Yesterday afternoon, I visited the place where my elementary school once stood. Traces of it remain visible: the brown gate through which generations of schoolchildren had passed through; the floor of the gym (or to be more exact, auditorium)--now overrun with various weeds and grass as tall as cornstalks--that was the venue of numerous extracurricular activities; the outline of the stage where my classmates and I mounted modest versions of Oliver! (Grade 2) and The King and I (Grade 7); the now-weatherbeaten floor of my Grade 1 classroom, where I was picked on for the first time; and the tree that stood near where my Grade 7 classroom once was, where I often struggled to stop crying after enduring another day of bullying. Sadness, not nostalgia, crept over me. Sadness for all those that disappeared from that place: the school buildings, the playgrounds, even that defenseless and wounded boy who would later learn to will himself not to cry anymore.
