As the third son in a family of four, I had the misfortune of growing up to be the last recipient of clothes, shoes and books passed down from my two older brothers. And the buck, or the monkey suit, stopped right with me.
Our sister, the youngest in the family, had the luxury of wearing everything brand new. Coming from a Minang family, where a daughter is imperative if the family's traditions and lineage are to be continued, she was the queen in the family. And poor me, I grew up feeling like an unwanted or accidental child. I could almost hear my parents hissing when I was born "Oh no, not another boy."
I exaggerate a little, though. My sister did get to use some of the books that I had read and had sometimes scribbled all over, the pages dog-eared through my carelessness.
That was the 60s and 70s, when books were good for several years before the school and the publisher decided on a new updated edition.
Some of the books we used still had value even after my sister was through with them. Our parents usually donated them to poor families in the neighborhood, or gave them away to tukang loak (street traders who make the rounds of the neighborhood buying and selling secondhand goods).
You could almost be certain of finding some of these books in secondhand book markets in Pasar Senen district in Central Jakarta. Similarly, if you didn't feel like buying a new book, you could always rely on the Senen markets to provide you with the books you needed.
All of this sounds nostalgic today.
I raised my two children, both boys born in the mid-1980s, with little or no experience of hand-me-down clothes, shoes, or books.
Since they were only 20 months apart, they were practically rivals from the time the second child was born. The second son did use some hand-me-down clothes and the old play pen in the first year or two, but he grew up so fast that he caught up with his older sibling. The two were pretty much wearing the same size of clothes by the time they started going to kindergarten and school.
I guess our economy was also much better than when I grew up, and we did not really have to resort to hand-me-down practices.
But what got me as we started sending our children to school was that every book we bought for the eldest son was only good for that year. This meant his younger brother, who is only a year behind at school, had to buy a completely new set of books every time.
Each year, the school in collaboration with publishers, would make sure that there would be a new edition quite different for each textbook, whether it was mathematics, geography or history.
My sons were even encouraged by teachers to scribble in their textbooks, making sure there was no chance for further use after they finished with them. My mom would have told me off if she had caught me scribbling in my textbooks.
So, our family ended up with two sets of books for each child. What was worse, we could not donate them to anyone because no one, not even the poorest family, had any use for them. And the market for secondhand books has long been dead.
Fortunately, amidst parents' groans over the rising cost of sending children to school, the government for some reason suddenly realized that one way of cutting costs was by extending the life of school textbooks; just like in the old days.
Beginning in 2006, the government has now mandated that every school textbook should be good for at least five years, meaning that they can be passed down to their siblings. Or, now that the size of families tends to be smaller, these books could still be donated to poor families.
Or, you could always give them to the tukang loak as he makes his rounds in your street.
Schools don't have to be that expensive. You can start with books.
Actually, being the third in line in the hand-me-down order was not all that bad. Just think of the kid next to you who was the last child in a family of 10.
--Eric Musa Piliang
