When I was in Primary 5, I was the class monitor. Mr Chew was our form teacher. I had just learned a new phrase “Did you get me?” and I had been dying to use it in a sentence to impress him.

One fine day, the opportunity came when he walked into the class and a few of my classmates were still held up in another class in another classroom. Mr Chew asked “Where are the rest?” I seized the opportunity. I told him my classmates were on their way back from another class and ended that sentence with “Did you get me?”

Mr Chew pointed his finger at me, looked me straight in the eye and said “Don’t be rude.” Thinking that he didn’t hear what I said, I repeated myself: “No, no, no…I mean did you get me?” He then also repeated “Don’t be rude!” I was devastated.

It wasn’t till I attended Landmark Education’s Communication: Power to Create course more than 20 years that I recalled this incident. As a young 11 year old boy, I was scolded by a person of authority for speaking in a direct manner. Since then, I grew hesitant of communicating in a direct and powerful way for fear of ‘getting scolded’. Instead I wrap my communication with sarcasm.

I became a sarcastic person.