Confessions of a Cat-holic (46)

I got a few things accomplished upon the end of first semester in the new school. First, I had my braces on to fix my buck teeth. I was not particularly concerned about my appearances but my parents said it was about time to wear braces, so I agreed. When I was in St Francis, I could not afford to be pretty. When I said I could not afford to be pretty, I meant not in monetary values. I meant that the price to being pretty among a bunch of attractive teenage girls in a single sex environment was too high. You would know what I meant, if you spent a day in my alma mater.

The Christian school was a much more peaceful and serene environment where I could finally feel secure enough to work on my looks. Secure as in safe, physically and literally. I decided to give braces a try, in a hope to end the enmity and ridicule on my front teeth by guys whom I didn't want to have any association with. There were rumors that I had plastic surgery in middle school because I had a few operations on my styes. I was okay with rumors. The best my new friends could do was just fabricating stories about my sex history and appearance. Afterall, they were a school with "faith, hope and love". What else would they care about, if not scandals, sex, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, love, appearances? I understood that they needed an outlet to vent out the stress from overstudying. Fine, I would bear with that.

After I had my braces on, my confidence level dropped a little. I looked like Crystal Cheung from Hotcha in her debut years. I often felt shy to speak up or laugh out loud because I didn't want to show my teeth. The braces were also scratching my mouth cavity a bit, making it difficult for me to talk or chew in fast speed. I was not sure if that was the reason my new friends thought of me as an "introverted" autist. I talked a lot all the time, maybe I just didn't like to talk to them. I also lost quite a bit of weight as a result of the pain that came with the corrective orthodontic treatment.

Good news was that I finally had my first menstruation in the first semester in SPCC. I was quite proud of myself to have been finally eligible to be considered a woman. It was after my 15th birthday so I would say I was reaching puberty in an age almost close to 16? If you counted the year when I was a foetus inside my mother's womb, I was technically approaching 17. Yes, I started my menstruation as late as 17. What a relief! I seriously thought I might have been a hermaphrodite. I guessed my prayers to God worked a miracle on me.

I had some spare time as I figured studying in a new environment was getting even more manageable than my times in St Francis. I only had physics tutorial lesson once a week, acing the other subjects was a piece of cake to me. I thought maybe I should take up some extra-curricular activities. 95% of the students in my year were members of treble choir, senior mixed voice choir, boys' choir, girls' choir or orchestra. They all had choir practices in lunch breaks and after school, leaving me with only a handful of students in the classroom. When I said a handful, it was not a hyperbole. There were only less than 5 students who had the entire lunch breaks to themselves.

My favorite pastime would be watching the basketball games in lunch breaks. SPCC had very few and often outdated sports facilities. The only sports team that the school officially ran was trampoline. Was that even a sport? Their football court was the size of a classroom and they only had room for table tennis in the basement and basketball up on the rooftop. When I watched them play, I was mostly checking out the players' looks since their skills were lacking. I wouldn't call them athletes. They obviously could not compete among other schools in the band 1 circle. In fact, they couldn't even beat the girls in my alma mater. But they were worth watching nevertheless. It was better than hanging out with the mathletes cracking calculus and sudoku down in the classrooms.