Vickoo continues to reminisce about his Pr 6 class of 1968.

After a chance encounter of my primary school post, my ex-classmate Mr Ong emailed me our class photo. In 1968, Mr Ong and I were in Pr 6J of Selegie Integrated School.

I was the cheeky-looking fellow with the nerdy black spectacles (circled at the bottom-left of the photo) while Mr Ong was the tall handsome boy standing at the right of the back row (circled). Notice that besides the teacher, there were only 4 out of 41 pupils wearing spectacles. (Today, the situation is likely to be the opposite – you will probably find only about 10% of the primary 6 cohort not wearing spectacles and don’t forget that those with apparently good eyesight may be wearing contact lenses instead. So in that sense, you can call me the ‘pioneering’ batch, heh. Another thing you might have noticed is that there were no obese children then – all of us were as skinny as a monkey. Coincidentally, the pupils in our class were born in the Year of the Monkey. If many of us were overweight, you will probably need a wide-angle lens for a shot like this.) I must qualify that I have become more good-looking since my primary school days, especially since I junked my thick glasses after my cataract operations in 1998. Believe it or not, I have changed so much that I nearly couldn’t recognise myself in the photo, haha.

Notice also how good-looking our form teacher Mr Teo was. He must have set many pubescent female students’ hearts a-flutter. I am sure that some of the 19 girls in my class had secret crushes on him. Good thing that he was as upright a man as the way he stood in the photo.

Actually, after viewing the photo, I realise that I could recall the names of quite a few of my classmates. Some of them even went on to Sec 1 with me in Victoria Secondary School. And I didn’t even realise that they were my Pr 6 classmates until now. In my primary school post, I mentioned that Mr Lam C M (seated 4th from left in the front row of the above photo) met me at Hong Lim Food Centre a few years ago and revealed the sad news that at least 3 of our classmates in the above photo had since passed on. I have no wish to guess who they were.

On the other hand, I have no recollection whatsoever of the faces or the names of a few of the boys and most of the girls. This should not be surprising since boys normally mature later then girls hence I took little notice of the girls then. Luckily, I was posted to an all-boys secondary school. If not, I would probably have spent more time ogling at girls instead of studying.

To all my Pr 6 classmates (especially the girls ladies), if you are reading this post, I would be very pleased if you could drop me a comment. Those reading from the nether world are exempted.

Tags: singapore, singapore history, singapore heritage, nostalgia, victoria secondary school, selegie integrated school