12th post

my salad daze...

Oh those halcyon days of old...

Do you ever find yourself reminiscing and longing to go back to more innocent times....? I sometimes find myself thinking about my boarding school days - not with so much longing to go back and relive it (hell no), but just because I was doing my taxes the other day and wished I was a kid again.

My days at Tunku Kurshiah College in Seremban seem like a different life altogether. I remember wondering if we'd ever get to leave the place. I had fantastic, dedicated teachers (of the old school variety), and some that scared me sh!tless.
My favourite teachers were:
The late Mrs Sarojini Gopal - English, English Literature. She was supportive, widely read, encouraging and kind, and was never condescending. She treated us like ladies, mind. She was the closest we got to Mallory Towers! She was the best!
Ms. Vicky - Head Warden, English, Phys Ed. She had a killer wit and a funky floppy hat. She treated me always like a had more than half a brain, which I really appreciated (considering..haha).
Mrs. Ho - Music. She looked liked a cross between Meryl Streep and Yoko Ono, she was BRILLIANT! We learned all the lyrics to the classics: Vaya Con Dios, Greensleeves, Woman is Fickle, etc. She's a treasure to the profession.
En. Ahmad - Math (the only half decent looking young man teaching there!). He said something funny to us one day at a sports meet when we were teasing him about a certain young shop girl at a stationary shop in town - he said, "We are just platonic friends. Go ask Shazmin what that means." Hahaha!
Ms. Rebecah - French. She inspired glamour in all things French, even Malaysian made croissants!
En. ??? - Art (he was flamboyant and oh so arty!). I can't, for the life of me, remember his name! I studied pottery and clay work and 'tried' to paint, but that was futile. We had a lot of fun in his class and he was a cool old cat. Was it Encik Malik???

The teacher that scared the bejesus (sorry! this is a tad ironic seeing her subject) outta me was Pn. Fatimah - Ugama! I used to practice my disappearing act in her period. I'd sit at the back, blending in with the wall. I'm sure she was a lovely person, but the subject itself filled me with high anxiety (remember the movie starring Mel Brooks? It was EXACTLY like that)...her favourite thing was to ask us indiviually, to recite random Quranic verses from memory, and she was damn garang. Maybe I should have had some kind of system, but I was hopeless at this and suffered for it. Mind you, the subject itself was fascinating, but I don't do rote learning very well, especially when my eternal soul was constantly being threatened to damnation and my spirit crushed with debilitating embarrassment four times a week for 50 minutes! Talk about dread. These days, the only thing that feels remotely like that is when the credit card company calls!
One of the first things a young person learns when they are shipped off to school is the importance of being flexible, because one has to be flexible in order to convincingly pull off the appearance of conformity. It's just that, living in a commune, you just had to conform a bit laah, if not, sure your life not worth living one...despite your own familial upbringing, personal tastes, spiritual beliefs and political opinions (I was an inspired Marxist then), you had to find that little niche to fit in.

The whole Sekolah Berasrama Penuh experience hit me like a ton of bricks, but the outcome was a good one: a better understanding of how to get along with people from all walks of life. It honed in me a keen observer's eye. I would sit on the edge of numerous popular cliques...watching and learning about The Human Condition. There was the rich KL girls' club, whose members were popular because they were trendy, spoke good english, listened to Depeche Mode, had LA Gear trainers and used bedak badan from Mothercare (?!) or Marks and Spencer. Then there were the holier-than-thous from up North, who actually admonished me once for drinking my Coke straight out of the bottle because it was 'unIslamic' (huh?)...[I'm sniggering now that I remember this incident]. I also remember the horde of sporty girls and the brass-band-obsessives...fun and perky girls. There were the rebels-with-a-cause, too...whose mission in the 5 years at TKC was to sneak out of school and hook up with the boys from SDAR (yikes). And yes, the DEBATORS (is it 'debaters'?)...who could forget? Who can remember?! They were SO SMART and INTELLECTUAL [sniggersniggersnigger], so high achieving ( I was elected President of the English Debating Society one year - but nobody remembers why as I never once debated! Haha!)!.(gee, you people reading this, please know I'm being sarcastic, yeaaa?). Waaaaaah....and I was friends with all these girls, though not a card carrying member of any of their sororities. My friend S and I were like two wandering misfits, manouvering our adolescent selves amongst these various factions, trying to make sense of it all, and not laugh in anybody's faces. I'm glad I found in her a kindred spirit and a friend for life (our children are born in the same year even).

Well, funny how looking back at one's schooldays can fill one with many mixed emotions. I miss the silly fun, the serious anxieties - like Ugama period (no, not really!), the drama and politics of girlie-teenage friendships, the thrill of young RMC/MCKK visitors (hey, I'm normal), the wonderful and dedicated teachers, the horrible exam prep. Nothing like teen angst. I'll take teenage angst against fiscal angst anyday!