Olden Days
I saw an old picture of me and my primary school friends standing on stage. Some of us were blowing through flutes and some were singing, for I suppose a farewell event. Our facial expressions were solemn in the picture. Looking back, I wonder what we felt on stage back then.
That old picture brought back memories. I have always been fascinated by the working of our memory. Sound, smell or visual imagery are keys that could evoke our past memories. Perhaps the last thing we hear, smell or saw before an event is committed to memory might be the potential key to bringing back our memory.
Through the picture, I could remember a few things. Below are two that happened in my late primary.
School bell.
There was a bell in front of teacher’s office, hung to the ceiling by a rope. It would rang a few times everyday — first in the morning when the school starts, second when class breaks and last when the school ends.
One day after the ending of a class break, a boy was tasked to rang the bell so that students could be ushered into their own classes. Due to the worn rope, the bell fell and hammered down the boy’s foot. He screamed in pain and was off school for weeks. He was A.
Hit and bleed.
This happened when I was in primary four. A student had been making noises during a class. Annoyed, the teacher knocked him on the head with a wooden ruler. Blood trickled down his head and he cried. His initial was A.W.