No Money to Share a Football?

In my secondary school days - when I was between 13 and 17 years old - there was a group of school mates that I played with everyday. We must have been the most playful lot in school for we played before school starts, during recess and after school ends. And the games we played each year varied according to the 'flavour' of that year. In form 1 (13 years old) it was hockey because Malaysia was the organiser of the hockey world cup. An Indian teacher must have made quite some money selling hockey sticks to the kids in school - cost about 18 dollars a stick then. As we grew older and when the school started to provide the balls it was volleyball and basketball. But football was the perennial favorite of all the boys. When we were younger and before the school started to allow us to borrow balls from the school we played real football only during physical education classes because we could not afford to buy a ball. At other times we only played a football 'variant' - kicking bottle caps on the cement floor of the school's basketball court. Our school shoes wear out really fast then because of the constant scratching against the cement floor!

When we were in form 3 someone suggested that we pool some money together to buy a soccer ball. Although each of us had to only contribute about 2 or 3 dollars, it was still a big sum for most of us. So when a Malay friend of ours (named Rashid) told us that he could not afford to pay for his share, we sympathised with him and I went round asking the other boys to chip in and pay for his share. I was quite happy that we managed to do that and Rashid got to play without paying anything. I was however shocked speechless a few weeks later when I saw Rashid coming to one of our games in a nice looking track suit (matching yellow color Adidas pants and top). It was the 1970s and no one else in school other than the sportsmen representing the school got to wear something like that. And that's partly subsidised by the school. Although I knew it was expensive I did not know exactly how much. So I asked him how much it cost him. He sheepishly told me that it was 30 odd dollars and his father bought it for him. I thought to myself that this is the same guy who told us a few weeks ago that he could not afford the couple of dollars to share a ball. I then realised that it was all a lie to get someone else to pay for him. How silly of me to have paid for part of his share when I myself could not afford that nice track suit he was wearing.

I never did own a track suit until I came to Singapore for university studies - with money my elder sister gave me from her savings. (She started working a couple of years back and gave me about $1,000 when I left for Singapore for university. It was not enough to last me the 3 years and I was relieved I got a $11,000 study loan from the Kuok Foundation a couple of months later.)