Two Sides - Broken & Woven

My first elementary school was just across the street, a mere five-minute walk away. This school had many children from out of town, whose parents either worked in the nearby market or factories. These families didn't harbor hopes of their children attending high school in Shanghai. Despite the nine-year compulsory education, the rate of students who made it to high school was less than twenty percent.

Looking back now, many of my less pleasant childhood memories originate from this place. However, I can't quite say what was right or wrong; perhaps there was no right or wrong.

From a young age, I was a student who always followed the teacher's instructions and loved studying. But in such a school environment, my efforts to please the teachers destined me to be unpopular among my peers.

Every time I took an exam, I scored a perfect one hundred. This led a boy to call me "duck egg" because of the two zeros in my score. He even wrote "OO" on my locker with red crayon, and it wouldn't come off no matter how hard I tried to erase it.

In the second grade, a new girl transferred to our class, and she immediately started playing with my best friend at the time. During roller skating class, I was left alone, gliding along the gym floor while everyone else gathered to play.

One day during a physical education class, for some inexplicable reason, everyone began scaring each other, mainly girls scaring boys. It might have been influenced by stories like "The Ring" or other horror tales. They put their hair in front of their faces and chased each other around the classroom.

It was loud, and I was getting annoyed, so I just stood there watching. Then, one girl came over, lifted my hair, and said, "Join us in scaring people!" I mustered a weak smile at her and continued standing on the side.

Later, because everyone was getting too rowdy and people were falling over, someone went to tell the teacher, and the teacher had to intervene.

The teacher asked who was scaring them, and the whole group of kids looked at me. The boy who had reported the incident pointed straight at me and said, "I don't know who started it, but the girls were involved, including 'duck egg'!"

He emphasized "including" loudly.

I saw the girl who had lifted my hair laughing happily because her actions had forced me to be part of the chaos.

I hadn't actively taken part, but because they said so, I was implicated. Although nothing significant happened afterward, the whole incident left me feeling disillusioned.

This is a story that's hard to explain, with no clear sense of right or wrong, and even harder to find meaning in. It's like a condensed version of those few years in that school - an abstract narrative. It wasn't until I transferred to a happier place that I was finally able to break free.

Story from Mimi Dorothea