Confessions of a Cat-holic (2)

The first thing I noticed about my new friends was their defectiveness. Conformity had been the key to survival in my Catholic community. We wouldn‘t question authority and we didn’t dare to be too special. The school trained us to be fit physically, thanks to the hilly mountains where our school was located. We listened to commands carefully and we all possessed a strong common sense. Out of all the schools in Hong Kong, I would consider my alma mater a sister school of Good Hope. We were both academically competent but we never aspired to be the best. It was never in our school philosophy or mission to be the "smartest" or the "best" but we always gave back what you deserved if you offended us. Our sports teams were exceptionally competitive and our girls were known to be athletic and therefore attractive. We were daughters raised by wolves, cunning and fierce. Just like Good Hope girls who were rarely talked about for their academic strengths, we liked to pride ourselves to be outstanding in other realms of life. Good Hope was known for its runners; my alma mater was known for its basketball team.

As soon as I stepped into the classroom of the new Christian school, I noticed that I was already the tallest and biggest in class. I was taller than the average student for at least half a foot. This somewhat shocked me in surprise. Later on I learned from other alumni of the school that many of the girls in this new school had eating disorders because they wanted to look tiny in qipao. I blame it on the school culture. The principal of the new school was an extreme Christian elitist. All he cared about was academic results. There were no student unions, prefects, class monitors, or any athletic teams in this new school. The only extra-curricular activities the students engaged in was choir and orchestra. They thought that athletic activities were for dumb people. They were confident they were smarter than everyone else in Hong Kong; therefore, they were not going to do any sports.

Apart from their feeble physique, another oddity I noticed about the student body was their appearances. Just looking from the outside, about half of the students were malnutritious and underweight. I would say 10% of the students had hereditary diseases such as eczema, leukaemia and other serious illnesses. Half of the male students had premature graying white hair as teenagers and they looked prematurely old with wrinkles and crooked backs. There was at least one student in every class who was either hairless, bald or albino. Girls were unusually short and skinny; their height was below any average in Hong Kong. The most extreme case was a girl named Kayen. I suspected that she was a short statured dwarf because she was only up to the height of my stomach as a grown teenager.

I was not complaining. I just found it unusual to have noticed so many abnormalities among the students yet they had so much pride in themselves. I had the hardest time figuring out where their confidence came from. Was it prestige? Was it branding? Was it academic results? Was it their self-proclaimed prodigy? What made them overlook such obviously blatant defects in their physicalities?