May 5, 2007

The Looking Glass

Scribbled by Perky |

Accompanying Bibik Nyonya to his school's dance competition has definitely brought back some high school memories. High school is definitely a weird phase for most as that's the time when you're still discovering who you are. You're bound to make countless mistakes (not to mention making loads of frenemies along the way) and everyone's just obsessed with labels and groups.


We have the Plastics - the pretty girls who are always in-tune with fashion. They look nice but if you're not careful, you just might find a knife or two stuck in your back.




We also have the Geeks - really, really smart people but for some reason, maybe because of the thick glasses, everyone just wants to avoid... well, that is until you need 'help' in doing your math homework. They're not very sociable and sometimes their personality can lean towards freaky/creepy.


We have the Rebels, the Skaters, the Angry Lesbian, the Village Bicycle, the Gangsta, you name it we got it. Looking back, I'm not too sure which group I belonged in (just so we're clear, I certainly was not the Village Bicycle). I guess because I was still trying to figure out the person I want to be, I just kind of floated around from group to group.

Don't get me wrong, it worked out really well for me. I never felt out of place with anyone of them. I could speak in music language with the band geeks; with the skaters I knew what a kickflip, heelflip, ollie and a nollie was; I could sit with the smartest girls in school and not feel like a stupid schmuck talking about why A+B = E-D.


There Was This One Time, In Band Camp...


Music has and will always be my number 1 love. I'm so passionate about music that it disgusts me with how much crap is being put out there in the market *cough cough* Mawi *cough cough*. So here's the part where I tell you that I was a band geek. I loved (with a capital D) everything about the school band - including the marching bit. I was so proud to wear the band uniform (well, the fact that it came with a very short short helped a lot!). Will it make me an even bigger geek if you knew that I was the band's secretary? Eeks!



Sk8er Girl


Picture a flautist doing a sole grind on the canteen bench. Weird, isn't it? Gosh, I loved skating A LOT (or the more appropriate term to use here would be agressive inline). It's general knowledge that rollerbladers and skaterboarders don't get along too well. But perhaps having dated a skater back then has spared me any bad blood from either side. As a matter of fact, skaters are a bunch of really, really cool people (well, at least the ones I know are very cool funny people).

Because my chests were filling out, I resorted to binding them (something I learned from my tomboy friends). I did that because one, they kept getting in the way, and two, cleavage don't look cool on skaters . I did a lot of crazy things back then and often I would come home with these nasty cuts and bruises. I still remember the adrenaline rush of my first stunt attempt of doing a 360 jump over a bin (sounds like peanuts, but hey, you gotta start somewhere you know). The wind in my face, the fast beating of my heart, my legs pumping hard to pick up speed, the uncertainty of not knowing whether I was gonna pull the stunt off... I must've tried like hundreds of times before I nailed that son of a gun. Though it didn't make mom too pleased, I wore those cuts and bruises like an honor badge.


The Rebel
Yeah, I had my fair share of trouble in school. Mostly it was my own doing or my clumsiness found its way to thrash school property. Perhaps I did have some sort of authority issues (hey, I still piss in my pants every time there's a roadblock but that's only because I look like an illegal immigrant). I was voted by my dear classmates as the class monitor in Form 1. I held that post for about a month before running to the teacher and telling her how being class monitor was affecting my studies. Well, honestly I hated being the class monitor because that would mean my recess time was cut short to 10 minutes. On top of that, I had to help the teacher carry the books! Do I look like a book carrier to you?!?


Just when I thought I was responsibility-free, that same teacher decided to make me the class librarian. However, this time I didn't mind it because the job involved me stamping the books, and because of my OCD, I loved arranging books. I took that job very seriously... yeah, I got some free lunches in return of looking the other way to those who 'forgot' to return their books on time.

But then that job had gotten wayyy too serious for the likes of me. Like all authority bodies in the school, librarians too have their own club. If you're a librarian, you are automatically a member of the librarian club. And that would mean that there's a president, a secretary, a treasurer, committee members, etc etc. To me, that's just a whole bunch of kahoonas. So when I was elected secretary of the all-too-important librarian club, needless to say, I handed my resignation in too.

Then came Form 4. We were now considered seniors. Once again, the teachers thought it would be cool to elect me as one of the school prefects. I gave it a try to see what the hype's all about. Once again, I hated it. Being a school prefect would mean I had to be in school on time (waking up early in the morning was and still is a bitch!). Being a school prefect would make me a hypocrete because there I am telling the other girls off for sneaking food into the class, when I myself have her pockets filled with sweets and keropoks (that if my equally hunger stricken friends didn't know about them extra munchies , should last me for the next 2 periods).

Apart from the various posts the teachers tried to give me, I had gotten into all sorts of trouble with the disciplinary teacher. From destructing school property, to holding hands with different boys each week, to having different hair color, to having 8 piercings on my ears, to skipping classes, the list was endless. I mean, seriously, these teachers would make up all these stories about poor, innocent me *sigh*. There were times that I almost got suspended (and not that I'm going to deny that I was hoping to get it coz that would mean I didn't have to be in school for at least a week), but it was always my grades that saved my scrawny ass. Or maybe it was my smile that melted the stone cold heart of the disciplinary teacher.



Well, all I can say to all of you who are still attending high school is that there IS life after highschool and be nice.... 'cause the geek you're laughing at now may just be the next Bill Gates... or worst, your boss!


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4 Your say:

Unknown said...

360!! I send my son to you to watch!

savante said...

Village bicycle?! How do I get into that group!

Lau Niang said...

Wow....just by watching some bimbo dance competition raked up so many memories huh? But i'm glad we sure had fun....kesian kan all the budaks? Berangan talented like that.....lolz!

Jay said...

My high school was so not like any of that.
It was too small, and too small-town Canada to have any of the major cliques.