Schools with just curriculum courses and exams or morning assembly at maximum are just too boring. But then we all may have volumes of happy, sad or spicy memories. Some may even be quite embarrassing ones. What would happen, if you were a part of a school quiz and you need to answer 5 bonuses or 5 points each or 3 answers of 10 points each just to reach a mark of zero? Looks, too funny but even murphy’s law stays at bay with me. So this is a story of maybe class 5 or 6 when our school was celebrating the silver jubilee event of AWES.

Well as some of my friends say, I am a very boring person. Until I got something that I may surely end up messing with, so was that day. The morning was jolly with a breeze remnant of the heavy shower the night ago. My mind empty and carefree, for both fear and some crucial knowledge to face the day, just like many average students in primary and middle schools. I got ready to go with my Maternal Uncle (mom’s brother) to the seats meant for parents and guardians. No, no, it’s not that my father was too busy or my mom too tired to accompany me to the school event. But the event also had a quiz competition I participated in; I felt my mom dad will be a bit less confident to face it though they may know the answers. I thought it was a foolproof plan. As usual like all other kids in that phase. We had different events set for that day included a cultural mini-food festival to start with dance, singing and Judo talent shows, ending with a quiz. I mean the last event of the day set for was the only event, I left my bed early to attend.

The solo and group dance competition went forth and I was altogether thinking of where the food fest was, alas my cravings were still juicing my patience out. But then I had my best bad luck taste bitter that food fest already ended at another side of the campus and so did my only luck to yummm… I mean I literally lied and skipped breakfast for the sake of tasting and contenting my tongue for the various spices of Indian dishes of different parts of India. Still, I let myself behold the visual delicacy of martial artists who came as showstoppers in the Judo talent show and not the competition. The competition wasn’t a part of the schedule for we had lesser students taking part in it and so was the stage not ready to accept them. But at the last after the declaration of all results came the quiz which I thought they made out of schedule as I was very desperate to get past the final round of stage. I mean the initial qualification stages were unknown to me for I don’t know how to get past the questionnaires of the written quiz but maybe it was just a chance of luck or maybe they wanted a mid-school child to be among the finalists. Till date, I simply keep that part to just maybe, because it wasn’t an exciting moment of my heart winning from my brain or the feared moments of darker moments as per my brain.

So came the quiz, I somehow got on stage with my makeshift guardian participant (P.S – He till that time didn’t have a single idea that I signed up for student guardian quiz competition with him). Questions came in and so my spontaneity to create blunders in answering. I successfully gained 10 correct points to answer one question meant to our table and further gained 40 negative points to finally set my score to minus thirty. I was spontaneous but at the same time happy as the crowd enjoyed my inventive answers for questions I never understood well. Maybe I didn’t know the answers, but I was equally semi-deficit in listening skills. So it was the last bonus question and the question was something to do with the achievement of Sabana Azmi. Yes, the very renowned and well-appreciated personality of the Indian Entertainment Industry or Bollywood but at that age, I was clueless of who she was when my Uncle said the answer. Maybe it is best-kept mouth shut. I now feel his laughter with partial embarrassment on stage that day. But I learnt one thing, I gotta think something about my redundant listening skills and thinking twice before I leap. Our score was minus twenty-five. Nice score if taken in the positive direction for the second got fifteen points for that rank. Maybe I just needed someone to make a vertical dash on an already horizontal one.

Well, that Be-positive attitude continued with me getting a Current affairs book on my birthday that year. I wish someone swapped that with some fiction in the bookstore. I mean I just wished… because it continued with the book of the current affairs every new year as a present from my father for 4 years.