Convent Education Almost Ruined Me : A Theory

I

My school is the best thing that happened to me, and also the worst. I studied in an all-girls' school all my life. I never went to any nursery or pre-school; it was home school and straight off to kindergarten and after thirteen years of knee length socks and pigtails I entered into the big bad world, full of confidence and grit my institution had trained and equipped me with. I was a strong young lady ready to take on the world with a storm. But boy was I in for a surprise; for the world is also occupied by another type of the Homo sapiens species viz males. Opposite of females, the likes of me.

When I stepped into college I discovered that even thirteen years of maths and history and geography and science could not have prepared me enough for my fear of the opposite sex. Yes! You heard it right-FEAR. Incontrollable, heart-thumping, tongue-slipping, beads of sweat running down your forehead kinda fear. I felt like a freak. I was a normal girl in every single way-not too ugly to look at, intelligent enough to sustain a conversation, deep enough with several interesting stories to relate. Even broad minded when it came to peoples' choice of lovers. It being an all-girls' school and all that, if you know what I mean! I’d seen it all. I understood it all. This is why I was a bit surprised when I hadn’t fallen in ‘love’ even by the second year of college. It took me almost one and a half years to figure where I was going wrong.

II

Hmmm...Now the theory: I grew up in an environment that was devoid of any male contact. My dad left home when i was about nine and my brother was younger than me. There were just just five male teachers in my school. The sixth one got kicked out cuz he was kinda perverted. During our biology exams he would offer extra writing sheets regardless of us asking for it, just as long as we were drawing a diagram of the Reproductive System. All the essays that he made us write were about women's sexual abuse. We all complained about him. When he got kicked out, it was like we had won a small war, the feminist seed in our subconscious minds attaining shoots and roots. There was also this young college guy who'd come to teach us temporarily. He might have been teaching us a chapter on the rules governing sound but all that we girls heard were the sound of the butterflies flapping their wings in our stomachs.


Once we hit 6th grade the prettier ones started getting boyfriends, sometimes even the ugly ones. I got into a lot of trouble and was in the Principal's office every three months but when it came to boys I used to be oh-so-holier-than-thou-art kinds. We were the kinds who really took our grandmothers seriously when she told us that we would get pregnant if we allowed a boy to even touch us. Therefore I never so as much even glanced at the pretty boys, even when we were made to sit next to them when attending inter-school competitions. Our hearts longing for a box of chocolates too, a hand to hold while taking a stroll around the Mall Road. But it was a sin!!


Besides, we were just so happy and gay amongst ourselves! We didn’t have time for boys. We were too busy crying over Mills and Boons and A Walk to Remember. We were too busy being bitter and bitching about girls with boyfriends behind their backs. They were such whores. We were busy studying; working on our brains cuz we didn’t possess beauty. We were busy listening to and worshipping Pink and Avril for so beautifully giving words to the adolescent angst inside us; too busy drooling over the Backstreet Boys and Westlife and Britney spears because we didn’t have lives of our own. Yes Britney too. There was something safe and reassuring about loving celebrities. They would not ignore you like that guy did. Who cares if you fell totally in love with him just because you saw him in a school play? If he is not even aware of your existence let alone about your attraction to him. But you would sit and crib over his alleged affair with his Barbie counterpart from your school and your journal entries were only curses directed at that bitch girl who stole him from you. You don’t have the guts to say anything to him on his face but who knows you could've and had it not been for that bitch the two of you could've walked into the sunset hand in hands...blah - blah - blah - bullshit.

III

Okay, getting back on track.

I was taught the highest possible of ideals when I was in school. I was taught that you cannot settle for anything less than perfect. Consequence, even when I grew up I looked for the same virtue in a boy. But obviously everyone knows that there is no such thing as a perfect boy. I had a list.

“Should know how to play a musical instrument

 should be able to sing

 should know how to dance

 should not be too fair

 should be intelligent

 should not be short tempered

 should not wear tight groin-hugging jeans (yuck!)

 Should not be an asshole.”

I’m not kidding. This was my actual list. It’s in my journal! 

So the theory is that because I was sooo obsessed with perfection and finding the perfect guy, I never bothered or took out the time to even talk to any boy if he didn't meet any of my requirements. It's a well-known fact that unless you spend time with a person you will never know about the person they really are. And unless you know a person you can never fall in love with them. I could never even make a guy friend. I had learned to view the boys as nothing more than the opposite sex fit only to be husbands or dads or brothers or boyfriends. Never 'only a friend'. Whenever I spoke to a boy my mind would be racing, thinking of things to tell or responses. I'm sure I chased away a lot of boys because of my comatose reactions.

So I remained Loveless and Boy-Friendless for a looong time. But the same Institution had also instilled in me a quality to learn from the mistakes we make. I took it as a challenge and today, I can talk to any boy without feeling even an iota of awkwardness!

But you see the connection?