I Was Once a Student Here from Before

The very first class of students there, you were, the experimental, the trial-by-error group, and, it’s the principal’s values that’s set the school up, using a more open method, not zoomed in on the academical tracks of things, that you were instructed with, translated…

Recently, my friend sent me a private message, that the very first school principal of the high school I’d attended from way back when was about to retire, and is inviting all the alumni to leave the messages of well-wishes for him.  And, the whole thing was like that hook, stirred up those days of my youth that’s already, sunk to deep, deep, deep down in my past already—————almost forgotten, that I was the very first class of students attending the school.

Recalled how as I’d entered into the high school, the school made the news, but, other than it being newly set up, but, there were the talks of how it’s based off of a freedom of learning.  But, seriously, the direct benefits of being the very first students in the school, was that we got to, take over the entire campus to ourselves.  Back then, there were the total of only eleven classes for both middle and high school ages, more than three hundred students, shared the huge space of over 20,000 square meters of land, the garden up on the rooftops, so quiet, undisturbed, like a private little space to those who’d hung out there, and we can, have a different angle to see everything every day at lunch time; and, sometimes, we would get into the mindset, that we owned a small patch of property in the city of Taipei, as young as we all were.

And, at the same time, the never-before status of us, the first group of students in the school, we’d become, a group of cherished grandchildren.  As the school principal greeted us good morning as we’d arrived, he’d always called us out by our names individually as for the students and teachers, rather than the instructors teaching, students sitting and learning means, we’d become partners, testing out the waters, of an, anarchy that’s started.  During those years, a group of us, wild monkeys, started screaming the words, “surpassing the top schools!!!”, and we’d all, tried and impeached the school instructors, and objected to the foods served in the cafeteria, to even, getting rowdy and raucous in the school board meetings too, and, abused the motto of the school of “freedom, self-discipline, creativity, energies”, and rammed around all day long.  We’d only fallen short of setting the school on fire with the “I’m the RULE” tattooed over all our, foreheads.  And the adults, they’d actually, tolerated us too.  Thinking back, we were, all spoiled children from then.

The wildest three years of our lives, flew by too quickly.  As we’d left school, that’s when we’d come to understand, that there’s no special rights given in the real world, the children’s complaints were, nothing more than the day-to-day goings on of adulthood.  The life, filled with all those, potholes, those patiently listening to us, accepting our behaviors, and, helping us to correct our own selves, it’s not matter-of-fact. The cherished and protected freedom that we got, is nothing more than a dream, in the greenhouse, we’d not known the sharpness of behaving so brashly, and, we’d, stumbled, fallen, gotten back up, stumbled, fallen, and gotten back up again for the decades of our lives that followed, and, all of that became, nothing but the gratitude we feel for, this school of, ours.

This was also why, I’d, forgotten those days of my wilder youth.  After all, the young and naïve monkeys, needed to, grow up.  but even so, as I recalled the past at this very moment, there’s still, nothing but gratitude that I’m feeling, grateful for what our instructors gave to us, grateful for being, lucky as we were.  All we have is this, one life, and I was, right on time, “not late, not early, and, gotten into the high school when I had”.  Everything I need to say to the school, “oh wow, I’d once gone here too!”  that was it.

And, this, is how deep, the memories of your high school days were, because of the kind and caring means of your school principal, because he’d loved everybody in the school like a grandchild, and, you weren’t pressed by the academics back then, because back then, the focus of education isn’t the grades, the placements, it’s on making sure that the students develop properly psychologically and emotionally, and you’d, reached your adulthood years, with those means intact, because of the education you’d received back in your high school years.