11. To Sir with Love 

I could have named this story “My first lesson in sex education” or “The most embarrassing moment of my life” or “The unidentified burning object”.  I finally settled for “To Sir with Love”.  You will know my rationale when you read to the end. 

My secondary school had a penchant for class picnics.  Every now and then we would go to the countryside or the beaches and do barbecue.  We had so many such outings that I could not remember the exact occasion or location where this story took place.  All I remember was that we were on a beach somewhere in the New Territories.  It was a school sponsored event, so everyone was there.   

We were trying to set up a couple of BBQ pits right on the beach.  In those days, there were no starter fluid and starting a BBQ would mean gathering a lot of dry twigs, leaves and grass and newspaper or whatever you could get your hands on to start the fire that would get the charcoal burning. 

I was one of several who were assigned the task of gathering the stuff to start the fire.  It was autumn and it was a fairly chilly day.  The sooner we could get the fire going, the sooner we could sit around the fire and start cooking.  We gathered the stuff as quickly as we could.   

I collected a fair amount of dry twigs and also a handful of newspaper and paper bags from a dump site nearby.  We placed the stuff on the pit, laid charcoal over it and ignited it with matches.  The newspaper and paper bags burnt easily and within minutes we had a steady flame and plenty of smoke.   

Several of us were watching.  There were two girls among us.  One was Alice Wang, the niece of our school principal.   

As one of the brown paper bags was burning, it revealed something inside.  When I picked it up earlier from the dump site, I assumed it contained some sort of waste paper inside.  The object looked like a thick bandage of some fashion.  It’s apparently made of white cotton but was badly stained.    

I had no clues what it could be.  Apparently none of the other boys had any ideas what this unidentified burning object was.  The two girls, however, seemed to recognize it.  I could tell from their faces that they knew what it was.  They had an expression that people would have when they anticipated an impending disaster or something unpleasant.   

Within seconds, there was a strangely terrible smell coming from the fire.  It was a penetrating and choking smell, one that I had never come across before and would never come across again since.   

Alice Wang was the first one to abandon the pit.  She shot a glance at me that said loud and clear -“You idiot!” and then ran from the pit upwind.  She didn’t say a word.  She didn’t have to.  The rest of us promptly followed the exodus to safety.  Everyone stayed as far away from the poor pit as we could for the rest of the day. 

While I might be ignorant in certain areas, I was not stupid and had formed a theory of the nature of the object that I had inadvertently put in the pit, and I felt like an idiot.  However, my theory was not proven until a short while later when the movie “To Sir with Love” came to the cinema.   

It starred Sidney Poitier as a substitute teacher at an English secondary school.  He was not very popular with his students at the beginning of the movie.  In fact, they all hated him!  One of the girls burned her feminine napkin in the classroom to show her displeasure with the teacher.  What a stink!  Now you know the reason behind the name of this story.  

-The End-