Days in middle school

A story of a bunch of boys in grade seven in 1967

After lunch, we went back to class, and there was this science teacher named Mr Samarajeewa, aka Nidhimathaya, meaning the sleepy one. He came in and sat on his chair but started dozing off instead of teaching us science. When he finally woke up, the boys started laughing at him, and he responded with nasty words directed at them. He was so unkempt and annoying that no kid could stand him.

The boys were happy when the science period ended, and their teacher, Mr Jayamanne, returned. He’s been teaching us for two years, the best teacher ever! He taught us many subjects like Sinhala, History, Geography, Art, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry. Science was taught by the sleepy one, but he was just terrible.

Mr Jayamanne was good at art and brought these pretty flowers to class for us to draw. I did an excellent job painting them; he even put my artwork in the middle of the class for everyone to see! In his spare time, Mr Jayamanne doodled, drawing artwork and caricatures, sitting in his teacher's chair. He was a literacy genius.

We learned about Buddhist Jathaka stories and Sandeshaya in Sinhala class. Mr Jayamanne taught us to be proud of our heritage and our religion.

He was also a great history teacher. He taught us about the survival and re-awakening of Sinhalese literature in recent centuries, even when the English occupied our country.

This boy in our class named Hilary lost his mum and didn’t come to school for a while. So naturally, we felt terrible for him, and Mr Jayamanne even mentioned Hilary’s mum in our morning prayers.

We had this other teacher named Kobeyya, meaning spotted dove, who used to be a Buddhist monk in his previous life. He was weird and never went to the Staff Room where the other teachers hung out. He just stayed in his class and had his meals there. His real name was Zoysa, but nobody knew that.

All those annoying teachers were baptised with nicknames designed to evoke laughter. The sleepy one was the nastiest. The spotted dove was a local bird’s name, a kinder nickname. Mr Jayamanne, too had a nickname, the Camel, for he was tall with a long neck.

During our break, we played soccer with our friends and other kids from our school. I won the best student award that year and got a leather basketball as a reward. After that, everyone in the school knew my name!

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