The unfortunate seat

This morning, I saw a kid under my block in his school uniform, looking bored and aimless and I thought to myself, why do these children play truant? Stupid question I know. They probably hate to study, dun like the teacher or jus dun have the attention span. Whatever the reason is, anywhere out of school is better for them.

Maybe I cannot fully understand cos I have always been a pretty good student. The one who prefers to sit near the teacher, the one who is remarked as an attentive student on my annual report book and the one who is always assigned to sit next to the noisiest boy in class (so that he will keep quiet too). Yup, this is when things changed...

 It's a real bad idea that will never work out but will just make the quiet student irritated, upset and feel tormented (in this case, poor me). The daily teasing, the literal poking of me with a pencil and the many other things the boy did to get a reaction out of me. While the bible does say that evil should be overcome with good, I guess the context needs to be taken into consideration, at least for the sake of the poor child. If you can't manage the bad kid, put him at the side alone, not expecting someone else to do the dirty job for you.

Maybe I should have been the one to play truant and with a very good reason indeed, which is that, "The boy sitting next to me is disturbing me!" Well, it never did happen. Probably that was exactly why I was the chosen one to be in that unfortunate seat. All that said, the past is the past. I am just hoping history does not repeat itself. If the school and home cannot provide a safe environment for the child, at least the playground, void decks and arcades do look like pretty good alternatives...