you will lose if you refuse to choose

long ago, i had this big ass pencil case. you know like those that you buy from al-arqam dudes. i used to doodle random shit on it using the trusty standard kilometrico blue ballpens including one big FUCK (we were in school, we had no other reason to use curse words except to be able smile to ourselves thinking we just did something cool, hoping the friends would notice, and think it's cool too, although it's not, at all).

in our school english classes were grade discriminatory. this meant that although generally i was in the dumbest class in my stream, the colonial language, my saviour, being the only proof my brain was capable of sending signals, made it possible for me to join the top hierarchy just whenever it's time for english.

unfortunately, one day while me and two of my faithful escapist friends skipped the first few minutes (few meaning 45 to an hour) of this elite class, i took a while longer as my morning shit was more needy than usual due to the "hearty" nasi lemak. when i came to class putting on my innocent schoolboy face i hadn't realized that we had done this a time too many and the teacher who was also the football coach was as pissed as the sith lord when.. err. whenever he felt like it.

my friends whom entered earlier managed to escape with merely a few measly pushups. i, instead had the big dude who was actually usually calm and jovial holding on to my collar with a pissed face that nobody has seen before. i guess "i had a bowel emergency, teacher" would definitely not work around this point, i know.. i tried. i sweated like a pig (which means you muslims can't eat me now, haha padan muka). in the end i got banished into the second class.

the second class was run by a kelantanese chinese. a jovial but not so calm dude who is also capable of isolated fits of anger. however, none was apparent when one day he accidentally saw the big FUCK on my pencil case. instead he smiled and said "wow, you really got the blues". i didn't and will never understand what he meant. maybe him knowing that there's no relevance for the stamping of the word FUCK on a pencil case, decided to utter something of no relevance to that something of no relevance too, what's the relevance? that's exactly what he wants you to think to punish you for making him ask himself the same question.

actually him being cool about things like this might be one of the reasons i will never (and just maybe, will never want to) learn to write in proper english like everyone else. add that to the fact that he always gave me good marks.

all of my essays in his class were of the same variety. i would always pick the option in which you start with one sentence and everything else is open ended. my stories were heavily influenced by tarantino movies as i was crazy about them back when i was 14 or 15 (hence the affinity with FUCK). i always used simple english and modest vocabs because the only literary influence i had were enid blyton, roald dahl, and the sports section of the new straits times. still, he kept giving me good marks.

this helped me to maintain being myself, but at the same time de-synchronizing my existence from the rest of english malaysia. sure i got an A for the subject in SPM, but i got 3B written next to it. which probably meant the dude/dudette who marked my essay was not too impressed with my elementarily-worded story about a criminal heist gone wrong, and prison life.

all the while, the other top english students were writing smart bombastic pieces about paradigm shifts worthy of a documentary or really beautifully written love stories worthy of a film of titanic proportions that made the girls oooh and ahh while it was read to the whole class. wise of my teacher to never make me recite mine aloud. i guess only me and him will ever get to possess the useless knowledge that the protagonist in my tales looked like kurt cobain and had a cool latino friend who wears a sleveless shirt and carries a glock around (don't ask, think lou diamond phillips).

maybe, other people shouldn't know when you've got the blues.

but back then, who in fuck would've predicted the coming of blogs.

wahukgeageahukgeaukgawahugkea.