Back to School – the Kindergartner, the Careless Child, the Morning Jogs and the Dear ol’ Bus

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Nowadays, with a son aged two, there are lots of discussions on schools. Quite naturally for me, it’s easy to drift back and think of the good ol’ days. Let’s all go back to school…

K.G. K:

I don’t remember a lot of my kindergarten days except us kids gathered around the teacher’s table, running out, playing in the sand and a classmate who once came up to me, advising me to discard my soiled handkerchief. She said that’s what her mother did after blowing her nose. “But you throw away tissue papers not hankies”, I countered. “Even that’s white just like this. I’m sure it’s the same. It should be thrown”, she stuck to her resolve.

To my mother’s relief I didn't take that advice seriously.

THE PENCILS AND THE WATER BOTTLE:

My pencil box and my water bottle were two challenges that I couldn't tackle throughout my schooling period. My pencil box, the one commanded to return as is, was almost always destined to return half empty – I had adventurous pencils that never returned to the box. Thankfully, my eraser, sharpener and scale lacked the enthusiasm of their skinny counterpart. On the contrary, my water bottle, the one that was supposed to be empty by the end of the day, got back just the way it left home. I never seemed to get that right.

I believe my father invested quite a sum of money into pencils. Gladly, the pens I owned found their way back into my pouch everyday. Some lessons take time, I guess...

THE BUS STOP:

I lived 15 minutes away from where my school was located. Ours was the first pick-up point and we had, probably, five others before we reached our destination. We had pick-up points that were a stone’s throw away from each other. Talk about convenience!

If any of my friends are of the opinion that I am a late Kate – it’s true and it’s been there from time immemorial. It was a usual sight for my bus mates to see me jogging behind the 7:30 a.m. bus to catch it at least at the next pick-up point. There were times when I have wondered if I would make it to the Guinness Book of World Records if I ran behind it till school.

I am grateful that my non-athletic nature shunned looking into this possibility on a serious note.

THE BUS

In the beginning bus rides were all about reciting rhymes over and over again, jumping in the bus when it goes over humps; laughing at things I just can’t seem to remember, etc. 

In high school, bus rides were still fun but on a different note. There were four of us who were the oldest on the bus. It was an unwritten rule that the right hand side of the longest seat at the back of the bus; and the one in front of it was ours. That was our gossip-cum movie replay zone.

Friday being a holiday, it was customary for a new movie to be out on cassettes every Thursday evening. It was also customary for Channel 33 – the then local TV Channel of Dubai to play a Hindi movie on Thursday nights. The four of us used to enact these movies that we would have watched over the weekend. I don’t know how we did them after viewing the movie just once, but we did it with a lot of vigor and zeal. It was as if we had a screen test coming up soon. Nothing was rehearsed for this act. If all four of us hadn't watched the same movie, there wouldn't be any acting sessions, just motivations with highlights to watch the movie. It was sheer fun!

Talking about fun, there comes to my mind another incident which was pure fun when we were at it, but not quite after a while. This one was with my gang in class – six of us. It was one of those boring high school days. I don’t have a speck of memory with regards to why we didn't have class and what we were doing loitering in the campus. At that age, the thought of bunking classes was not even an idea at its genesis. Whatever the reason be, the point is that we had nothing to do. Roaming around the campus on that hot day, we stopped by for some shade at the parking lot allotted for the school buses. We noticed that there was nobody around – just open buses. What did we fancy about a parked bus? I don’t know - I'm not 11 anymore. It’s human to have aching legs the moment you see empty seats. So we hopped into one of the buses. At first it was the echo of our footsteps in a still and empty bus that intrigued us. I don’t know when the devil got the better of us; because before we knew, we were cheering and racing each other - two at a time. If that wasn't bad enough, we decided to run over the seats, along the aisle with one foot each on adjacent seats. I wish I could tell you that you should try that some time because it was super fun. Once we were drained from this activity, we realized that all the seats were soiled with our footprints on them. By the time, sense put a reign on us and we decided to wipe them away with our handkerchiefs, one of us spotted a man, dressed in a bus driver’s uniform, walking towards the bus. Out we jumped and ran away for the fear of being caught! All those moral studies of being apologetic and owning up one’s faults went down the drain. I swear I saw myself getting scolded at in the Principal’s office, my dad’s angry face and an eventuality which I didn't know how to imagine – all this in the split of a second.

Never once later had any one of us suggested doing such a thing on a boring day which is verdict in itself that we all swore inwardly never to repeat such a thing ever again.

I think I'll stop for today. Hope you had a fun ride so far. This is not all. I’ll be back with more school memories tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Also Read:

Back to School – the Early Morning Chorus, the Mighty Rains, the Creaky Cabins, and the Game of Hide and Seek
Back to School - the Biscuit, the Dance and the Sketches