Im Not A Racist, This Is the Story of My Life (Part 1)

from the day we were born till the day we grew the first tooth, our greatest achievement was to be able to eat solid food. 

from the day we were crawling till the day we took our first step, our greatest achievement was our ability to walk...saying the first word, first day at school, first best friend.....everyday was a blessing in disguise.

schooling days were my version of theme park which i had five days a week. rain or shine. cold or warm..my friends were my allies...together we did some crazy fun stuff. back in those days we only knew one skin colour. the colour of friendship. we didnt care if someone were yellow, brown, pink, white or watever.

then puberty hit..when boys were grabbing each other's crotch and having a cheeky laughter or playing ball with someone's pants during PE classes everything was very enjoyable. i tell myself thats probably because i had tonnes and tonnes of friends back then. being a school prefect, participating in competitions, debates, yada yada yada...

my world was filled with happiness and crazy fun. reflecting back on those days, now i realize that i never really had a clue how the boys at the corner of the classroom would feel like. but of course we never picked on them...

then came the 13 - 17 years time frame. it was secondary school and i was still passionate about going to school. we became close with the teachers...there were those teachers who despised us to their guts..and they were those who treated us like their friends. 

not too long after, began the rat race. that was the time when we were evaluated not only from the academics but also through contribution in extra curricular activities. 10% of the total points to enroll into university was non academic. unconsciously began a segregation.

i use the word segregation as opposed to 'healthy competition' among us in the same school. there were those of us who were high achievers, participated actively in school societies, uniformed bodies, school magazine, sports and there were those who were not doing so great but belonged to a certain ethnic group.

little did we know that all we had to be was belong to that particular ethnic group to be fish that would never have to swim opposite the current.

the second year the merit system was introduced, there was an obvious shift in the school. those pathetic losers who didnt have a good command in english, commendable leadership skills, did not participate in competitions, debates and quizzes to win the state title were being promoted to lead the prefect body over us who served the school for 5 years. at that tender age, it was very frustrating. we asked ourselves, what did we do wrong?

we didnt get the answer to that question till years to come.

the teachers who were supposed to teach us the values of gender / social / race / religious unbiasedness, were plotting and thinking of ways to give the non-performers a chunk of the cake which they did not deserve.

the most obvious of event was when these losers won the highest honour at the school's principal awards when they only enrolled in our school for form 6 compared to us who were in the school from form 1.

Probably that seemed to be the only way for these people to attain that 10% merit points. we, on the other hand were sidelined despite the fact that we made the school proud in so many ways.

then it hit us and it hit us hard...