Down the memory lane

I was reminded of my early school days, thanks to a few pictures of my school posted by my old chums online.
There are countless memories etched in my heart, associated with the school where I studied from the First Grade to the Eighth!

In this post and the sub sequent ones, I am going to brief one such memorable incident from each Grade! Let’s go down my memory lane! :)

First Grade
The MigrAnt

I was new to Andhra. And so was Andhra to me!
I joined KVW, in the last quarter of the academic year, as an extremely timorous first grader. And people speaking an alien tongue didn't help matters either.
Hardly 5 years old, English, to me, was no more than ABCD, twinkle twinkle and Ba ba Black-sheep! And for the records, my Hindi was as good as my Greek and Latin.
In a month or so, I could manage a few friends with my broken English (if I can overrate it! :) )but, still, couldn't be half as expressive as I wanted.

One (not-so-) fine day, I was drinking water from my bottle when I found something oddly coarse in it. I was shocked to see a pool of red ants floating on the water inside the bottle.
I knew red ants' bite was as bad as an injection. I was quite unaware, at that tender age, that those ants would have long been dead before they could have tried to bite my mouth and whatever inside! (Yeah..” whatever”.. You don't expect a First grader to know about the pipes, intestines and kidneys. Do you??? ).
How hard would it be to have scores of ants biting your insides???
This thought was enough to trigger my tears big time!
And, tears turned into howl in no time!
I started wailing uncontrollably! Soon, people surrounded me asking what had happened.
If only I could explain!!!
All I could do was to point at my water bottle and my mouth! And this became some sort of exercise for me as I had to repeatedly swing my hands from my water bottle to my mouth and back again.
Alas, nobody could get it right! Crowd started to build. I became the centre of a big circle of anxious teachers and amused students. I felt like a dumb-charades contestant. A poor one all the same, I must say!

And that was when my class teacher misunderstood that I had mistakenly swallowed my water bottle's (non-existent) Straw!!! Anxiety among the teachers turned into alarm!
The panic struck teachers immediately called my elder brother to 'inform' him!
And how relieved was I to finally, find someone whom I can communicate without my hands! :)

I had never been more grateful for his presence! :)
I told everything to my translator-bro who conveyed it in "Hindi" to all! People started laughing on the triviality. And the crowd disbursed soon later.
I, eventually, stopped my tears after being guaranteed that eating ants were harmless and in fact, good for the eyes (Is it really??? Anyways, a first grader does rest assured when told by the “one-who-knows-all”, a third grader! :)).

This incident was my first memorable incident in my alma mater! I still remember the way I created a great hype out of void!

My first talent had been realized! :D