As the high school reunion becomes my routine schedule, now I have another reunion of my junior high school , the 41 Junior High School located somewhere in the south part of Jakarta. I was a new student in 1977, moved from other school as my father got a new job with a housing facility. I remember that the school – it moves to a new location now - had a kind of hilly contour which made my class – I think - to be located about one meter below sea level. So during wet season, our class was regularly flooded and our sport activities were cleaning up our muddy class. Similar to the things we do in the gym, we lifted up water from the well, transported the buckets with full of water to the class, brushed the floor, plus those annoying boys who were running around, playing fighting heroes on the wet muddy floor.
I was greeted by some unfamiliar faces when I first arrived in the reunion - it was a second one as I missed the one before. And a tall guy said “I’m Daud. Do you remember me?”. Bingo !! I know the guy. He was my classmate in the third year of the school. During a home industry class, I threw a palm of rice into his dense curly hair and he had trouble to take them out. Well, it was fun ! I met several others. There were about 19 people came to the reunion. But the best thing is I met my best friend during my junior high school. Henny, a very tomboy student (see the picture). At that time, she often fought with other students. She is the eldest and the only daughter in her family with her six brothers. No wonder she mastered any styles of fighting especially with boys. Astonishingly, she is the first who got married amongst us.
When we had a chat remembering all the memories, one friend was wondering why she did not really remember each of the others. I said ”Sure, because they are the kickers and we are not”. During the late 70’s, kickers – a shoe brand – was a very fancy brand. If you want to be considered as fancy and famous, wear the shoes and you will belong to the gang. I and some others were just some simple students. Our complicated family’s financial situation at that moment influenced us to consider the brand as an unaffordable good to be purchased. In another word, we had no money to buy the shoes. Even to save money, for our pottery project, I and Henny dug a nearest river to get the clay. It was fun playing in the river though Henny was almost rushed by the water. When the others created some very artistic objects such as vases, pots, plates, I decided to make a “thumb” for my pottery project. And I think it was the best art product that I have ever created in my life.
There are not so much memories I remember during my junior high school period. I remember some boys’ names who liked teasing all the girls. I remember my math teacher – as normal, I was good at math. She was a very small, very old, very skinny and a very weak lady. Surprisingly, to date she is still alive ! There was also my English teacher, Madam Dharso. Because of her, I fell in love with English as a foreign language. She often introduced us some new English songs while she was teaching to make sure that we had a proper pronunciation. To date, while I’m speaking English I still feel like I am singing.
The restaurant that we had the reunion is a nice one. It has a broad range of Japanese and European cuisines to choose. I liked the food though Henny as a genuine west Sumatran person, she could not eat. For her, proper food means lots of chilly and coconut milk mixed with meats, chickens, or vegetable, sometime with the inner parts of a cow. For me, the later is the best part though sometime they give me a stomach problem. Perhaps for the next reunion, we can go to the restaurant which serves traditional food. And I hope I would be able to come due to my tight schedule to execute my field research, where I hope, I could see Yuni, my shared table friend during the junior high school. She lives in Surabaya now. I’m looking forward to see her.
