Conscience

Looking back, I suspect that I might not have been the most angelic of little boys.

The earliest memory of how demonic I was finds its roots in kindergarten. The adults who ran the place, probably young idealistic people without kids of their own, thought it decidedly brilliant to sit us "little angels" at tables of four, and rotate the groups every two weeks.

The theory was, by mixing in different groups regularly, the kids would develop their social skills faster. They would overcome their shyness at meeting new people, and learn to cooperate, give and take, grow into well-mannered sociable beings.

Evil finds no foothold in the hearts of innocent children, no?

Foolish humans! Under that system, there was no group that I didn't come to overwhelm by sheer force of character or violent brutality. My day of glory was when I was finally rotated into the group with the then reigning class bully, for after that showdown, my dominion was complete.

(He had taken my new eraser and pulled it out of its cardboard sheath, knowing how much I hated people to do that. I took his eraser, bit it in half, and spat it out onto his books. Ooo. Never seen someone cry so fast.)

But I couldn't afford to be complacent. They made me change classes, you see, twice. Everyday was a battle for new turf.

I heard much later that after my short stint there, they scrapped the rotating system, replacing it with one where the kids sat at cold metal tables, with at least 1m between each child, thumbtacks on the floor to discourage movement, and barbed wire circling the compound.

Even now, there are many colourful posters littering the walls of the staff room, with labels like "How to Spot A Possessed Child" and step-by-step guides to dealing with juvenile troublemakers. No kindergarten kid left such a legacy as I.

Yes. My early childhood was a completely amoral time for me. If someone hit me, I would hit them back. If someone didn't hit me, I would hit them all the much harder. I was practically the poster child for, if the government wanted, their "Stop At Zero, Sterilize Yourselves" campaign.

But every story has its turning point, and mine was in Primary Five, when we received our Mid-Year Exam results. I got a 53 for my Maths Paper, a dismal score which was probably Band 5.

(Just in case you've never gone to Primary school in Singapore, your grades are clustered into Bands, arguably to encourage you to work harder. Band 1 means "Good Job, You Did Well", Band 2 "Not Too Bad, But No More Scholarship Liao", Band 3's "Tsk Tsk, Police Going To Catch You", Band 4 "Hahaha see How You Tell Your Parents" and Band 5 "Brain Damaged La You".

Aye, the academic scene in Singapore's harsh at times.)

So anyway I found myself clutching my paper and running off to the loo. I shut myself into a cubicle, and just started crying. Before long, I heard the adjacent cubicle door close, and someone else started sobbing too. When the worst of my grief was over, I said:

H: You also did badly ah.
X: Yar la. S*** la. Feel very bad now.
H: Feel bad? Why leh?
X: I'm a full-time student... my only responsibility is to study. My parents work so hard just to send me to school, so the least I should do is get good grades and support them next time. I don't want them to worry about me...
H: Oh. Ok.
X: You leh? Why are you sad?
H: Go home my mother sure going to whack me. I scared pain.

On the way home that day, pricked by what my friend said, and after long hours of inner turmoil, I gave birth to a Conscience. It was small compared to its peers, underweight and decidedly malnourished. It certainly didn't look like it would survive past a couple of hours.

Yet, frail and delicate as it was, it wailed with the lungs of a dozen babies. And true enough, not only did it survive, it developed quite well.

In fact, since that day, I've changed quite drastically. Overnight I drew my own OB markers, and started treating people better, respecting their space and rights and privacy. People tell me that I'm very 'guai', and while they're right in that my parents were good parents, I must attribute a lot of it to the strange thing otherwise known as a conscience.

There are, as of now, a loooong list of things I must set right, and by my own hand too. Way way high on my priority list is to compensate my dear friend for breaking his arm in primary school, because I was too scared then to tell my parents.

After that... after that I will seek out the loved ones I've wronged in some way or another, and for what it was worth, tell them I was sorry for the way things turned out. Some things can never be righted, but I know I will still try.

For all the laws we have, for all the fears of punishment, the hardest thing is to be able to answer to yourself before you sleep every night.