As a child, I always liked to laugh, especially when I was scolded at school.
Scoring perfectly on the arithmetic exam–or the KS exam, as we called it with Chinese abbreviation–was one of the highest honors any student could achieve in my elementary school. As a fourth grader who was proudly indifferent about math, I was propelled only by the competition around me, stumbling forward with an ambiguous worry about my score. As our math teacher, Ms. Shi, read the answer key of our first KS mock exam and let us check our own answers, I had already become unable to hold my red pen because my hands were shaking so nervously. The six problems I didn’t have the time to complete blurred my thoughts. My ears vaguely captured a few answers from Ms. Shi, and I put check marks next to all the problems I had managed to finish. Having missed at least six points, it counted as a failure in KS. As my eyes scanned the room, I discovered that all four of the classmates around me had received full marks. Ms. Shi’s classic, sarcastically cheerful voice lingered in my ear:
“Whoever missed six points or more, stand up.”
Little heads—bearers of shame—were raised here and there as children stood up. I rose, my head dangling. As I was attempting to disappear, Ms. Shi glanced in my direction as though she knew I hadn’t finished.
Looking around the spacious, clean-scrubbed classroom, I noticed another girl, H, standing with her thin head tilted to the right. She was also considered one of the “decently commendable” students in math; everyone else among the standees had already been labeled as well-rounded failures, according to all the personnels at school, including themselves.
Following this observation, I had an overwhelming urge to laugh. This impulse reminded me of my unstoppable antics in second grade when the school principal yelled at me for sprinting and screaming in the cafeteria. It seemed to me as laughable as how a fifty-year-old, serious-looking man would get irate about two seven-year-old girls playing tag on an empty playground–after all, would the playground still exist if all the pupils can do is to walk on it? What might have amused me even more was my classmates’ frightened eyes accompanying the loud crying of the girl who chased me in tag. Yet, the real reason could never be known. Of course, my laughter infuriated the principal even more. I would not make the same mistake this time. So, glancing at Ms. Shi at the front of the room, I pressed down on the corners of my mouth with force, holding my breath and keeping my eyes tightly closed.
“Someone seems so confident in her . . . superior intelligence that even getting a failing grade cannot help raise her awareness,” Ms. Shi said with a hint of irony in her round eyes. “And look, everyone, she’s still leisurely observing other classmates as if this doesn’t apply to her.”
I squeezed my lower lip with my left thumb and the side of my index finger, causing the angle of my mouth to turn down in an even more unnatural way. With this, the desire to laugh became unbearable. I decided Ms. Shi was referring to me, because “over-confident with superior intelligence” and “observing other classmates” were typical phrases used to describe me, and, as additional proof, I was one of the few girls standing up.
Ms. Shi continued. “Yes, H, I am talking about you. Be careful–don’t think you can be a good student forever just because you have been a good student in the first three years of elementary school. Stop acting like nothing matters to you. When your classmates fail the mock exam, at least they have a healthy attitude. At least they feel embarrassed, which signifies a desire for improvement.”
I had, at that moment, a not-exactly-pleasant epiphany: Ms. Shi was scolding H, the girl with the tilted head. But she was referring to me when she cited the “contrasting example” who felt embarrassed. Being publicly held up as a model of contradiction was one of the highest honors a student could achieve after doing something equally dishonorable, like failing the KS mock exam. Given this, my blatant laugh turned into a smile, the kind of grin when one realizes that they still have the key to home after forgetting a wallet, jacket, or phone on an evening subway.
And, of course, aside from experiencing a reasonable degree of anxiety, I never felt embarrassed. It was likely because of my fitful breaths and the ridiculously distorted shape of my laughing mouth that Ms. Shi thought I was crying from shame.