Wherein I Rant Most Heatedly About My Alma Mater

I'd meant to post this earlier, but essays and all that. Evidently my alma mater VS has decided not to go co-ed after all, following the "protest by hundreds of old boys". Petitions were set up and people cried out against the possible denudation of the fine tradition of screwing up the lives of hundreds of little boys from the ages of 12 - 16 by depriving them of the view of a woman's genitals.

I am a failure to the institution, of course, since I am all for the girlsification of that good school.

Let those chicks in, I say, and end the cross-dressing! Little boys should not have to be forced to put on dresses and make-up or have to stage plays featuring no more than two female characters!

Make use of those female toilets that are present on every level but hardly ever used!

Give our youngsters access to women's genitalia (and undergarments) belonging to women fresher than the tough old birds of thirty years!

(Note: I should like to qualify my statement by explaining that in my 18 years of education, only in VS have I encountered males desperate enough to sneak-a-peek at women three times their age.)

Looking at the school website, I am reminded of how militant it was back there. It was my first encounter with army-like obstacle courses in Physical Education class, not the most fun of activities for a roly-poly boy of twelve. In fact, few things in Phys Ed bode well for a roly-poly boy in those days, and there was a lot of Phys Ed. Everyone but myself seemed to enjoy playing soccer, and in my higher-secondary days it was quite awful to realize that I was the only one in class who would rather attend Physics lessons than go kick some ball in the field.

And then there were those anti-obesity programmes! Damned enforced slimming! Those among you who are sometimes confused as to why I am somewhat sensitive about my weight must know that I come from an evil regime that refused people-like-us from using the canteen during recess and made us run (we mostly walked and swung our arms real hard) laps round the parade square. Even worse - they used to refer to us as the fat bastards, something that would have drawn the newspapers and the Ministry of Education auditors to our weightophobic Phys Ed teachers (who invariably looked like models from Men's Health, though some resembled the "before slimming" pictures more) had any of us been in a snitchy mood.

(Incidentally, according to Singapore's laws fat bastard is libel, at least for me, because I have two parents listed on my birth certificate, Mr Lee!!! Who's the bastard now, huh???!!! HUH???!!!)

My animosity towards the game of soccer must come at least a little from the fact that my teachers seemed to think it would be fun to let the fat bastards play ball. I don't know about you, but running around a field trying to defend (there was never an occasion where they were so desperate for players that ehy put me on the attack) two sticks and a net against people who have three digits of weight in kilos isn't my idea of fun. I must have been the only goalkeepper who actually ran away from the ball rather than towards it. In my defence, behind the ball was usually something not quite so round but definitely heavier.

Another thing I will always remember are the parades. We'd sit in the spectator stands in the sweltering heat, whilst the uniformed-group-people did their moves on the parade square and collapsed one by one because bloody Guests of Honour are never early, and seldom on time. It was always made out to be a noble thing, collapsing in the heat. Sometimes people would clap as the poor sods were brought out on stretchers, as if they'd performed some kind of service to the nation (though in truth, perhaps their perishing was a service to the nation, bring up the average IQ of the gene pool). To this day, my contempt for people in uniformed groups still remains - a sneer comes to my lips quite involuntarily when I hear anyone mention their past record as a student cadet blah blah.

So really, should girls be allowed into VS? I say yes, if only so people like me who enter get alternative choices in their life models (not to say VS didn't provide a wide range - just that they all tended to be spectrums of the same rainbow, know what I mean?). I think single-sex schools suck in general. Of course, I'm sure the tobacco-chewing football players will disagree, but for this kind of thing I think the opinions of the little boys who had to wear a dress have to be taken into consideration.

Sometimes when girls complain to me about society trying to make them conform to unreasonable (and superficial) ideals for being a woman and how generically disgusting men are I feel slighted.

Suck it up, girls, guys have it tough too. You're not the only victims of chauvinism.