I was not cheating!

When I was in P.4 or 5, my teacher accused me of cheating in an exam.  Actually, it's after the exam.  The teacher gave us back the exam paper to explain the answers. I found her making a mistake for marking one of my correct answers as wrong.  When I brought the paper out for her to see, she said that I cheated and changed the answer.  And needed to see her after class.

The only time I remember myself cheating is during the dictation in early primary school.  I was poor at memorizing the text and very poor at dictation.  So, I'd take a deep breath, and peeked at what the neighbor wrote.  But that's it.  And I begged my classmates for forgiveness afterwards.

I think the teacher had her point.  First of all, no one wants to admit his/her own fault.  Secondly, because of my sweating hands, the exam paper was already quite messy.  And the papers we used at school were very cheap and rough.  The exam was answered with pencil.  And I did rub off some letters during the exam.  But not after!

Luckily, some of my classmates stood up for me.  I was sitting on the most right hand side of the classroom.  I didn't have anyone sitting next to me.  Probably because of the curse I mentioned earlier.  Because there were no one next to me, supposingly no one could testify for me.  But my classmates in front of me, behind me, as well as the one on the next column, stayed after class with me.  Although the reasons they gave, which now I think, was quite....  childish, I really appreciated that.  I remember the one  in front of me saying that she didn't hear me opening my pencil case.  Anyway, at the end, the teacher granted me the points.  However, I felt very bad.

After school, my mom picked me up.  As soon as I saw her, my tears poured out.  Cried so hard that I could not say a word.  Later, I told her that my teacher accused me of cheating, but I did not.  It took me a while to calm down.  And probably after that, I don't like people telling me I do something wrong.  Ha! 

- Lindberg