Memories: Prologue
I enjoy looking back and reflecting the past. It’s a warm, cozy feeling, to reminiscent the events that once caught your eyes or impacted you in some way. Certain memories will always have a place in your heart, whether good or bad, whether you've tried to purge it or not. Some put a smile on your face, others haunt the daylight out of you. Whatever they are, these are the nuggets of flashback from the years gone by that bury themselves somewhere in the depths of our hearts, our minds, to mould thoughts, shape mentality, and work in their subtle ways to influence our lives and make us what we are today.
I reflected, and a flood of interesting memories poured back from many directions.
I am the first born, supposedly the pride and joy of the family. Got enough pampering from my parents alright, short lived as it was. Damn my sister had to pop out barely more than a year after me! Then somehow, the concept of “sharing” hit me hard. It didn’t help that she’s aged only one year apart from me and we both wanted mostly the same things at that time. Parents’ attention, food, toys (hmm… ok some of it), textbooks.. Maybe not so much of textbooks since she was the one who had to use my old ones! :P
As a child from a dual income family, Mom and Dad were naturally not around most of the day. That was when Grandma had the great pleasure of babysitting her rascal of a grandkids. I could always count on Grandma giving me a few coins to buy snacks and tidbits if I so much as finished three-quarter of the food placed in front of me. Obviously, I always garnered all the discipline in me to gobble down the vegetables (eeee…) and porridge and some of the fish and meat so that I could run down my block and buy three sweets for $0.20 or a lollypop or a packet of kaka, and then sit on the swing in the playground and watch the world pass me by.
Cannot find ne tu! Suck thumb!
Gotta preserve that bit of modesty for myself!
Aiyo! Double chin!
See what see?!?
Those were the days I cherish. Now, they all seem so far and distant.
Growing up was one of the things in life I dreaded most when I was a child. While my peers seem all too eager to venture into adolescence and adulthood, it freaked me immensely. I did not want to grow up. How could my friends not see what going up entail? Responsibilities, relationships, money woes…
I want to be to remain the careless, playful, (never up to any) good boy that spent hours sitting in front of the telly watching cartoons and building castles in the sandpit with little buckets and shavels. I want to go back to being the kid who cried bloody murder to get what he wanted. I want to return to those big canals near my old place to catch fishes then throw them into a bottle of my pee and count the seconds before they bellied up! :P
Yet, I looked at myself in the mirror, and pondered how much of that innocence I have lost. What happened to that solace in the simplicities in life? Has life really become so much more complicated? Or did I just allow it to whirlpool into the sorry state it is now?
Things are not that bad, surely.
At least looking at these pictures remind me how the smiles in both still strike a chilling resemblance. Maybe, really, nothing much did change.
"It's just my life story
Minute by second my story
That goes on forever
with each breath that I take
This is my life story
Celebrating my story
Of smiles and tears and friends and
birthday cakes"
I don't want to grow old, but I so am.
Happy birthday to me.
I reflected, and a flood of interesting memories poured back from many directions.
I am the first born, supposedly the pride and joy of the family. Got enough pampering from my parents alright, short lived as it was. Damn my sister had to pop out barely more than a year after me! Then somehow, the concept of “sharing” hit me hard. It didn’t help that she’s aged only one year apart from me and we both wanted mostly the same things at that time. Parents’ attention, food, toys (hmm… ok some of it), textbooks.. Maybe not so much of textbooks since she was the one who had to use my old ones! :P
As a child from a dual income family, Mom and Dad were naturally not around most of the day. That was when Grandma had the great pleasure of babysitting her rascal of a grandkids. I could always count on Grandma giving me a few coins to buy snacks and tidbits if I so much as finished three-quarter of the food placed in front of me. Obviously, I always garnered all the discipline in me to gobble down the vegetables (eeee…) and porridge and some of the fish and meat so that I could run down my block and buy three sweets for $0.20 or a lollypop or a packet of kaka, and then sit on the swing in the playground and watch the world pass me by.
Cannot find ne tu! Suck thumb!
Gotta preserve that bit of modesty for myself!
Aiyo! Double chin!
See what see?!?
Those were the days I cherish. Now, they all seem so far and distant.
Growing up was one of the things in life I dreaded most when I was a child. While my peers seem all too eager to venture into adolescence and adulthood, it freaked me immensely. I did not want to grow up. How could my friends not see what going up entail? Responsibilities, relationships, money woes…
I want to be to remain the careless, playful, (never up to any) good boy that spent hours sitting in front of the telly watching cartoons and building castles in the sandpit with little buckets and shavels. I want to go back to being the kid who cried bloody murder to get what he wanted. I want to return to those big canals near my old place to catch fishes then throw them into a bottle of my pee and count the seconds before they bellied up! :P
Yet, I looked at myself in the mirror, and pondered how much of that innocence I have lost. What happened to that solace in the simplicities in life? Has life really become so much more complicated? Or did I just allow it to whirlpool into the sorry state it is now?
Things are not that bad, surely.
At least looking at these pictures remind me how the smiles in both still strike a chilling resemblance. Maybe, really, nothing much did change.
"It's just my life story
Minute by second my story
That goes on forever
with each breath that I take
This is my life story
Celebrating my story
Of smiles and tears and friends and
birthday cakes"
I don't want to grow old, but I so am.
Happy birthday to me.