Kevin and Anton

Kevin Phang Khein Khei is a friend of mine from SMK USJ 12. I believed, when I left school, that he would be the future Head Prefect. However, after I left, the USJ 12 Prefect Board has changed dramatically. I haven’t met any of the teachers who were responsible for the change since then. Okay, I‘m exaggerating, I probably did meet them when I collected my prize for my SPM performance, but I haven’t spoken to them since I was in Form 5.

The closest I got to speaking to one of them would be Puan Teng, who was invigilating the SPM examination at Seafield. I saw her on the day when I had Bio 2, but I chose not to talk to her as I needed to revise…sigh, why must, of all the ecology topics, it must be the ones I didn’t read which came out?

But I digress. Point is, I don’t know how much the Prefect Board has changed since then.

Wait a second…Let me hold that thought. I did speak to not one, but two of them in Lower Six…Puan Cheah and Puan Ong, but then again, the topic was not about the Prefect Board, it was about me doing Form 6. Nevertheless, I still don’t know what has become of the Board since I left.

I bumped into Kevin recently. If I’m not mistaken, it was New Year’s Eve. He himself has stopped caring about the Board, but then again, I guess if I had been passed over, pushed around and struck down, I would too.

To me, back then at least, Kevin would always be a schoolboy, still in SMK USJ 12, not yet having finished his PMR examination. And I would treat him as such. Just a kid, I would think.

Anton was the Head Prefect (Boys) for SMK Seafield for the 2007/2008 session. Whenever I interacted with him, I always treated him as an equal rather than as a person younger than me, even though I am a full year older than him and two years his senior. Somehow, as he would always be more Seafieldian than me, I always believed that he deserved to be treated a bit more maturely.

The catch is this. Both of them finished their SPM last year, and are the same age. However, I would have been inclined to treat them differently before December last year.

Part of the reason for this has to do with who I perceived they are. When I left USJ 12, Kevin was still in USJ 12, just past PMR. I guess a part of me still felt that he was still there and hadn’t progresses since then. Besides, as I haven’t had much contact with him since then, I haven’t been able to change my perception of him.

When I first met Anton, however, he was a Forth Former running for Head Prefect. So I always felt that he deserved to be treated in a more matured manner than Kevin, even though they were of equivalent age and seniority. You may say that I had a mental block with regards to Kevin’s development; I couldn’t get myself to believe that he could grow up.

Most of this mentality changed when I went for YLDP : 18-UP last year. I was interacting with people 18 and above, and most of them were college students. College students are, in general, more independent than their Form 6 counterparts. So I received a sort of mini culture shock that time. I had to change the way I interacted with people as these were adults, and the kind of topics they would choose were different compared to those a Fifth Former would choose.

Sixth Formers, on the other hand, who spent more time in school rather than in college, tend to choose topics more towards those a Fifth Former would choose. We maintain a certain kidlike mentality. Part of this is due to the fact that in Form 6, we are, to a certain extent, still treated like kids. So we don’t become like an adult as fast.

At 18-UP, I had to constantly remind myself that these weren’t kids I was dealing with; these were adults. So after finally adjusting my thought processes, I am finally able to overcome my mental block with Kevin. When I did speak with him on New Year’s Eve, I tried to keep it as adult as possible.

Now, however, I am feeling the need to do the complete opposite. Most of the people I will interact with over the next month and during the past month are SPM leavers, and as such, they still behave like small kids. I now have problems going back to a level where I may interact with small kids, and I constantly amuse myself over their worries: SPM, college, etc…mainly because I have been through the fire and I’m fine.

Interactions with people is a complex business. When we get too old for them, we sound like dinosaurs, or just laugh at their seemingly “petty” worries. When we find that we are behaving too childishly for our audience, we are normally able to grow up, at an astonishing rate, as we catch up on what we have missed out while we were away, or doing Form 6. However, it’s going back down a level, which is harder to do.

Sometimes, as elders, we often forget that we were young once, and, as such, have lost touch with the more youthful side of ourselves. Young people cannot be guilty of not knowing how it feels to be older, but elders are guilty, to a certain extent, if they forget what it feels like to be young. I guess it’s easy to write about, but it’s harder to do. As the age gap between me and the people I will have to interact with is, thankfully, small, so too will the generational gap. It just feels a bit weird, after having to adapt to a more adult-like situation at a youth camp, to throw all that away for a more youth-like situation at a school…but then again, I chose to go post-STPM, so I guess I have no one else to blame.

At least now I will learn to be more flexible when I talk to people not my age group...