True/false stories

1.

I used to like school. But, I’m at a breaking point. School has become a place not for learning, but a prison where I would spend the hours gazing at the walls and shaky ceiling fans.  Teachers spend most of the time giving lectures about life instead of imparting knowledge essential for passing the “O” levels. Classmates spend most of the time talking about soccer, online games, and “hot” Koreans. I’ve had enough!

With the door closed and music blasting, I lie on my bed and start to plan. The devil inside me pops up and gives me a hand with the guilt while my brain start to come out with all sorts of crazy ideas. I move my head to the beat of the music playing. After a while, the music is slowly starting to become a distraction. I am close to a near perfect plan and nothing can spoil my concentration. I always believe that the most important thing in a plan is the escape or the “final part of it”. Therefore, I grabbed the remote beside me, and turned off the stereo.

It’s Monday morning. It’s time to carry out the plan. I try to remain calm as I recollect the steps I had noted down in my brain last night. First, act natural and walk to the bus stop. My mum likes to escort me with her eyes to the bus stop every morning and I only noticed it a few weeks back. Second, wait for a while before walking back home. I had to change out of my school socks and shoes and I had no reason to bring a pair of slippers to school. Luckily, my parents didn’t get a shoe cabinet, so some of the slippers would be left outside the gate for convenience. Third, proceed to MacDonald. MacDonald is my workplace and the only place I feel happy in nowadays.

With a bittersweet feeling in my heart, I begin the 20 minutes walk to Compass Point.

2.

“One more year, just one more year”, I always say to myself when I have the urge to skip school and go get a mc. Today is no different. I have to force myself with the guilt of disappointing my mum, to go to school.

The problem I have with school is not the overwhelming amount of homework or the complicated math. In fact, I love doing homework, especially math homework. The problem I have with school is the people I’m attending school with, plus the lousy teachers who replaced the good ones last year. School now has become like a prison, like the movie “I Not Stupid” describe.

Today, I take the usual bus to school, walk on the usual pathway, climb the usual flight of stairs up to the classroom, walk up to the usual desk and sit on the usual chair. As usual, lessons are filled with meaningless lectures about life targeted at the bunch of troublemakers sitting at the back of the class as I stare at the shaky ceiling fans wondering when they will drop and eliminate the troublemakers.

The bell then rings to signal recess and I waited for the teacher to leave before fishing out my Walkman to enjoy my music and the quiet classroom. I close my eyes and plant my head onto the desk. The morning hasn’t been that good as I have just been told that I have to redo an assignment. All of a sudden, I feel a strong force seizing my earphones away from my ears and with the mixture of the disappointment of my rejected assignment and the anger of having music removed forcefully, I immediately stood up and swung my right fist with the strength I can conjure and directed it at the area where a person’s nose is located. I feel my knuckles ache and a little moisted too and I looked up. I see Mdm Ng holding up her hands to her nose and at that moment, I knew that my Walkman would definitely be confiscated.