Gangsta Class

This is my lower secondary class. It is only for my second language (the rest of the class takes Malay as a second language) that we have to merge with this other class - the 'E' or 'F' class. Sometimes I wonder why was I ever posted to this class in the first place when the rest of my primary cohort were in the other classes.

The one redeeming factor was that I learned to live with all the representative races of Singapore - Malays, Indians, Eurasians and a host of other minorities, even Malayalam ( aka Joseph Ignatius). Bradley Achak was decidedly racist as he so casually slimed me with "Cheena Babby". God, there was even a "gay" couple Trevor Grosse and Joseph (? can't remember his last name ) who taunts me with homosexual slurs and other "gay" couples like Lionel Goh and Selwyn Poh. Franco Carlos was a tough guy who works part time at a pizza joint.

Back to the Chinese lesson where class is in progress. This 6-footer, quantitatively challenged dude and other Chinese gangsta would mock Miss Lim and she would break into tears, needing me to hunt for the principal. Incidentally my Chemistry teacher in Secondary Three would ask the same of me.

I was to meet Miss Lim many years later, married with a young son to a rich man. But she doesn't look too happy in her marriage and has threatened to leave home several times and I suspect actually did on a few occasions. That meeting also saw her in a tiff with her husband.

Whilst being carried away at the annual sports event, I was both cheering and jeering at some teams or individuals, without a very good cause on introspection. John Teo came up to me and smacked me on the head for being a "hooligan". Sometimes I really ponder how the "gravity" of "disciplinary" offences are actually measured and defined. Her daughter, Marion Teo, was to be crowned beauty queen many years later - OMG - I was thinking like - please lor.

The world has changed. In the co-educational classes or even the all-girl ones, the girls can be equally boisterous and foul-mouthed. I guess this has always been the order but that we haven't been seriously looking .