by Elsabeth Goh (P4 2022)

              Dun….Dun….Ding.  The recess bell rang.  I was looking at my timetable and realised that the period after recess was art.  My art teacher, Ms Fong, was the second strictest teacher in school.  I looked at the board where the reminders were written and suddenly, a thought struck my head, “Wait, did I bring my colour pencils?”  I crouched under my desk and unzipped the bag.  For the first five seconds, I gently rifled through the contents of my bag for the next five seconds.  I was looking at organised chaos.

              “Oh no, oh no!” I frantically jumped up and down while thoughts of Ms Fong shouting at me rushed through my head.  “Please bring your colour pencils to school next week.  Otherwise, you will not be able to complete next week’s task,” Ms Fong’s kind, gentle voice turned into a deafening, screeching voice in my head and I almost fainted.  That might have actually been a good thing since if I fainted, I would be able to go home and avoid getting scolded by Ms Fong.  However, I had no choice but to just go down for recess.  My palms were sweaty and my neck was stiff thinking about the trouble I was about to get into.

              Just as I was exiting the classroom, I saw my friend’s colour pencils sticking out of her bag.  The colour pencils looked a lot like mine, so I was sure that if I stole them, nobody would notice.  I glanced around furtively and swiftly made a beeline for the colour pencils.  Without a second thought, I snatched the colour pencils from her bag and thought “Sorry Celia, it’s only for a day.”

              Just as I was walking over to my desk to hide ‘my’ colour pencils, a prefect who was on duty walked past.  He squinted his eyes and peered at me and realised I was stealing.  When I saw the prefect looking at me, my eyes widened in shock as the prefect ran in the direction of the General Office.  A few minutes later, a voice boomed over the Announcement System, “Lucas Alex.  Please report to the General Office now.” After I heard the announcement, I jumped out of my skin because it scared the living daylights out of me.

              When I was in the General Office, all eyes were on me and my face was beetroot red.  “Lucas Alex?” the principal bellowed, looking as mad as a hornet.

              “Yes?” I replied with my head hung low.

              “Now, our prefect here told me you were stealing from – Let’s see, Flora Celia, right?”

               My eyes widened in shock and I said, “N-no! I mean Y-yes! B-but!”

               The principal interrupted, “No buts.  Since you stole for art lesson, I will leave Ms Fong and your parents to discipline you, okay?”  During art, I received a tongue lashing from Ms Fong.  Furthermore, when I reached home, my parents who had heard about the incident from Ms Fong grounded me from playing video games.

              From that day, I never stole things again.  I also learnt to take notes of reminders and pack my bag the night before to ensure that I had everything I needed.

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