the students do not complete their homework I let them copy mine and they paid 10-20 sen. 20 sen for a page of the workbook, 20 sen for test answers, 20 sen for a drawing or craft. They even paid 5 sen for Today's News. With perfect grammar, a sentence would get them an A. Many students seek my services. (See the reasons below*.) For my friends foc. But they let me borrow their comics.

I can't wait to go home once I had a supply of books and comics. I'd hide under the bed with a tumbler of sweet tea, sipped with a long hollow plastic string. I'd only come out to do my chores, and back again to my world of fantasy.

I did have other interests other than books. We would spend hours swimming, submerging in the river, and looking for shrimps. At other times we (one of my best buddies and I) would be sitting on tree branches munching bitter star fruits or sour mangoes dipped with salt. I had a fistful in my pocket which I grabbed from my uncle's shop earlier.

*Monsters and tortures. Those days the punishments for not doing your homework were very harsh. The women teachers get their satisfaction by pinching your stomach pushing and twisting the flesh between their fingers. The fear in your eyes, the shame, the tears of bearing the pain will only add to their sadistfaction (sadistic satisfaction). Their other weapons were the multiple rulers to knock your knuckles red and sore. Public caning was for having long dirty fingernails, long hair, dirty shoes, or not wearing socks. If you have a See me! in your book the rewards were Japanese slaps. You slap me, I slap you, as hard as possible until the sadist screamed, Go back to your seeeaat! Without explaining what you had done wrong. Your ears ringing, your face would sting for the rest of the day. For the boys, Stand up on the cupboard! Imagine standing on one, with your head bent and your body crooked even for ten minutes. We pray that these monsters rot in hell! You know who you are!!! You are not forgiven. By the way, your torture an defamation drove that boy to a successful future.