April 27, 2018

Three ghosts, a well, some nuts and screws and a prized parrot


Recently my childhood buddies and I made a trip to visit our old schools where some of us first met as classmates in 1969 ... forty nine years ago!!! 

The visit brought back a lot of memories … we walked through the old classrooms, canteen, the various sections of the school building, reminiscing the days when we were all carefree school kids fooling around in school. Yes, fooling around … really, we were not the studious type. OK, to be fair … not all were fooling around … most of us were. 
 
At the main corridor of our old secondary school ... SMK Sri Pantai

As we walked around the school, we reminisced where our classrooms were, the IA (Industrial Art) workshops where we dirtied our shirts, the science labs where we let go a rat to scare the girls, the discipline master’s room where we were caned and the boy’s toilet where cigarettes were passed around during recess. 

Yes, we were a mischievous bunch … the good thing is, back in those days, there were no mobile phones and cameras … those naughty things we did were not recorded. They now exist only in our memories. As we talk, many stories were brought alive again in our conversations. 

Let me relive some of the memories and tell you a few funny and naughty stories. 

The three ghosts
I remember when I was in Standard Three, there was this rich boy called Lee Chee Wai (there is always a rich boy in old school stories) … everyone knows he comes from a rich family. Every day we see him arriving at school in a big car and every time during school events like children’s day, teacher’s day or year end school party … he will bring fried chicken wings, curry puffs, cakes … all the expensive stuffs. Most kids will just bring half a kati of biscuits or some cheap multi-colored sweets … yes, kati (and tahil) … if you are old enough, you know what those are. 

And Chee Wai speaks perfect English … we were all quite jealous of him. Having said that, there were no bad feelings among all of us … we play and talk to each other all the time. Most of us were from Chinese speaking villages … our parents put us in an English school hoping that we can learn the language and have a better working future. Like many Chinese boys in the school, my English vocabulary was nothing to be proud of. At Standard Three, I have less than a hundred basic English words that I can remember.

One day during recess Chee Wai asked me … “eh, do you believe in ghost?”. I said … “what?” He said …”you know, ghost?” Really, at that time I have absolutely no idea what a ghost is. But I was not going to lose face to a rich boy admitting that I don’t know what he is talking about. And so, I said to him … “oh yessss … I believe in ghost, I have three ghosts at home!!!”

From that day onwards, somehow I got a feeling that Lee Chee Wai was avoiding me … I did not ask him why. It must have been months later when I found out what a ghost is … maybe Lee Chee Wai avoids me because “I bluffed him” (the term we always used when we were kids) but I believe that more likely it is because he really thinks that I lived with three ghosts. 

A well
At lower secondary, my English was still not as good as my teachers had hoped … I was encouraged to go for tuition. My father could not afford a paid tuition so I found myself cycling to the YMCA twice a week … YMCA offered free English tuition to students from various schools. 

As bad as my English were, I was never afraid to write … so I got myself writing to pen pals. Yes, pen pals … rings a bell? Those were the days of aerograms and handwritten letters … where we were excited to see the postman. I even wrote an aerogram to Rowena Cortes (google the name … check her out) … a famous Hongkong singer back then.

I wrote many letters … learned to use flowery phrase like “hope you are in the pink of health” instead of saying “hope you are in good health”. But after a while, I just wanted to write something simple and so I thought … “pink of health” means “well” … right? So very simple, just replace “pink of health” with “well” … easy, no sweat (as we used to say).
 
And replace it I did … so, “I hope you are in the pink of health” became “I hope you are in the well”. Yes … that was what I wrote to a relative in Singapore and he wrote back and asked me why I had hoped that he was inside a well. And you know what? We still talk and laugh about this today. 


Some nuts and screws
At the beginning of secondary school, we can choose to attend Commerce or Industrial Art (IA) classes … I chose a spanner over an abacus. The first thing they taught us in IA class was to make ashtray … yes, ashtray. Why the hell were we making ashtrays? Aren’t we suppose to discourage people from smoking? Not sure about the IA syllabus … anyway we made ashtrays, did some simple carpentry, learned copper tooling and other so called industrial art skills. 

After two years of making small things, finally in Form Three, we moved into more exciting things … 2 strokes and 4 strokes combustion engine … wow, that was a big thing for us. We were all very excited … looking forward to “work” on a real engine in the workshop. It was long boring theory in the beginning and we couldn’t wait to finish the theory so we can get our hands on the engine.

At last the IA practical assignment came … a small group of us were given an assignment to dismantle the engine totally … which we did quite EASILY … no sweat! Then we have to assemble it back accordingly. And put it back we did. But after putting the engine back together, there were still some nuts and screws on the bench … where did those come from?

So how? We were not going to let anyone see those nuts and screws … so, we opened the fuel cap and dumped everything into the fuel tank. No one saw anything, nobody knew … until now that is.

And you know what? We passed our assignment. 

The prized parrot
Brickfields was a popular place in the 70s … there were several schools there, an old theater called Lido Cinema (remember?) and it was centrally located in the then Kuala Lumpur township. If you have studied in one of those schools in Brickfields in the 70s, then you will know that there was a pet shop, the corner shop just opposite where Anthonian Bookstore used to be … a shop that sells all kinds of pets … birds mostly. 

There was this beautiful white parrot which was always displayed in front of the shop ... the prized possession of the shop owner. Not only the parrot is beautiful, it can “talk” too … “hello”, “I love you”,“good morning”, “how are you” , “kor kor” (brother) and also croon out some funny whistles and tunes. The people passing by just love this parrot … it was the darling of the shop.

Like most school kids after school, my friends and I will hang around the pet shop … looking at the parrot, teasing it and try to get it to “talk”… so much so that the bird gets irritated and behave strangely. And the shop owner don't like us teasing the bird … “don’t disturb my bird … do you know how much this bird cost?”… he scolded us and chased us out of the shop. 

We were little rascals who don’t like to be shouted at and chased away … we were not going to let it go that easy. From that day onwards, every time when we pass by the shop and when the owner is not looking, we will whisper to the parrot … “f**k you”, “go to hell”, “die faster”, “stupid fool” and a mouthful of foul *%$#@ Chinese words. That went on for weeks and very soon the chatty parrot was happily letting out those newly learned words at the disbelief of the customers visiting the shop. Suddenly, it was no longer the darling of the shop … the once prized parrot is now worth a lot less. Not just that … really, who would want to buy a foul-mouthed parrot?

Poor shop owner … he didn’t know what hit him. And the bird? Not sure what happened but it was no longer in front of the shop. 

OK … to the shop owner and the poor parrot … really, I am sorry. Maybe it is a bit too late to apologize but better late than never. Look, we were young naughty boys … we didn’t really think about the consequences of our actions … please forgive us.

There are so many naughty and funny stories from my younger days … maybe I will tell you more some other times. 

I must say I have a good past … so many good memories … the cheerful childhood, the naughty schooldays, the playful young days and the carefree growing years. Every time when I think or talk about them … it brings a smile. I have said it before and I will say it again … at my age now, I don’t want dreams … I want memories.