Secrets from Grade Four

There are some things in life you wish you had learned earlier. Experiences you wish you could wipe out with an eraser. And to make you more human, some people you should never have met.

Everywhere you turn every person you speak to; testimonies of success are laden with challenges that almost derailed their dreams. It's as if there is no gold spoon formula for achieving as told in childhood fairy tales. For those of us still in school, much is left to be learned. School is just the beginning and your education … a long process that for some is the happy never-ending story and others a nightmare.

Despite the protagonistic short-lived portrayal of get rich fast, many of us still hold to the adage "if you want good, yuh nose haffi run." For those of us who were raised in the rural communities, it was an even more cliched schooling that you never quite understood until about third form.

Sadly, it adds to the notion that religion is the opium of the people and the common belief that this is just the way life is. Therefore we allow the wealthiest classmates to be the brightest, and if your dad dropped out of school in the ninth grade, your fate could only be the same. Worse yet brilliance in boys was confined to sissies. God forbids the culture our parents forced upon us.

In Grade 4, I decided to do what the tougher boys would do. I induced my thoughts with feelings of fatigue for extra lessons (an increasingly necessary task for academic success). If you guess, you guessed right. I forewent lessons, without my mother's approval. I played cricket in the evenings, marked papers in the Grade 5 lesson class, and had more money to squander in the days. After all, I had no place there; evening school is for slow learners.

"Looks like we have a visitor this evening man" Miss Taylor, the evening school teacher announced as I quietly ushered myself to the back of the Grade 4 lesson class. That evening my mother found out about my little secret of truancy. My plan came to an unforgettable abrupt end. I wanted to strangle the teacher. How could she? I was one of her favourite students in Grade 3, Class Monitor and chief informant.

Needless to say, I was sent home. I knew what would greet me as soon as my mother got home. I decided to impress my mother, so I showered and sat patiently on the veranda reading a book. I knew I would not escape the beating (even though my grandmother was there) but at least it would tone her anger.

She was the least amused.

“A now yuh want read?” … as much as I was no stranger to beating, I got the most ever that day. My mother had no mercy. Fortunately, she “she ben di tree wen it was young.”