A gentleman's revenge, ten years later, is still not late

Ambition big enough, nurtured long enough, will eventually bear fruit.

From the moment I started kindergarten my teacher made me class monitor. Counting those two years, plus my eight years in primary and secondary school, my schooling includes ten years of being class monitor.

In eighth grade I got sacked mid-term for skipping a single class — the only time in twelve years of school. From tenth through twelfth, moving from a village school to a specialized school, I could only dream of not being the worst in the class, let alone leading it. But I always held the ambition that someday I'd reclaim the top leadership role in a large group.

Watching the way our class monitor operated, I could see that not just his character but his leadership ability was nonsense. The other kids were caught in the orbit of his parents and the teachers and couldn't see it, or saw it but wouldn't do anything about it. Unable to find an opening to overthrow him, I settled for making him aware: you may be good at every subject, but in English I'm only racing the best in the class — the deputy in charge of studies — and you're not yet in my league; and as for how to behave with your classmates, I've had that skill since kindergarten. I also wouldn't give you a chance to badmouth me, so whatever you did poorly I wouldn't even attempt, in case it looked like I was overstepping. When your dad is an important teacher and your mom is a popular teacher, nobody will read my actions as well-intentioned anyway. I only did for people the things you wouldn't do. And there were so many of them — you only knew how to help our class by kicking other classes down, help the teachers, help the school, help yourself. I knew how to create value for each person, for our class, for the class next door, for each teacher, for the whole school.

I organized class birthday parties month by month or by a cluster of nearby months. I rallied everyone to chip in, to their ability. I organized International Women's Day (March 8th) for the girls in the class. It was only after doing it that I noticed October had the most birthdays — count back nine months and "Aha! That's why they say 'when January comes I'll marry you'!" In the old days, at the end of the autumn-winter rice harvest, the grandparents would shoulder sacks of rice over to arrange marriages for their sons.

After high school, let's see what would happen. I didn't want to stop seeing people, but I didn't know how to hold friendships together long term. Every year we'd gather, and each year we'd be one friend short, one visit short. Once everyone had their own families, sometimes it'd just be three of us drinking together — this person comes sometimes, that one shows up other times, it's hard to get everyone together. You showed up exactly once, with the girl I had a three-year unrequited crush on from eleventh grade through the first year out of school. Lucky for me you didn't come back, because if you'd come regularly I'd probably have zero high-school friends left.

Nearly twenty years later, once a year if we were lucky. We'd ask after this one and that one — haven't seen them since we graduated, and every passing year we added one more year to the "haven't seen them" count... I wanted to see them too, adding another year to my own count of haven't-seen-this-friend, haven't-seen-that-friend... One day I told myself: I have to reset every one of those numbers to zero, no exceptions!!!

What better opportunity than the one day that happens only once in a lifetime: getting married. It put my friends in a position where they couldn't say no. It wasn't just about seeing them at the wedding — the wedding was the excuse to summon them.

A few years into this effort, my friends tacked on the title of cultural-arts-and-sports officer, with the duty of organizing everyone for drinking sessions. I accepted every title; whatever you called it was fine, and whatever result mattered, I'd go do it. Any title is recognition.

I kept doing it better, and every year a few more friends would come. When we met we'd ask "how've you been, bro?" — no more of that "five years" or "twenty years" or "haven't seen you since we graduated." (And whoever skipped this year, I put you in charge of next year, no excuses.)

Only this year did my friends finally let me move up to Class Monitor — paying it all back twenty-four years at once. Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade don't count, those years weren't mine.

The feeling of satisfaction / fulfillment / accomplishment has filled up all forty-two years. I'm still floating from last night; this is an achievement I can carry with me for the rest of my life. To carry it forever, I'll just have to do better every year from here.

I'm ambitious about serving my friends, and I'm not afraid of any gossip. A gentleman's revenge, ten years later, is still not late — and mine took twenty-three.