Rather, the boys in my Primary 6 class would take empty 100-Plus bottles and make the most toxic concoctions, including but not limited to the following ingredients: urine, saliva, spiders, grass, pen ink, soil, and sometimes, actual 100-Plus.
We would then shake the bottles with the vigour of those creepy bubble-tea dolls you used to see at Pasar Malams, and threaten to pour the mixtures on each other.
Till today, we are widely credited with being the forefathers of biological warfare.
It is things like Bak Kut Teh, changing into shorts so we could go to LAN shops, and buying bubble tea with the sole purpose of shooting the pearls at each other’s white uniforms that made our childhoods what is was.
That, in a nutshell, is exactly what the Instagram account @KidsOfSingapore embodies.
There is a litany of characters on display in each video, and each one brings to mind a memory from primary school.
In one of the videos, a boy can be seen licking ice cream off the floor, most probably as part of a dare.
I have lost count of the number of times someone said to me, “Eat (Insert disgusting inedible thing) and I will give you $2”.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, this was how I paid for my first football—not because I was prudent and saved my pocket money, but because I would put almost anything in my mouth for money.
I’m glad that I got that out of my system, if not, I might’ve had a vastly different career trajectory. (Get your mind out of the gutter, I was referring to myself being a food critic)
And the key piece of weaponry that every Primary school boy keeps in his arsenal of insults is the versatile and evergreen “your mother” diss.
It never had to make much sense, but you cannot deny that it was always effective.
Someone says that you’re ugly?
“Your mother face look like dog cb!”
Failed your 1.6km run?
“Knn you run so slow damn fat like your mother sia!”
Can’t figure out the Pythagoras theorem?
“A squared plus B squared equals your mother STUPID!”
Without skipping a beat, his friend swoops in to save the day by retorting in his unbroken, pre-pubescent voice, “Yes, I know your mother go for boob plastic surgery.”
Burn.
How do you come back from that? It is simply impossible. These boys know how to hit where it hurts.
In one video, a boy is seen running back and forth, from the pavement to a road divider, and back again. Most probably in a bid to show his friends that he is some kind of daredevil.
One commenter even implied that such stupid behaviour is key in order to let natural selection pan out. Harsh.
Clearly, the boy barely has a grasp on the full extent of gang violence, and has no idea what he’s is doing, even if he is doing it purely because he thinks that it is funny.
Usually, the general public shits on people who glorify gang violence. Luckily for him, he’s a cute and chubby bespectacled kid, which means that he can get away with sleeping with the cai fan auntie’s daughter and still get extra portions of har cheong gai.
Regardless of the level of stupidity at which they conceive of and execute their ideas, you can tell that it comes from a place of pure, unbridled joy. There is zero cynicism in whatever they do, and everything is fair game so long as it triggers a laugh.
This is an aspect of youthful innocence us adults could really use. We tend to overthink issues and place too much of an emphasis on political correctness to a fault.
When was the last time you held an opinion to yourself just because you didn’t want to tread on any toes? My guess would be that it wasn’t too long ago.
In my mind, an ideal world would be one where a group of adults could engage in childish pranks and slapstick humour just because they think that it’s hilarious. Who knows, they might even pick up traction and find a way to pioneer and monetise a new kind of juvenile comedy.
Oh wait, I forgot about this.
