Memoirs of the Classroom - part 1

  A composition 'About Me'. I feel a lot of our earliest writings can be traced back to essays bearing this title. I was a five-year-old asked to write the same. I wrote five lines and drew a picture of me next to them. To me, no piece of writing was complete without a picture. After I drew with the classic brown Goldfish pencil, i used it to colour me. My teachers came and stared at my composition. I looked above at them, seeking their approval.
"You have drawn a picture, " one of them said, "This is you?"
I nodded in reply.
"Why have you coloured her with the pencil?" she asked further.
"Because I'm dark." I stated and looked at them again.
  They looked at each other. I did not know what to  make of their expressions. A "no-comments" face I presume.
  The conversation did attract some of my neighbours too; kids, who gave me the very same look after eyeing my drawing. No words. One would expect different responses from grown-ups and children, but here the response was unanimous. As children everything we did to display, we did for approval. I believe this was my transition: learning to make peace  with the  idea that I wouldn't always receive it. Or did I? For, i do wonder what to make of those faces. Was being dark a problem? Did the drawing being coloured go against our school's efforts to encourage conformity? Or if one is to be optimistic, was a child's self-awareness something new?
   Later in life, I believe, I would look back at this   event and feel that those faces were better than the ones calling me names through  the remainder of my school life. It took a great college life, accolades and worthy friends to restore that five-year-old's self-esteem. It was tested time and again by a society holding double-standards, by notions that only fair is fair and fair is lovely,  by certain men who were still the same kids looking for parental approval and by the chai-trolley culture that would reduce a girl's sense of self-worth to her performance for mere two hours or less.
   I will never remember what were those five lines I wrote "About Me" but I'll look back and remind myself that not everyone has to approve  and that one can live with that and live well.
- H.M. Memoirs of The Classroom.