Kindergarten Blues

I remember when I was studying in elementary school (otherwise known as "kindergarten" here), I used to dread major events in which all the parents would attend and watch their offsprings put on embarassing performances against their will (all of the time).

God I hate those things, I tell ya.

Even from an early age, whereby most (not all) young tykes would still have monotonous & robotic thinkings, I was already light-years ahead of them in terms of maturity, sensing what was going around the kindergarten.

Needless to say, I was always the rebellious one, thwarting nearly all of their attempts to program my mind with communism and mindless obedience; I would not be brainwashed.

But none compares to the annual concerts and what-shits we were forced to put on for the sake of entertainment. Then the parents would all go "Aww" over their children's cutesy acts and blind them with repeated camera flashes. Sorry to say this but I don't believe in all your Communist-like ideology crap.

I recalled a year (could be 1987, I forgot) when our kindergarten suddenly decided to get cute and drafted out a plan for the kids to sing a few hootenanny songs while carrying a single cardboard with a letter affixed on it to form a single, complete word when joined with the rest. No doubt I hated the sick idea right from the start, but being young and powerless, I had to succumb to their vile wishes. As if being paraded on stage like an animal wasn't insulting enough, our teachers made it compulsory for everyone of us to wear heavy make-up, including those with two meatballs and a sausage.

Imagine my horror when the teacher came over, bound me to the chair and proceeded to apply lipstick. It was extra-red in color - all the more to make me stand out like an idiot onstage. What are they trying to teach us? That it's perfectly acceptable for boys to wear makeup and look gay? Trying to fight back and resist was futile as the leather straps were too thick and strong for a boy my age and size.

After almost an hour of thrashing and finicking, the evil deed was done, and the whole group of us paraded to the stage and like mindless drones (except me), they sang and danced in the most revoltingly cute way possible, and I suspect they did this to solicit as many "Awws" from the audience as possible. Oh shit.

If I had a gun at that time, I'd have been so proud to hunt down the teacher who slapped lipstick, blusher and eye mascara on me and chamber a few rounds into her wrinkled body to serve as a warning to the other teachers of the fate awaiting them should they ever try to get cute with me.

Finally, after 3 dreadful hours tasting lipstick and sweating a storm onstage, it was finally over. But the damage was done, and nothing I do would ever reverse the shame put upon me (the others were still too childish and dimwitted to even feel molested and brutalized). Later on, when my parents were both taking my hands in tow, they stopped short to speak to the same teacher who slopped paint on me. My hands weren't free at that moment, or else I'd unleashed a series of kung-fu moves that would've made Bruce Lee's chop-socks look like something out of a Teletubby show.

Then we went for late supper, I got to drink Coke, and subsequently back at home I remembered getting sick in the middle of the night, vomitted a Niagara-ful of puke and missed class the day after. Must've been something in the lipstick that the wicked teacher applied in an effort to try and kill me, but luckily I survived to tell this traumatizing tale.