Flashback 000001

Hi all,

This will be one of the many in the series of my memories, be they good or bad. This is the reason why I'm  posting two posts in a day and posting in spite of the fact that I haven't done my Geog 1.8 yet. 

While waiting for my dad after my piano tuition, a boy just walked up to me and asked me, "Excuse me, were you the Vice-Head Prefect?" As I answered yes, I asked a question of my own, "What class are you in now?", even though I've never seen him before. He answers "5H" with a smile. As I waved him goodbye and walked away, I suddenly got into one of my writing mood. It's like a mood where you suddenly feel like writing essays and the like, you know? It's basically the opposite of writer's block. But anyway, yeah, this is how the story goes.

The boy stood behind the pillar nervously, eyes shifting from the announcement book he had just left on the stage, to the reading student population whose eyes would soon pin him down, and to the mike which he would hold later. The beads of sweat tricking down his back, usually a rare occurrence, was affecting his mind crazily now, and he tried to remember what he was supposed to say. This was different from acting. In acting, you know it was most likely make believe, you know that all it will do is to propel your name into stardom, but this...this was totally different.

When the bell rang, he heard it with astonishing clarity, and it seemed to be like a death sentence, a death sentence that rang for 5 seconds and set off a general murmur as students rejoiced the end of silent reading and kept their books. He made his way to the stage, attempting to cool down that jumping heart of his that he swore was what everyone was looking at now. The flag-raisers took their positions. They had it easy, the boy thought. Just raising the flag. That's all they do. The conductor, a P6 veteran, looked at him with question, asking him if he was ready. He could barely detect the faintest hint of scorn, of surprise, and of acceptance of impending doom as he nodded his approval and nodded his head, while making his way up the small, elevated stone platform doubling as a stage. 

As he looked around, the general murmur was raised by quite a few decimals as the general school population silently sized up this new guy. He could almost hear them saying, "Who's that? I thought that only a P6 can do it? What's this P5 doing here?" He quelled the general whispering as he spoke into the mike, "School, please stand." The whispering, like the wind caressing the leaves as it made its swift journey past, stopped at once. Trying to imitate the senior's authoriative tone and praying for a shred of confidence to make him sound more like his senior and less like a wimp, he enunciated, "School, atten-tion!"

To his general surprise, what folllowed after that was good. As he recited the pledge, he could feel the student body reciting with him, and for the first time, he felt something coursing through his veins, spreading through his soul, an emotion which he had not felt for a really long time. Pride. Finishing up the pledge and the announcements, he left the stage, to be greeted by the looks of pleasant surprise by the P6 seniors. That wasn't too bad, he thought. It wasn't any trouble at all. 

It was a year later. The boy stood on stage, tall, proud, and thinner than he was the year before. As he went up on stage, his aura of sadness of palpable. Those who looked at him were wondering what was happening, especially the innocent, bubbly P5s, who were the ones standing in front of him. Going through the process of being the "commander", he knew that the P6 prefects could feel his anguish. Even though he was the Vice-Head, he had more friends than the Head Prefect, for the Head commanded respect, while he commanded friendship. He knew it was inevitable, he knew that sooner or later, the PSLE would take higher priorities than his prefectorial duties, but as he stepped off the stage, a close observer would have noticed that the boy's eyes were red, and he rushed off in the direction of the toilet after he had finished. He couldn't be blamed, for that signified the end of an era, the end of a lifestyle, the end to the daily routine he had. From now on, it was unfaced dangers, territories whose maps had been lost over time. He really couldn't be blamed, for the small little boy who had went up a year before was now leaving behind a group of people who had grown relatively more mature listening to his baritone dictating the progress if the morning assembly. He really couldn't be blamed. 

Yup, that's the end of my essay. Yes, I know its really long, but I just couldn't help myself. I was the boy, just in case you haven't inferred, which is not very likely, so no offence. It's ultimately your choice on whether this essay was good, and by the time you feel like commenting, I think my cbox would have been OK. Watch out for my next post! (This sounds corny, haha. )

Cheers,

Darrel