MusicMarketplace.com
Until the third grade, I had hardly spoken with anybody except for my family and relatives. I disliked people overall and especially despised kids around me. They seemed too infantile to me who was also a kid then. Naturally, I was the most unpopular student at elementary school. An election for a class president was held every term. When I started elementary school, my mother ordered me one thing as the most important thing at school. She forbade me to vote for anyone else besides me in a class president election. She had wanted me to be a class president so badly and believed voting for others in the election was the stupidest thing in the world. There was no need to announce candidacy in the class president election, and the president would be chosen from all students in a class. We wrote a name of a student on a piece of paper, a teacher collected it and showed the result on the blackboard. In every election, three or four usual names of popular students were written on the board along with their votes. And there was always my name with one vote. That was my ballot. I would press myself to write down my own name on a ballot with my trembling hand because of my mother’s order that was more like a threat to me. The result would be always one vote for me, which apparently told everyone that I voted for myself. Everyone would laugh at me. All I could do was not to burst into tears for shame. I just had to do that as my mother would make sure sharply I had voted for myself when I came home. From the third grade, I started talking to other kids and became popular. I was elected to a class president by a landslide in the fourth grade. All students put on a nameplate on their clothes and a president pin was issued to a class president to be put on a square of green felt under the nameplate. In the evening, my mother cut green felt, almost crying for joy. Her vanity was finally satisfied. She made me put on the president pin wherever I went. I knew people must have laughed when they saw me wearing a nameplate with the pin on Sundays, but I had to for my mother’s pride…
