Extra class

Growing up, my family was your stereotypical Machiavellian Asian one. I peaked pretty early, setting an unrealistic bar for my parents’ expectations of my academics. Part of this training included tuition. And caning if I got below 80% (though thankfully this was dropped after they realised it wasn’t too realistic in high school).

Anyway back to tuition. I’ve had a succession of tuition teachers. Mostly good, some bad. The worst was Mrs Yip, who taught (or rather tried teaching) me piano. She was very slim and tall. As a diminutive five year old, I was intimidated by her aloofness and incredibly long toes. After about one or two rather unsuccessful lessons, she delivered the clincher that would squash my self esteem and kill any musical inclination forevermore – “Your fingers are so sticky” – I suffer from palmer hyperhydrosis – “can you ask your mum to get you some gloves?”

Apart from her, I did have many good experiences. I was a nerd who looked forward to tuition and homework. My neighbour Aunty Raji (God bless her for giving me MYR100 right before I left for Australia) allocated a special seat for me during her various classes. From the age of four, I’d sit in, smug every time I managed to answer a question my 12 year old peers couldn’t.

(Yes, I was one of those awful kids who never seem to study, talk throughout lessons, yet topped the class. You know you hate me. If it’s any consolation, this strategy did begin to fail in high school.)

During primary school, I had Mandarin lessons. The language did not and still does not come naturally to me. I regularly got smacked on the head for being such a failed Asian. Lao Shi stayed a 10 minute walk away. We had our lessons at her ancient dining table, on her ancient scratchy faux-velvet chairs. She was the gravest person ever and had been known to snipe at us for failing to remember our Mandarin nouns and verbs. The strongest memory I have of the whole experience is probably of how my eczema would flare up during lessons, thanks to the scratchy seats.

Lao Shi also sold us a black spitz puppy. Cherry was such a sweet thing, but then she got ticks which diminished her cuteness by a factor of 734,921. Maternal Logic wouldn’t let me name her Darling (“What if she ran down the road and you had to keep screaming, Darling! Darling! and some man thought you were calling after him?”).

We also had Mr Siva, who was so popular for Math and Science, he crammed about 15 students in his tiny little living room. I usually sat beside Aiman, who was always entertaining. Although more than once, he’d scrape his (Aiman’s, not Mr Siva’s) hairy leg against mine (non hairy) to elicit a scream or two. I did stab him in the hand with a pencil for that. I think the lead is still buried in his flesh.

One time, one of the class jokers decided to pay his tuition fee of MYR80, with most of it in notes, but the remaining MYR3 in one cent coins. Mr Siva, always temperamental (not to mention overweight), flew into a rage and with the sweep of an arm, scattered the hundreds of copper coins across the floor.

Incidentally, Siva is the Hindu god of destruction.

Then we had Mr Tan. Mr Tan was the most unmiddle-aged middle aged man I had ever met (since then, I’ve realised being 46 years old does not mean you must be balding and wear polyester pants with pleated fronts). His classes were held on top of the Baskins Robbins in Bangsar every Saturday. I had him for Chemistry and Physics. I had no problem with Chemistry, apart from our permanently PMS-sy teacher at school, but struggled with the disciplined concepts of Physics (once even making our male teacher cry, but that’s another story).

Mr Tan had (and as far as I know, has) a fringe and shoulder length hair, a hairstyle he has happily kept since high school. Now that all makes him sound hippy and greasy but the man had taste. Always perfectly groomed, but in the most masculine way. I nurtured a crush on him for a whole year, but it only really blossomed after I broke up with my first love at 16. Still devastated, I conveniently transferred all my affections to him. Probably inured to all this nerdy acne-fied teen worship, he played along anyway. We spent many breaks chatting over Perrier and After Eights (I told you the man had taste).

I was really heartbroken when high school ended. I didn’t do A Levels like my friends did and hence had no excuse to continue classes with him.

Then there was He Lao Shi, whose most useful teaching involved How To Overcome Hiccups (swallow water bent over) and thought I had head lice because I always seemed to be scratching my scalp (I was trying to pinch out the scalp pimples), The Teacher With Really Huge Lips who taught us Add Math, and a few other rather unmemorable ones.

Does anyone have Mr Tan's email address?