Theloopylululog

Funny misunderstanding I have ever been a part of?

I don’t know about funniest…but the first one to open it’s doors without hesitation in my vast memory palace is this one.

The year was 1997. I was 15 going on 16.

A couple of months to go for the school leaving board exams. The teachers were busy rounding off the syllabi. In their mad scramble to make it look like they did a perfect job of sharpening us dunceheads( their words, not mine), they cut corners.

If you belonged to a certain era and were a student in the Indian Educational system you know how scandalous sex education was those days. No one spoke about it. No one discussed it. It was relegated to a few pages in the bio textbook that were off limits.

If you were caught reading the chapter or even glancing through the diagrams, you were banished from the human kingdom and exiled to rot in the last benches meant for stray kids, with no brain, brawn or beauty. Where you would likely be languishing till you quit school or left it only once you were through with the boards. Your entire lineage blotted with the mark of a sinner.

Everyone looked at you like you were a bastard child. Speaking in hushed voices, pointing fingers and generally wondering how you are still alive carrying all that burden of shame. Why haven’t you burned to ashes yet?

Keep this vision board in your eyeline as we move forward to the day I was inducted into this hall of shame…well almost.

It was a day just like any other. Frenzied with studies and more studies. You wouldn’t know where my face ended and the cover of the books began. We were an amalgamated mush racing against time.

One other thing you know if you belonged to that era was the chapters supposedly on sex education, mainly the one on human reproduction was presumed to be deleted. Something to ease the guilty minds of teachers who were too embarrased to teach us little humans about our own births!

The final exam would have questions pertaining to that chapter but the teachers would want you to leave it alone since you had the choice to attempt others and still scrape by without losing out on the requisite marks. Either way you were cornered by the system if you were a student.

My biology teacher, bless her heart was more into fashion than biology. She fervently believed we were all idiots and would amount to nothing anyway. So why even bother!

Cunningly, that particular day, she put forward a couple of questions. I don’t remember the first but the second I will never forget.

Lost in my own world, I raised my hand.

First I heard gasps of shock. Then I saw eyes the size of golf balls staring at me. Then followed the giggles of the girls and the guffaws of the boys.

Strangely the boys were all making fun of the fair kid who had a crush on me. Probably locking eyes with him for the first and only time ever, I saw his eyes, horror filled, probably wondering why in the world had he been imagining of having a home, a family of 2, a dog, a cat and a hamster with me in his day dreams.

I was still lost in my own world of books and exams and all that jazz, little knowing the blasphemy my hand had committed by raising itself!

I heard things like…Oh my god! she is forward dude! She wants IT!

I still didn’t know what the fuss was all about. Even the teacher began to join the fun and laughed.

Now I had to know WHY. I nudged the girl next to me, who was trying to disengage and cut all cords with me and my forthing spawn.

Apparently I had raised my hand a few seconds too late…in time for the other question to already pop up. Not the first one as I absent mindedly thought I had answered.

Do you want special classes (separately held for both genders) for the chapter on human reproduction?

Every single kid on that day looked at me like I committed blasphemy. Assuming I was in favor of classes that taught sex! REALLY??

And haunted the boy with the crush; bro bashing him for weeks, for falling for a fallen girl.

ME? I was thoroughly embarrassed. Red faced, I mumbled out as coherently as I could that I had raised my hand for the other question, not the one on sex-ed.

I was well known to everyone in school. I was my principal’s pet and my mom was a beloved teacher to all and sundry. Added to that, I was a group captain with the honour of the rolling shield under my name. I literally had not an inch to crawl under and hide.

Funny? Sure.

Embarrassing? OH YES!

Seared to my memory? Need you ask?

I still don’t know what the whole fuss was about though, do you?

Well…apparently seeking knowledge could get you exiled even as a teenager! And how! Who knew!