Recently someone in my class has taken delight in rubbing salt into others’ wounds. I would never do that. No beings perfect, it is quite natural for you and me to own a weakness.

Was there ever a case where you could not articulate a sound as a child? Starting to learn pinyin in primary school, I had trouble distinguishing some sounds in the system. Yes, I could hear the differences, but I simply was not able to enunciate them distinctly.

Since a lot of kids in my hometown shared the same trouble, my parents did not make a mountain out of it. Besides, the kids would outgrow the problem in time. By adolescence, most of them were able to get the sounds right. Therefore, I did not become aware of the flaw at all until after I became a first grader.

In a Chinese lesson, the teacher was instructing us to enunciate three sounds in the Chinese pinyin system, G, K, H. The mistress having modelled them, I tried time and again, but I found I was doing all the three as H, H, H. Noticing most kids around pronouncing them more or less correctly, I panicked. I started to practise quietly lest I be heard. However, my voice becoming lower did not divert my teacher’s attention from me; instead, she perceived the change. Singling me out, the teacher ordered me to read the three sounds to the class. Instantly I was cast under the spotlight, my speech limitations thus exposed to every ear around.

After that lesson, I became a laughingstock. Some of my classmates even aped me. In retrospect, my faulty pronunciation was nothing shameful, but as a kid, I suffered beyond measure from their tease. Before I read anything, I would look out for the G, K, H, sounds. Going with a sentence with any of them in, I took great care to pronounce but I still stumbled over it invariably. Therefore, laughter was a constant companion, with me reading in the primary school classroom.

Then came a day when suddenly I found I was able to do the three sounds perfectly. I was 10 that year. Meanwhile the kids had stopped playing jokes on me before I knew it.

The year I was 13, my younger brother started primary school. He, like me, struggled with the three sounds. At home back from school, I showed him with great patience how to sound them right. I would not like to see the same pathetic scenario befall my brother.

To be honest, I do not hate my former classmates at all. I just think that at the time childish and silly, they were callous to how I felt. The only legacy that has lingered from my childhood pronunciation trauma is that anytime I come upon the three sounds, G, K, H, these days, I have an odd feeling in the guts.

This experience of mine has underlined the fact that everyone is equal and that we should respect all around us whatever imperfections they are believed to have. Before I comment on anyone’s shortcomings, I will bite my tongue and think twice.