It was the first day of school for the 5 year old children in the ancient remote village of Guilin, located in the Guangxi Region of China, nestled among the ethereal beauty of the limestone mountains bordering the Lijiang River. As with every child in every country around the world, the boys and girls were apprehensive, excited and almost impossible to get under control.
Their Teacher Miss Rei-Lee was trying, as she did each New Year, to match the names of the children with their faces. She watched and listened as the school nurse checked temperatures and recorded vital statistics such as height: Kra-Kah 105 centimeters (cm); Si-Yah the tallest at 111 cm, 104; Lay-Tah, 110 cm; The new boy in the village with an Iranian father and Chinese mother, Ali 108 cm; Dye-Ahl 104 cm and her cousin Wy-Ahl 106cm; lastly the twins, Gae-Tah 107.5cm and Ahf-Tah 107cm.
Miss Rei-Lee, in search of a method to bring some order to this chaos in a way young children would understand, devised a brilliant plan. Each morning, when the first bell rang alerting the students it was time to enter the classroom, they would line up according to height, a way they can visually comprehend and do without much supervision. Then for roll call each child would simply state their name. This solution seemed to work to take roll and teach responsibility to the developing minds.
Miss Rei-Lee patiently explained the procedure and told the class to line-up by size and then, in order tallest first, to state their names. It worked well at the beginning:
“Si-Yah, Lay-Tah, Ali, Gay-Tah, Af-Tah, Wy-Ahl, Krah-Kah, Dye-Ahl.”
But after a few months, as the children grew at different rates, chaos ensued!