It was around 8.00 pm. I found myself opening the door to a room filled with study desks, and a dozen pair of wide, eager eyes were peering back at me thoughtfully. The storm I heard before coming in had died down to angelic silence.
"Um, hello... good evening," I greeted the creatures inside the room nervously.
The huge eyes stared longer and harder. Help.
You're making me nervous!
A dozen of kids, I thought. Can I handle these kids tonight?
A small, squeaky voice then asked, "Are you the new English tutor?"
I replied affirmatively. Now the eyes became wider and rounder. Silence turned to loud whispers. I could just hear someone whispering to his friend, "No way... he looks like a pansy!"
I am so gonna get that kid one of these days.
"Oh," the small, squeaky voice said. "You're... different than what Miss Sarah says you look like."
Oh? "What did Miss Sarah say I look like?"
"She said you're 90 years old, and that you have no hair."
It struck to me that either the owner of the squeaky voice didn't pay much attention to Sarah at the time, or that she was actually deaf.
"Well, I think what she meant was that I'm 19 years old and that I have long hair," I corrected the girl, whose name I later found out is Mira, while I absent-mindedly ran my fingers through my mane.
Oops, that seemed to have an effect on the girl tweenies.
I put down whatever paper Sarah gave me on the isolated desk at the far front corner of the room. Found a marker pen on the floor and wrote my name across the white board for the whole class to see. Squeaky voices read my name aloud in almost a chorused chant.
"My name is Tengku Amel Hanan Adzeizan, and I shall teach you English from now on until Puan Bariah returns from her leave."
A hand was raised up high.
"Yes?"
"Err, sir... what should we call you?"
I looked back at the white board. Damn, my parents don't know just how frickin' long my name is that it makes life harder for other people.
"You shall address me as Mr. Amel," I told the boy with glasses that might have been stolen from Harry Potter. I forgot what his name was, but it sounded like Hock Chye something.
"Yes, sir."
Sir? God, I feel very old.
Kids are really good at ice-breaking sessions. Their eagerness is a killer - I might just die from choking on one of their questions.
"Are you married, sir?"
"No, I'm still single." I'm too young for any relationship commitment whatsoever.
"Do you have a girlfriend, sir?"
"Heh." No comment.
"Sir, Aimi said she wants to be your girlfriend!"
Do I look like a paedophile?!
"No, sir! Mana ada!" Aimi bunched her fists and started making the boy next to her a human punching bag. "Melvin's lying!"
These kids remind me of my niece.
So that was my Saturday night date at a small tuition centre in Petaling Jaya. What kind of date did you think Amel was having in your mind, punks?!
As I leaned against the desk watching the kids engrossed with their grammar exercise, I couldn't help wondering what my late English teacher might have been thinking when he was in the same position, watching my classmates and I do his English exercises.
Mr. Leonard Wong was the best English language teacher I have ever studied with. Tutelage under him was an extraordinary experience. He taught at St. John's Institution, and was a favourite member of the school (apart from the seemingly immortal Brother Lawrence). I have always admired the memorable method he used when he went teaching in our class - music was his medium, and he always had this guitar around with him which he would play during lessons. Our language exercises were based on the lyrics of some oldies. One could mistake our class for a music studio hearing the singing and guitar-playing inside.
Mr. Wong had encouraged me to seek the beauty of life through writing after he read my answer scripts and poems that were handed to him for assessment. I was surprised he didn't scold me or make sarcastic remarks like some other people about my habit of adding in time travel, zombies, human sacrifices and alien frogs into my English essays. An essay titled How I Spent My Sunday was littered with evil henchmen in Duckzilla costumes armed with ray guns that transform girls into tomatoes, a secret altar hidden under a merry-go-round, a psychopathic priestess who marries young men to have them fed to the Juggernaut, a pack of zombies who are forced to work at the amusement park for peanuts, and a cross-dressing protagonist who carries a letter-opener around for safety.
"English is your forte. It is your gift." Mr. Wong once penned in my answer script.
That made me become obsessed with writing at school. Ever since then, I stopped picking up fights with other kids and destroying whatever was in my way. Mr. Wong's kindness and compassion made me realize that not everyone is untrustworthy or cruel in this world... I might have overlooked those who are good-hearted and who sincerely wished to be my friend. Most of my stories and poems have been published in the local newspaper and won me some prizes. Mr. Wong even had me write in his Scrabble column in The Star newspaper, although I had no idea how to play the game at all.
I miss the old guy a lot. He was an incredible English teacher, educator, columnist, Scrabble player, husband, father and friend to everyone who knew him, and no one will ever be the same as him. Rest in peace, Mr. Leonard Wong Siang Hume.
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