It was a usual bright sunny morning 6am. My mom’s morning routine was to make me ready for my school. I was 10 years old. An auto-rickshaw was about to come for a pickup. So, she had ironed my uniform perfectly, did my hair precisely and polished my shoes neatly. Like always, school uniform seemed perfect on me. She had also packed homemade lunch with some fruits. Nothing was unusual until lunch break bell rings; and one of my classmates named Tina asks me to accompany her. I had my own group of friends but still my conscious denies saying ‘No’. Therefore, I turned towards my bestie Libby and said, “Libby, I will just come in few minutes, can you please wait for me downstairs”. She replies, “Sure”.
No sooner I overheard the amount of food Tina order. I shockingly said, “Tina, I don’t think you should order this much, you might waste more than you eat”. But she replied negatively, “ If we can’t finish, we will garbage it, don’t worry!” As if food had no value. This was contrary to what my mom had taught I thought. No sooner she pulls out her tiny glittery purse embedded with colorful diamonds and golden zipper, my thought disappears. I not only noticed the amount of money she had but felt weird in my heart. “Whoa, why do you’ve so much of money!” I exclaimed. She reactively said, “It’s usual, why are you so surprised, don’t you get your pocket money?”. I busted, “I do” and gently added, “what’s your pocket money?”. As soon as she happily replied, “100 Rupees every month “, she was distracted by another friend.
In a meanwhile, I thought that it’s lot of money compared to what I get is just 10 Rupees and became speechless. As we were waiting for food in tremendous crowd, my thoughts continued. No doubt I can’t afford to eat from canteen every day. Thereafter, my mind began to wander on self. My eyes dropped and landed on her nails. I noticed shiny transparent nail paint. We weren’t allowed to do nails, mine were bitten and broken, forget about paint.
We had strict school rules for the uniformity of status. But for the first time, I saw the difference in our uniformity of clothes and shoes even though they were exactly same. That’s what I thought earlier until I saw my shoes weren’t shining like hers, it also seemed pretty worn out nor my lace weren’t perfectly tighten. I said, “You’ve a nice shoes”. She added, “I got a new one, I try and get new pair every 3 months”. Who can afford to get new pair of shoes every 3 months, I thought. And my thought continued. I had white socks but they seemed off white unlike hers which implied feather touched softness and whiteness as ‘dove’.
Furthermore, even school uniforms appeared different to me. We had same colours then why was it so? I began to identify. May be my navy blue skirt wasn’t blue anymore, the colour was faded! Also, it was pretty long with folded seam at the bottom. I remember how my mother opened stitches, as I grew tall. While she had a pretty bright and slickly hemmed skirt. Plus, white shirt on the top was iron-pressed unlike mine. I wondered that how her collars were tightly straighten because my collar border were turned upward. Then I pressed collars by hand to make it right.
In addition to that, the tie nod was tricky too. It never stayed in place between two collars for me and always drops down to its comfort. This made my the top shirt button visible. And she had a perfect thick sturdy tie nod that seemed hard to ever move. May be money makes a difference my little mind adds in a gap of thoughts. Later, cool breeze blows so does my eyes rolls towards hairs. Her two-ponytail hair wanted to fly in sky while mine had two oily braids that were tied with torn blue ribbons. “Rich people don’t apply oil”, I remembered Libby’s words. And ‘richness’ flourished in my mind. Thereafter realization sparkled with the class and I also felt status classified into categories. Am I not considered rich? I wasn’t surely poor then where do I belong, my mind struggled. Thus, I felt my economic middle-class status for the first time when I hardly knew the term in my young age. Even in a strict convent school environment where first rule on board was uniformity, an attire showed me my status.
Photo Credit: Mauro Petrolati Flickr via Compfight cc
Sona Christian 
I really liked how you described the way that the uniforms looked in such great detail both hers and yours. It was interesting to read your interpretation at realizing that although everyone’s uniform should be the same, they indeed were different. Also the part about Tina feeling superior to following the rules because she felt the right to have painted nails even though one of the rules was to not have painted nails. I do wonder how you were feeling inside as all of these realizations were coming together, were you sad, jealous or angry that she didn’t have to follow the same rules?
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Thank you for your feedback Angela, I’ve considered your point of expressing feelings for my blog. In response to your question: I didn’t felt sad here by not having those materialistic things. Surely, I was feeling sad that richness brings superiority. Also, Tina being naughty extrovert girl, she found her way to break and hide rules from the authority.
Thank you for the encouragement!
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