For three days now my younger brother hasn’t gone to school. No-one in my family really knows what the problem is. Nor do I. But the last thing I want is for him not to go to school because of me. I hope that he didn’t copy my bad habits from the past. Now I need to find out the problem and fix it for him. I am sure that I do understand him more than my parents because my age is closer to him and I still remember what it was like when I was a kid. I have got to go to talk to him now.

My brother’s name is Guy. He is the fourth person in my family out of my parents and me. His birthday is on 16th of December. He is eleven years old right now which is about five years younger than me. He is in Prathom 5, but he looks older than that. He is quite short, fat and has dark skin. Do you believe that he weighs about 55 kilos while I am only 53 kilos? Do you believe that? If he jumped on me, I would be stuck on the floor for sure!

Now let’s talk about the problem. One day in the morning, I saw my dad standing in front of our house in his work clothes with a moody face, real moody. I walked towards him and asked what had gone wrong. He said my brother didn’t want to go to school today and he hadn’t gone for the last two days. I didn’t know that because I just came back home after sleeping at school (working late at night). I said to my dad that he can go to work now, I will handle all the rest.

Dad went to work, I went in the house and I saw my mum there. She hadn’t gone to work just because she was trying to talk to my brother about the problem. But he didn’t say anything to her. He just sat there crying. My mum also cried. She told me that Guy tried to kill himself. She said he held a cooking knife against his neck and said that if anyone came near him, he would cut himself. I was laughing after I heard that. I told my mum that why didn’t she just tell him to do it. I am sure that he wouldn’t do it really, he is only eleven. But my mum said she knew that but what would happen if Guy really did it? She said it’s better not to take a risk. I agree with her now.

I told my mum to calm down then I went to talk to Guy. I asked him to come up to my bedroom to talk but he didn’t want to. He said he was scared I would beat him up. I had to ask him lots of times before he came upstairs. He then sat away from me on the other side of my bed. Maybe he thought that’s easier for him to run away, just in case I tried to hurt him. I said to him: “Don’t be afraid, come and sit near me. I won’t hurt you, I just want to talk to you like brother and brother”. He came to sit near me with a scared look in his eyes. I started to ask him questions like “Why didn’t you go to school?”, “Did anyone hurt you?” etc. He didn’t really answer my questions, he just continued crying.

It took me a while to find out what’s wrong. In the end he told me that the problem came from his class teacher. He said she didn’t like him and kept punishing him. He said he didn’t want to go to school anymore. He wanted to stay home. I asked him why it was like this and he said it started from the time when he didn’t want to give some money to the teacher. I asked him why did the teacher want the money for? He replied that it was for the school. Soon they would be going to the temple to make merit by giving some money to the monks. So, every classroom teacher had to collect money from their students and send the money to the school office. After he had finished telling me that, I asked him why hadn’t he given some money to the teacher. We are not a rich family but I knew our mum gave him pocket money. He didn’t say anything so I asked him again then he started to reply. He said that he was saving up his pocket money to buy a bicycle. He also said that he wanted to buy it with his own money like I had bought my motorcycle. I was very pleased with him when I heard that and very mad about his teacher. I guessed that she wanted her class to collect the most money in the school so that she could show off to other classroom teachers.

I told my brother not to worry about what happened. Really, donating is up to each person, you don’t need to do it if you don’t want to. There are other ways of making merit without having to give money. I told him to go to wash his face then I went down to talk to my mum. I told her what he had said and I asked her to go to talk to the teacher of his class. My mum went to school with Guy. She went straight to see the principal and told her the whole story of Guy. Then they went to talk to Guy’s teacher. My mum said everything is fine now. And she also said to me that she hoped Guy would now go back to school after three days of being absent.

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This is the uncut version of Panrit's article that first appeared in his Gor's World column in the Bangkok Post when he was 16 years old. We will be posting his full versions every Sunday for him while he is still in prison. Read more about Gor at his website www.ThailandLife.com.