Seriously, is it some kind of universal experience that every kid in the world has to go through the hell of playing the recorder in school?

Well, I say hell cause that's apparently what everyone else thinks. But uhhhh, this is why this book is titled My School Life and not Our School Life. Cause here's another fun fact for you readers: I love the recorder with all my life

When I was younger, I was absolutely fascinated by flutes. I actually have no idea why, but younger me was absolutely obsessed with them. Problem is, I'm not a very musical person. I had piano classes when I was like 6 but dropped it about two years later, so I actually have little to no knowledge on musical instruments.

When I reached Standard 3 and was given a recorder, I automatically assumed it was a flute and completely fell in love with it. Problem is, the school didn't really put a lot of effort teaching us music, and no one in my family knew what hell instrument I was gifted by the school.

Seriously, not a single family member knew what was the instrument called, all they knew was it was definitely not a flute but they didn't really bother to correct me in that. Like one day when my uncle was visiting I knew he was good at instruments so I asked him if he could teach me to play it.

He stared at it for a few seconds before asking, "what is this?"

Yeah, I was quite literally self-taught on the recorder. You know how you can say you're self-taught but in can be in the context of you learned through YouTube tutorials? I took the music textbook and combined with my previous sheet music knowledge from piano class, taught myself to play songs in the recorder through trail and error.

Fast forward to about 3 years later when I'm 12 in Standard 6, and our teacher is actually making some sort of effort to teach us the recorder. I open the textbook and realized the song we're learning that day was the first song I thought myself to play on the recorder, 可爱的家庭 (or My Cute Family in English)

Alright, so at that point a good portion of my classmates already knew I was pretty good at the recorder cause I actually had the time and willingness to practice it. So when I decided to just show my friends I knew this song already my music teacher overheard it, and she freaked out, like FREAKED OUT.

She was so amazed, SO AMAZED that this 12 year old could play a dinky nursery rhyme on Satan's instrument I instantly became her favourite student of all time. It was ridiculous, my life sounds like the entire subreddit of r/thathappened but one of the things that is the most unbelievable is that I'm actually pretty good at the recorder.

Also, she doesn't remember me by name. This woman has taught me for about 4-5 years of my life and she actually doesn't even know if I wear glasses or not. I know this cause my friend from another class told me about a time she was bragging about me she asked her if the kid she was talking about wore glasses.

She said no. I'm literally the only kid in the school who doesn't hate the sound of the recorder. I'm somehow still her favourite student.

Anyways this chapter can branch off into two ways that is to continue about my pretty useless music teacher who's dead to me or my recorder obsession, and I've decided it'll go back to the recorder.

So anyways, fast forward again to a year later in 2019, and if you read some of my other books, or are a long time follower, you might've known that my recorder skills shot up insanely after primary school graduation, cause last year I did a solo performance for teacher's day on the recorder.

Originally, I wanted to do that again this year, because yes. But Covid-19 said no and now I'm stuck at home sad and with no recorder stuff. On the bright side, my school is having an online talent show so I'll see how badly I can embarrass myself playing Spider Dance on the recorder

Nowadays, I know the incredibly obvious difference between a recorder and a flute. And I continue to torture my neighbours with squeaky recorder music. Also, that music teacher was not someone I'd like to have back in my life again