First Things First — On Primary School and the 6 Years Spent there

Maybe I peaked in primary school. I had an image of a model student: straight As, excellent for a conduct grade, vice-chairperson of the student council. It was everything to me, and this is why it still haunts me. From time to time, I still reminisce about the memories I’ve collected from that period in my life; all of them now stored in a corner of my brain, collecting dust in an old tattered box until I pick them up occasionally. I would blow the top a little, sweep the dust off and then show it to the world — tell people about it and/or post a picture to upload onto social media. I then place it back where I found it, making a promise to sort and clean it one day. I don’t think about it for a while after and the cycle repeats. Recently, there was a week or so where I kept on dreaming about things related to primary school, which is what led me to writing this (that and the fact that I have exams in 3 days but instead my brain hates me and hence I can’t study). So, thanks for the spring clean?

Lower primary me was an ASS. In primary one and two, I had the eyes of my form teacher on me. For good reasons of course. Class Chairperson and first in the class and level, of course she would have had her eyes on me. I was confident, straightforward, daring, and also an ass. (I fought with this guy in my class verbally because he called me a chicken in primary one. I called him a chicken back and then our form teacher must have stopped the squabble before it escalated, forcing us, two stubborn 7 years olds, to apologise to each other. At the end of the day I had “Dear mother of Tan En, she had a small argument with a classmate of hers in class today, and it was not pleasant. I am utterly disappointed in her.” written in my school handbook. Ok it didn't write exactly that but I was so scared of my parents finding out that I never let them touch my handbook for the rest of the year, and when it was time to buy a new one for the next year, I readily threw it away without hesitation. I kind of wished I kept it though. The said guy later became a good friend of mine in primary two, seeing as to how we became deskmates, along with another girl, and the three of us flung erasers with plastic rulers to the back of the class once when the teachers were not looking together, competing to see who could fling theirs further. We sat at the back of the class then, and not to mention I was *still* class chairperson at that time. We never talked about the chicken incident since, and I also haven’t seen him since the last day of primary two, where we said goodbye and to see each other next year seeing how we were supposed to end up in the same class in primary three. He wasn’t there on the first day of school, and it seemed as if the school didn’t have an inkling of what happened too; his name was still on the class list and my new form teacher seemed confused when she marked his attendance as “absent” for the third day in a row. I don’t know where he is now, but I hope he’s doing alright. I need to tell him that the chicken nickname has stuck.)

Talking about primary school after I graduated felt like a bit like Lara Jean writing love letters to all the boys she’ve loved before, writing to capture the feelings of love and adoration but with zero intention of sending it out. It was fun to paint out experiences for those who had never experienced the things I did in primary school, one of the quirks of being in a secondary school that houses people from all across the country? I would replay the memory I had in mind, and then describe it and walk someone through what had happened, how I felt then, things like that. (think something along the lines of Inside Out) But for all the people involved in that specific memory, it wasn’t as if they knew I talked about them. Do I want them to know, to know that I remember something enough to talk about it highly, praise and poetic, to someone? To be able to fill the blank canvas in someone’s head with colour, projecting the tape shot in the cinemas of their heads? Maybe that was really a Lara Jean moment — I wrote the love letters for closure.

We move onto the next topic quickly after. No one really remembered what I said. Not even myself.

I was excited for the days as a primary three to come. “Middle primary” was what they called it. I would be a prefect-in-training, I was now a member of the school’s choir, I was in the first class in the level together with my best friends from kindergarten whom I’ve consistently bothered during our lower primary days. Honestly, I would say my favourite years in primary school were in primary three and four. New experiences with a new class I liked a lot, together with amazing form teachers (both of them had one thing in common and that was buying us food. Mrs L would get us cake at the end or start of every term to celebrate the birthdays of those who had theirs during the term, and Mr K got us bubble tea during the last day of primary four for class party. I think he got us Koi.), what could go wrong? Maybe puberty started hitting me then. I was definitely growing, like a video game character levelling up after gaining experience points. I had a pretty close-knit group of friends and was also learning new things (SCIENCE… Remember when we could easily score full marks for our science tests? I am now a struggling trip science student.), and with that came a shift in thinking and knowledge. (I think this was where we started picking up curse words too, and aggressively shushed each other when one would say it, giggling afterwards.) It was a time I enjoyed a lot, from spilling my best friend’s secret about their crush to the exact guy they were crushing on then (because I was such a trustworthy friend then, wasn’t I?) to stealing one or two tomato chilli chips from the packet someone just got, because I always bought food to school and my mom didn’t allow me to buy chips from the snack store since I never had a need to, and I was obedient enough to follow her orders, to planning for Mrs L’s farewell with my friends (to which I now say, what the HECK how did we pull that off. Now I can’t look at the pack of Daiso tissue paper carnations I have in my cupboard the same way again.), and to the math olympiad sessions which would start an hour after lunch on Fridays (I think?), which the few of us would spend that free hour in the library pulling out dictionaries to search all the dirty words up and then laugh over them because we didn’t have anything better to do. We also had an air conditioned classroom in primary four because the school started constructing the new block and “dust would fly into our classrooms”. There’s really nothing like always wearing a pink, Uniqlo Chuppa Chup jacket to school and learning in a place that we purposely set at 18ºC.(The lowest we could have set the air-con at was actually 25ºC, but we did fiddle around with the control sometimes)

On the day we received our report books in P4, I realised that I wasn’t going to be in the same class as the friends I’ve grown the closest to in the past two years, and I was sad and salty (talk about an amazing combination of feelings) as Zootopia plays in the background, seeing how all three of them had a different class name written next to the “Class for Next Year” portion of the report book. Another page is flipped.

29th May 2019. I had been slightly reluctant to attend Speech Day, seeing how it was Sportsfest that day too and I was excited to sit under hot weather at Serangoon Stadium, even though I am not athletic in any way and barely cared about sports. But I house pride, and I loved screaming house cheers in my purple shirt. (There was also the promise of hanging out with friends at NEX after, the Milo van and cheerleaders. I’m so sorry BUT HAVE YOU SEEN THEM) So, with how I *would* “be able to experience it next year” and how I *wouldn’t* have many chances to do a Valedictorian speech ever again in my life, (both of which I now would reply to with a lifeless “haha”) I went back to my primary school. To be honest, it was really scary seeing all the people I knew again. The last time I talked to most of them was half a year ago, and obviously that made the whole atmosphere awkward. It also didn’t help that I was then, and still is, bad at striking up conversations and amazing at overthinking, so I remembered just sitting there for the entire duration, words stuck in my throat. When it was time to do my Valedictorian Speech, I was shaking. I still went up on stage, paper with what I had written myself and corrected by my father in hand. And then it went fine. I messed up a little, and stuttered here and there, to which people obviously didn’t care about because I, myself knew for sure that the students in the crowd were *definitely* falling asleep, but in my head that experience was so traumatising that it has stuck with me until this day. No more speeches, I was done with them. Nope. Zero. Absolutely none. (“I love you 3000 huh?” a classmate? Friend? turned and asked playfully after I returned to my seat, seeing how I was seated behind them. Apart from the fact that I do remember who asked that question and their identity is blurry to me, Avengers: Endgame had just been released and of course it was popular then, seeing how 10 years of the MCU was getting an resolution and how big of a thing it was. I remember watching it with my family and sobbing really hard when [spoilers] Tony Stark died. I also remember my father suggesting I put that line there in my speech as the last line for an impactful ending, to which I readily agreed because, impactful ending. It’s funny looking back at it.)

Primary 5. You’re now in upper primary and everyone starts telling you about this thing called the PSLE. The infamous Primary School Leaving Examinations started to creep towards us like a bad ache, as the expectations and burden of scoring well enough sits on our shoulders, making us hunch our backs over the study table, worksheets and worksheets to complete. I’m exaggerating — As compared to what I’m going through now as a secondary school student, my upper primary years were nothing. Sure, I had my eyes set on this *one* secondary school which topped the secondary school rankings posted on KiasuParents (do people still use that site?) on posting day every year, along with three other “elite schools” (It’s the name we’ve created for ourselves, not so much of the people. This is a topic for another time), and I needed to work hard for it, but my nose would be a metre longer if I said I pulled all-nighters and finished a stack of those PSLE exam papers they sell at printing shops for all 5 of my subjects (I took Higher Chinese too). Upper Primary was seriously, so, so fun, and I do remember it the most vividly too, seeing how it was only 4 years ago and I also had just gotten a phone then too, traces of my pre-teenaged self stored in a technological space for me to look at years later.

There were opportunities left, right, centre (debate, oh debate. Remember when I could still do public speaking? And things like math olympiad and writing competitions and all the things I used to be “good at”. Also the one thing that led me to appear on the newspapers (not Straits Times) which I will not say what it is, or else all of you will start trying to dig it up) for me to develop myself (aka I was an overachiever then), and experiences like zoo camp (IT WAS SO MUCH FUN I remember sneaking out to the toilet at 3? 4am? and the two Night Safari giraffes. I know it’s no longer funny but I’ll never let the joke die down.) and deliberately going to the newer, much cleaner, and further away toilet in the ISH block after our classrooms were moved to the AVA rooms in preparation for our PSLE. (“It’s for you to get used to your exam venues,” the teachers said. We cared more about how we were going to have air-cons in class again instead of a bees.) Not to mention, the nerf gun wars we had (I’ve always been close to my younger brother since I was young, so of course I liked the adrenaline the nerf wars brought me. What I did not like was someone getting shot in the face or eye and then being in pain afterwords because feelings would always be bitter and it would send me into a state of panic and worry for that fallen friend.), especially the one Mdm T let us have in Primary 5. I even got to shoot one of the PE teachers because he asked me to. (he wanted to see how painful getting shot with a rubber, Nerf Rival, ball-bullet was. I was the closest in the vicinity and of course I agreed to his request. He let out a grunt a second after I pressed the trigger and yelled at me to stop firing.)

The “new-room” smell is one of my favourite scents ever, I don’t know how to describe it but it was exactly how the AVA room that “housed” my class smelt like then. It’s distinct, standing out, yet it’s what nostalgia smells like to me — the moments where we, mere 12 years old, were the most stressed out, where we spent our final preparation days and where we screamed upon finishing our last papers; anxiety and pure joy combined, truly a highlight. It also reminds me of him. (This is so embarrassing and I can really skip this whole section but what’s primary school without prepubescent feelings? Ha! Please let me live after this, I’m being vulnerable here.) To be honest, my crush on Friend A is justifiable. I won’t get into the details (for my own sake. I’m so going to regret publishing this part and I’m already choosing my words super carefully for this section) but I can definitely write an essay on this if I wanted to. (In Primary 4, he placed a piece of paper that wrote “I have a crush on you” in my angel-mortal envelope. The first thought that came to my mind was “what the hell” because 1) you don’t just write that and not tell me anything, especially since you sit behind me in class. We’re friends???? 2) ??? why ???and on second check, it was a harmless joke after all. He wrote “jk” in the smallest handwriting a blunt pencil could allow behind, to my relief. I think I still have the note somewhere in the house, but I haven’t had any luck finding it.) If I were to give my past self a piece of advice, it would be to confess. You’re not going to see him after entering Secondary School again anyways, so what’s there to fear about? Losing your pride and dignity? Pfft. He probably had an inkling of my feelings then, but there definitely are some words left unsaid, from yours truly.

Metaphorically, my upper primary days were like the weekly before gaohua stay back catching sessions we had. As higher mother tongue students, we had to stay back every Friday for an extra hour of class since “we had more content to cover”, and every week before class started we would run down to the canteen, quickly eat our food and then gather in the hall or parade square (but mostly the hall. There’s significance to that bear with me for a while) to play some variation of catching (virus, ice and water etc) until it was time for our class to start. There was never anyone in the hall, so it became our playing grounds — free for us to run around in, screaming at friends and voluntarily getting caught because that was my “strategy”, and not because I was slow at running. (I still had dignity and pride then.) Even though we were well-aware that class was starting soon, and it was important, we would only stop when we saw our teacher waiting for us outside the staff room nearby. It’s a simple and carefree memory spanning across a year or so, but it only resonated with me when I started to miss it. I wonder why the closest experience I’ve had to this in secondary school was either running to the parade square in the Anderson campus 5 minutes before morning assembly or getting chased by a friend after making the worst joke ever. There were definitely people watching both times.

The doors of the bus opens once I reached my stop, and in front of me is one of my primary school classmates. She plays basketball, and goes to the school near my house (which explains why she was at that bus stop) now. There’s no slowing down of time, or any eye-contact made, but in that moment, I wonder what could have been if I had greeted her — My legs reacted naturally after alighting the bus, making me walk the route from the bus stop back to my block out of habit. I spared a glance back at where she was and then saw her leaving the bus stop.

Fleeting. That’s what these moments were like.

And that was not the first time something like that has happened after I had graduated from primary school. I curse me and my ability to recognise people I’ve seen long enough too well, because that has resulted in moments where feelings of questioning (“Should I talk to them?”), fear (“What if they don’t recognise me?”), anxiety (“What do I do if they don’t recognise me and I just look like an idiot standing there?”), confidence (“I’m going to talk to them”) and then apprehension again all course through my head. And then it’s over. A second later, our bodies past each other, two in a sea of many, and then you’re gone when I look back. It’s now one in a sea of many. (I later post a Whatsapp status about meeting a primary school classmate whom I’m sure “they didn’t see me” and then get messages asking “who”, to which I reply and then forget about, because messages get buried over time and status updates disappear in 24 hours.)

I’m tired, so I put whatever I had managed to dig up back in the box I found them, colour fading and the inked scribbles already bleeding into the material. I know there’s still parts of it I haven’t cleaned, memories at the bottom untouched, fading, soon-to-be forgotten, but it was nice to clean the ones at the top this time. I’ll just clean the others next time. I wonder how much I’ll remember another ten, twenty years later, laugh quietly and think “We’ll just have to see,” to myself. The box is back where it I found it again, and I leave it there in favour of worrying over how cubic graphs and logarithmic functions work. (Those absolutely cannot collect dust. I have two math exams tomorrow.)