To Err is Human to Forget is.... Out of the Question

After a number of years and thanks to Facebook, I am able to re-connect with my class and schoolmates. Memories came rushing in as I see those faces aged by time but my mind could still see them when they were teenagers. Yes, I studied at a boarding school where our behaviours were shaped by the friends that we made. Six long years of happiness, loneliness,anger,disappointment, failure and success.

Find old friends  on FB and reminisce

Coming from a family of four boys and one girl (me), I found it hard to mix when I first joined the all-girl school located in the far south of the peninsular. I was awkward and tried hard to improve on the many areas that I found myself deficient and I learnt fast. I remember several teachers liked and trusted me. I was given responsibilities like carrying the girls' exercise books to the teacher's staff room and keeping the key to the school home science kitchen and assisting in the school library and chosen as a pack leader in the Girl Guide.

But somehow my relationship with my classmates was on a different plane. As a group, they would have found me as rather quiet and unsociable so they did not nominate me for any responsible task.To make matters worse I also suffered from anaemia which weakened me and stopped me from participating in more robust activities like sports though I excelled in class dramas usually acting as a male, must have been tomboyish!

Anyway to cut a long story short, it was when I was tasked with keeping the school kitchen's key that I came to trouble with the teachers because they stopped trusting me from then on and I was treated like a "pariah". You see, one day on a Saturday, after a school outing, my senior of two years, came to me to ask for the kitchen's key because she and her friends wanted to do some "unauthorised" cooking. Being my senior in the boarding school, I reluctantly gave it to her as it was a Saturday evening.

As luck would have it, as the girl and her friends were busy cooking,making the kitchen as if their own, Miss Pothucheary, the Home science teacher who entrusted me with the key,  came in probably because, as a duty teacher, she saw the light on and My God! I knew something was wrong when the girl failed to return the key to me for safe-keeping. Apparently the culprits got real tongue lashings from the woman.

The teacher called me first thing on Sunday morning ( years ago Sunday was not a holiday in that State) and without hearing my side of the story and explanations  she started to scream and scream at me and accused me of being irresponsible and undeserving of being trusted! I was only 14 years old! I had wished the earth would swallow me and I remember tears streaming down my cheeks. I was very furious and disappointed with that senior girl. Following the incident, I noticed the other teachers were also cool towards me. Imagine in a boarding school and I virtually had no one to really talk to for fear of further reprisals.

She screamed her heart out as I silently cried

After the unfortunate event, my grades started to fall. Initially, I came in second in the class of about 25 brightest girls coming from all over the country in the first year but slide in the next three years. I was depressed. I picked up myself in the last year somehow and managed to stay in the top five but bouts of depression and self-doubt still haunted me and my performance was really not consistent. I scored 96% , the  form's  highest, for Additional Mathematics during the MCE (Malaysian Certificate of Education) trial examination and became the toast of my maths teacher a man called Mr Chan but did not do as well in the real examination.

Getting a scholarship based on the results of the trial examination and going to Australia to study  was the best thing that could have happened to me. I wanted to show my teachers and my friends who I really am. There were five of us selected to study overseas and I am the only one who succeeded in completing my medical course. The others failed in their attempts or could not even enter Medicine after their matriculation. I was offered the prestigious Colombo Plan Scholarship to do Medicine at the University of Queensland. The period was the best in my life as I  regained my confidence away from small-mindedness. I made friends  and one of whom last to this day though he is in a different profession.

Now as you might have guessed it, I am looking at the face of the girl, now an old woman, who destroyed my life in that boarding school, on Facebook. The anger came back involuntarily as I cannot bring myself to forget what she did to me. I have to learn to forgive her but I could never learn to forget the consequence of her action on me. It was a long time ago but a teenager's terror and undue hatred has become entrenched. Even the name of the teacher I could not spell properly but her terrible raging face is fresh in my mind. I really pray no child has to undergo that kind of experience because it is just so unjust and unfair.

Yes, this is the feared  and despised Gorgon

Getting to where I am today, I always remember to treat my underlings fairly and refrain from them remembering me as a Gorgon... yes, the teacher became a Gorgon to a child of 14 on that fateful day and the child never forgets.

Facebook brings me joy but it also brings back bad memories.