Form Four, 1978 - Part One

FORM FOUR, 1978 – PART ONE

In the first week of January 1978, I went back to school to check the results of my Lower Cambridge Examinations. To my surprise and joy, I had passed!

Immediately, I went to Pertama Shopping Complex, the place where real guys shop, and looked for a new pair of olive-green pants, the color of my new long school pants representing the raw jungle spirit in us. Never did I realize (which I later found out) that it actually symbolized the disoriented feel of being lost in the jungle. I guess the government, with its vast experience of jungle drifting, knew what it was like to be in Form Four and chose this color for us.

While most rich people bought the regular issues made of soft cotton, I had to buy the type made of tough cotton, like those used by poor, pioneer miners in the Wild West. And so, mine was a pair of Lee® jeans, in government sanctioned olive-green color that came with a matching thick leather belt tied by an oversized gun-metal buckle. When I stick in a pack of Marlboro into the back pocket, I was transformed. If I was a white man, I’ll call myself Eastwood or sometimes Clint. All that was missing was a gun sling, a whip, a hat, and maybe, a Jessica Simpson. I learned that, in life, it all boils down to your choice, and I’ve made the sharp one, knowing I’ll be the only one wearing so ruggedly. I was ready for the ride. And for the first time, I’m beginning to like school.

When I walked up to school on that first day, the expected awe happened. I became a legend (as written in my diary) when the headmaster pulled me up to showcase me as an example to all the students standing in attention: “This is not a place for cowboys!”

Then he kicked me out of school after a whip, all because I wore something of a different material, one regularly used by the Marlboro man. He must have hated cowboys very much; maybe as a kid his cowboy sisters dressed him up as a female Red Indian. Man, I hate people with psychotic childhoods, especially those who grow up with it and became the headmaster. As I went out the iron gates, like Clint riding into the sunset, I sang his song, “Rawhide…Rawhide…when the going gets tough, the tough gets going (to the coffee shop).” Finally, I just love school!!!

But, what about my promising job at the petrol station, the one that taught me so much about management, and, over last December, gave me so much? I think, in a few more months, I will lift myself off the foundation grade and into the air-conditioned office where a cashier’s job has my name on it. And, it won’t be more than a few more years away before I hit the eminent rank of a manager, with a Renault company car and the keys to the private toilet. I have this thought running through my intern mind as I headed to the coffee shop while holding the scroll of LCE certificate in my hands. Sometimes, I felt like tearing it into pieces because this issue of whether to continue with my studies or continue with work is really tearing me apart.

A few non-alcoholic drinks later, and after the exhilaration of the Red Indian psycho had worn off me, I came to my senses. I decided to work three days a week and attend two days of classes. In this way, I’ll make myself happy and make my parents’ too.  To manage this delicate task of balancing my need for a career and a need for an education, I didn’t use a clone or put up a mannequin in class. Instead, I used my Huey helicopter-view technique and took advantage of the chaotic situation on the ground. Now, you know why they call me Sergeant. The ones running the school, middle-aged people who had never wore jeans before, were still sorting out the type of classes to put us into, as some who almost failed their LCE were accommodated back. It was an interim period where we were just randomly placed in classes and allowed to just chill. Naturally, everyone took advantage of this liberty and rampaged like soldiers on R&R – smokes were coming out of the most unexpected nooks. This tested those soft people’s soft management skills, but to my pleasure, when the going gets tough, the soft gets going around in circles. I took this window of opportunity to run two parallel lines simultaneously (Look at all the powerfool management words I have mastered at that age). And I was glad that I had many friends who didn’t rat on me.

However, by February, it was getting tricky. The softies had figured out a prototype and students were soon put into the right classes which began to, surprisingly, run smoothly and punctually. My excuses of sickness, dead relatives, and the weather were becoming suspicious. It was very soon when I had to make a decision at the crossroads, just like my mentor, Mr. Shakespeare: To be, or not to be? I meant: to be in class or to be in a petrol station. I was so confused. I was so stressed. Until, I heard it from a girl one day.

This well-manicured girl, with the latest uneedsex hairstyle, pouted her lips and heaved her chest in one deep breath as she sat next to me. After a long inhale of my space, she exhaled and smiled, “Saunders, you smelled so nice today.” I was stunned, not so much by her chest’s movements, but by the irreconcilability of her statement – I was stunk of petrol from my day job and she said I smelled nice. So, I had to ask for her deep explanation. She mentioned something about Ferrari and sex before the teacher cut into our conversation, “You zit face, clean up that nose bleed!” 

That night, I was wide awake, thinking about her breathing and the Ferrari she mentioned.

The next morning, I had a defining dream just as I was about to wake up. It wasn’t a wet dream. It was something meaningful and symbolic. I was walking out of a red Ferrari, and a sexy lady, strangely looking like the uneedsex girl from school came up to me all breathing and whispered into my ear, “I love the smell of your exhaust fumes. It makes you so powerful…I want it now!”

Okay, so I lied! I did have the best wet dream.

My neurons fired up as I made an intense discovery. It was a light bulb moment! When the uneedsex girl in my class told me that I smelled nice, she had smelled the petrol on me and related it to the similar, empowering smell of a Ferrari’s exhaust fumes. It’s just like when we used to chase after the postman and tried to smell his two-stroke bike’s polluting fumes – it was arousing and addictive. In other words, the petrol on me aroused her senses, which in turn, benefited my dreams.

Immediately after I got dressed, I headed to the petrol station and quit my job without even waiting for the paycheck. Then, I splashed on some aphrodisiac petrol before rushing back to school, and sat next to her, who gave me the sexiest smile all day long while breathing my space. Wow! I can always earn my money later, but now, I’m going to savor my moments with my well-manicured, breathing girl. I felt so powerful and stiffed.

So, because of a girl, I continued my studies.

The teachers said Form Four is going to be a bit different. It’s more like a welcoming back year after the hectic Form Three of last year. It’s a honeymoon year. Love is in the air. Birds are singing. Bees are doing.  So, come back and study. But, I think it’s a story created by the teachers to get us back into school so that they get paid.

I had a choice to change to a Vocational school. I liked it, not only because it rhymes with vacational, but to learn hands-on about mechanical and engineering stuffs. I get excited when I come near power saws, power routers, power drills, power screwdrivers, and power sanders – just holding them turns me on like petrol to her. Regrettably, I didn’t opt for it, again, all because of her. At our school, we had industrial class, a kindergarten version of Vocational, without any power equipment but a few manual screwdrivers and spanners for us to play with. I don’t even get to chisel anything. Still, I paid attention, unlike some of my buddies who went around the corner to smoke up their lungs. But, to compensate, there were plenty of boring lectures on DIY. It’s not do-it-yourself back then, it was more like do-it-yawning.

That’s the problem with school – they always do things half-heartedly – never full steam ahead, unlike us boys every morning. Come on, 99% of school headmasters are guys; so, they should know what I’m talking about or what’s it like in the morning. Why did they let those highly-valued courses be like a half-raised flag – somebody died? Maybe, it’s the Education Dept. I don’t know if it was run by a man or not because we were never allowed near that barb-wired place up in Federal Hill.

So, to compensate, we were left to do our full-steam stuffs elsewhere; like in the cinemas, yeah, watched till our eyes popped out; at the coffee shops where we talked all night (ever wonder why mamak stalls are so full of students?); at the Marlboro and Camel deserts, and even the Dunhill stores, or how about the Winston skies with the gliding eagles? And, please don’t accuse us of not giving 99% full-steam during class. We did put in the 99% sitting quietly in class staring at the walls, just like what all those Members of Parliament, who gave full-steam 99% (or took), do in the august house every session.

Although I didn’t always give 99% like I always did for her, I was not too bad at school, just moderate. I am of the opinion that it’s better to moderate my life with tinges of vices here and there, now and then, to balance off the life-long strict reminders of ‘You’d better be obedient’. But as usual, when I took up a philosophy, those who didn’t want to be moderate labeled me mediocre and said I lacked ambition. Unlike me, they aim high to be the top student. But, I realized there’s no hype being a top student – they burn out too early. And, most bum out in their later years. You don’t believe me? Just look at your boss and his secretary late in the office? Or, look at some top students who became powerfool in their later years, men like Bill Clinton and that IMF guy?

In their school days, guys like them looked down on moderates like me and my friends. I discovered that they, the A1 boys (we call them ass–one boys), disguised in ass-smooching prefect clothes and hiding under positions in debate societies, are actually nerds that studied a lot. But, in their later years, they had burned all their energy and had enough of hiding daily under their Armani, conservative shells.  So, they ditched their costumes, and in search of new energy, they came out roaring like wild, free madmen!  On the contrary, just like my buddies, I was already a wild, free madman in my school days, but in my later years, I got burned out and turned to writing novels.

The moral of this story, if you believe in one, is, please, don’t fret if your kids comes home every day with a new moderate behavior. All you need to do is just moderate his moderate behavior. Let him be, and let him ride through his learning process, but preferably not the Marlboro rides, as I discovered recently, they cause collateral damages like those pictured all around the box. Most importantly, you must be there as his buddy to sensitively guide him while you ride with him.

Need a dummy’s guide on how to do this? If your once-upon-a-time-cute son brings out a cigarette to smoke, light one with him. Don’t try to tell him about the cancer stuffs or ballast about the collateral damages; they’ll only turn him on.  Use go-astern or 'gostan' psychology.

“Hey dude, wassup…wanna bum me a stick?” this is how you buddy up to him. And then you suckered up with, “You should get a tattoo like 50 cents … but … maybe wait until Justin Bieber got one.”

Get the hang of it? When you see him smile and he opened up his brains to let you in, whether because of your dumb acting or your pathetic stammer, you go for the sublime hit, the way we ex-olive-pants guys do after with our mistresses, “Do you know that each time we sucked on this, how much money is sucked by the government?”

Right! You are nailing him about how much taxes he’s paying on that roll of tobacco and how 100% of that will silently go to those guys who sits in Parliament – those turncoats who have businesses run under their mother-in-laws’ name. Get it? Basically, every kid has a rebellious streak in them. Extrude this mean streak and relate to it by telling him: decent citizens like you and he, from now onwards, should stop being suckers – don’t pay any more taxes. Try this, and if he’s the stubborn type, he’ll stop smoking. That’s how I stopped. Ironic, isn’t it?

I don’t know how to advise you if your kid is more than moderate, like extremist because I wasn’t extreme in my behaviors. Maybe, you could consult Osama, Rev. Jones, or Al Capone, but you have to wait till you meet them later in another life. So, maybe, smoking helps you get there faster.

. . . to be continued.