If Mr F is “simply one glance and he can remember everything mister” then I am probably “no matter how many glance and still can’t remember miss.”
My mathematic was extremely horrible and Mr F was extremely good in mathematics. During examination, he solve the questions very quickly within half an hour and then he will look out of the window in a daze.
I would then take the chance and copy his answer.
As I copied his answer, I will comfort myself with the bible’s saying, “It is more blessed to give than receive” so I am simply helping Mr F to acc.u.mulate good karma.
The usual procedure goes like this:
(Peek) ACBCD, BCAAD, alright, memorise.
(Writing down) BCAAD, BC…what is the last few? c.r.a.p, forget!
(Peek again) oh, oh, BCAAD.
(Continue to write) wait, the last answer is D or B? I did not see it carefully.
I was about to sneak another peek when I saw that he had flipped his answer over. Looking up, I saw Mr F looking at me with contemptuous in his eyes.
I laughed awkwardly as I went back to answer the paper, trying hard to recall if the last answer is B or D. However, I could not recall the answer even if my life depends on it.
It was then when I heard his icy voice, “It is D.”
….
“Can’t even copy correctly, how stupid are you?” He remarked.
I pretended to not hear him, disregarding what he said.
…..
Mr F was the math cla.s.s representative although we still did not have much interaction then, there is one incident that I remembered vividly.
There was this once when the teacher separated the exam papers into two pile. One being people who pa.s.sed and the other are the ones who had failed.
The pile where people pa.s.sed were given to Mr F to return to the students and the teacher naturally took the other pile to give out.
It went without saying that I belonged to the latter pile.
As the teacher reached my table, he said, “Such a simple paper and you only managed to get four questions correct. Even if I was teaching a pig, he would have learnt by now.”
Mr F just then pa.s.sed by my table and happened to glance at my paper. Out of righteousness, he refuted the teacher, “She managed to get 5 correctly.”
The teacher was a little awkward while the cla.s.s goes, “wow~~~~~”.
From then on, I got another nickname, “Five.”
Later, I came to Beiing to work and my work place just happened to be at the fifth entrance, making it felt as though it was a curse.
When I brought this up, Mr F had no recollection of the incident, not knowing that he was the one who caused me to have that nickname.
But speaking of which, Mr F did not stay as the math cla.s.s representative long because he had face blindness and always could not get people’s name right, resulting in him always giving back the paper to the wrong person.