Yesterday Once More

Just 2 days ago, I was helping mum sort through the boxes of old textbooks, exercise books, novels, magazines and periodicals that she had been hoarding eversince we finished our primary, secondary and tertiary education. Mum had a habit of hoarding and almost every corner of our family house is full of old stuff and things that she had been "keeping" for the past 40 years. 

As we went through the boxes of books, old memories started coming back. There were textbooks, workbooks and even testpapers from my primary and secondary school days. These books reminded me of my childhood and teenage years, when I did my homework with the help of dad, as tuition were unheard of during those days. Memories of my classmates and teachers, many whom I have not seen or heard from for ages. I remember vividly, when I was in form one, we had a very unpopular integrated science teacher, an Indian known as Mr. V. Mathew. He had a reputation of being very bad and quick tempered and struck terror in our hearts in the science laboratory. When his tempers flared, he resorted to tearing our science worksheets and yelling at us at the top of his voice. Whenever any one of us failed in his test, he would punished us by forcing us to rewrite the questions and answers all over again, sometimes 50, 100 or 200  times. There was one occasion, when a classmate failed her test on the chapter of reproduction in humans, and she had to write the word "penis" 100 times! Just imagine that! Fortunately, he was transferred to another school the following year and thereafter, a more mild mannered teacher took over.

I also came across my report cards and looking at those marks I scored, it is a wonder that I managed to do that " well" without the tuition, internet, reference and assessment books. Well, as the saying goes, life is alot "simpler" those days. We did not have internet or facebook, MSN so we improvised our own games, played with marbles, swam in drains and rivers, climbed the trees and so on. We can say that we are also a resilient, knowledgeble and capable lot.

Sadly, the books had to be dispose off as both Ruth and her cousin Jane would no longer be using them.  Most of information are outdated and no longer relevant to the current school curriculum. So, there were 10 boxes of the books and other odds and ends to be picked up by mum's scrap collector. .