Premium Tears

I remember my first heart break at the age of 6. Before you even ask me what has heartbreak got to do with a primary 2 student, just hear me out first. I had a sitting partner who was so good at creative arts. He didn’t have to struggle to draw or color. He was a natural. Even his so called “terrible” drawings had 8/10 while mine had 2/10. I just didn’t understand how he could pay attention to details when it came to arts.

I, on the other hand, was so good at maths. Maths was my thing. I could solve the questions without even doing too much. Most times, I could tell an answer was correct by just looking at the question. My sitting partner on the other hand wanted nothing to do with maths. He didn’t even understand the basics. We decided to make a deal. He was going to be doing my creative arts assignments for me in exchange for his maths assignments. Everything was going so well and I remember how all our 2/10s changed so fast to 7,8/10s.

We both began getting a lot of good remarks from our teacher about how we were improving in the various subjects. There was this particular day, I was called to the office for an important issue. We were having creative arts so I entrusted my sketch book to him knowing very well he was going to do justice to the work. After I returned from the office, I also did not bother to check if my work was submitted or not. Our teacher had already told us to only go out for break after submitting our sketch books.

After break was over, I was summoned to my teacher’s desk and she had the biggest frown I’ve ever seen in my life. She asked where my book was and I told her it had already been submitted. I was so confident because I trusted my sitting partner not to break our deal. We searched through the books one after the other and didn’t find mine. One of my friends brought to our attention that my sketch book was under my desk. As if that was not annoying enough, my teacher realized I hadn’t done that day’s work. I knew I was in trouble.

Well, last last, I was punished. I really didn’t really mind as long as our main agenda wasn’t exposed. What actually made me cry after being punished was when I found out my sitting partner rather did someone else’s work for her. And she was no other than the person who had been competing with me in maths class. I was really hurt. I cried and crewd and crode. I had my revenge but that’s a story for another day.

The highlight of this story was where his grades began dropping in maths class because his new source wasn’t “sourcing” for him. Of course, he wanted to come back but I had already learned how to draw by then. It was always a delight seeing him get punished after getting 2/10 in maths alongside his new “friend”.