A Legitimate Way of Playing Truant in School

Nibong Tebal Health Clinic

It has been our Hakka culture and tradition to emphasize the importance of education in the elevation of the socio-economic status of our clansman. Our fore fathers would say, no matter how poor a family is, the children should not be deprived of education.(再穷也不能穷教育) As a matter of fact, whether it was rain or shine, my father would see that I boarded the school bus to school. No way could I play truant under the watchful eyes of my father before reaching the school.

However, I had a legitimate but painful way to play the game of truant during my Standard Two year. Would any one of you like to exchange a day of no schooling with the pain suffered either from the filling or extracting a tooth? Out of sheer stupidity or maybe with a bit of courage, I did that.

Mr. Salleh was a Malay clinic attendant attached to the Dental Department of the Health Clinic of Nibong Tebal at the time when I was at Standard Two in Pai Teik Chinese School. The clinic was located a few kilometres away from my school. One morning, he made a routine round to my school to identify children for dental checking in the clinic. Under normal circumstances, nobody would like to be chosen for this checking as it was like asking for trouble. Most people, even the adults, were dreadful of hearing the grinding sound while filling of a tooth was in progress. I was among a few boys from various classes at Standard Two volunteered for the inspection so that we could evade the lessons for the day.

Normally, if one or two pupils were selected for a routine checking, Mr. Salleh would carry them on his bicycle to the clinic. The boys were allowed to bring along their bags as they were fully aware that they would not go back to school after that. On the other hand,the school had to arrange a bus to send the pupils to the clinic if the number of pupils exceeding two.
We were delighted to go to the clinic as it was clean and spacious. Beside the clinic there was a football field. We could fool around the clinic, playing whatever games we could think of;games that we played were,hide and seek, police catching thieves,high jump and many others which I cannot remember. When our turns were called for inspections, we entered the dental room one by one.It was liked entering the hell from the heaven. We were at the mercy of a Chinese nurse to do what she liked on us, either filling or extracting of tooth.

After the treatment was done for every one of us, it was almost twelve noon. All of us were expected to walk home by ourselves. We really enjoyed the day without lessons and homework, but of course not the treatment by the dental nurse. Nevertheless, we were still looking forward for more inspections to come...