Difficult To Forget

I was only a young naïve 10 year old girl who don’t know better. That was the age where I felt liberated, I felt that the world was a beautiful place to live in… The age where I felt that I could be the most dazzling, magnificent girl in school or even in the planet. I was free from care, I was in love or so I thought that I was. I suppose it’s what you called puppy love. Which I’m most certain that a lot of people in this planet one way or the other had their first crush, first puppy love that they cannot forget, ever!

“…and they call it puppy luuurrrvveeee…

My best friend Z was a little bit of a softy and when I said softy, I meant a soft – he’s like a girl, he’s more than a girl, he’s just like what we Malay call a Bapok. He likes to hang around with us girls so much that we thought that he’s turning into a girl himself but during that time, we didn’t know what gay or lesbian means so we just thought that he’s just weird and probably because his siblings are all girls, so he’s more comfortable being around girls. His dad was a police officer and his mum was an actress in Singapore and those days, she was a popular and a first-rate actress and probably still.

Z and I we were like two peas in a pot… We were like… sisters (with a tune)… We hang out together, we go swimming together, we will have sleepovers (which was hardly ever coz my dad hate it when I slept at others house. He always says that why would you want to sleep in someone else’s house when you have your own house? Macam tak ada rumah sendiri gituk nak tidur rumah orang!) at his place and just we’ll just chill and do those girlish stuff and also we’ll do our homework there. I like going over to his place coz his apartment was bigger than mine and he has a balcony and those times, if you have a balcony, you are rich! Well, not mega rich but you’re sure well off! I’m always in awe whenever I stepped into his house. It’s just so spacious and so comfortable and I just felt privileged to be there… It may not be a big deal to others but compared to our 2 bedroom flat, it was a huge deal to me… Of course, I befriended him not because his parents were rich or he has a famous mum or that he has a bigger house than me or that he always gives me his teddy bears… not at all! We just get along really well! I get really offended when some of the kids called him names and I always try my best to defend him coz I know he’s not that and I know it’s just a phase that he was just going through… (Boy was I wrong!)

I couldn’t really bring to mind how it happened or from where he came into view but he just did and how he took my breath away and I bet not only my breath, all the girls breath in that school! (No air to breath!!) Well they say first love last forever don’t they?

It’s a bit vague on what happened between the three of us… Z, R and me…

I remembered that the moment I saw him, I was head over heels… His hair was sandy brown, fair skin, big bright brown eyes, sharp nose, luscious, beautiful lips and was the most good-looking boy I’ve ever seen… and not to mention that he’s of a mixed race and that time it was really rare to find them breed! (And no, that’s not the reason why I married my husband or that I have a thing about Caucasian – it just happened!)

It took me A LONG time to speak to him. Z was the middle boy… Or should I say the meddler? Somehow Z knows R from somewhere and they ended hanging out which also means that I hang out with them too… But I was really shy with R (but I wasn’t known to be shy even as a kid so this one is exceptional). Every time I’m with him or near him, I got tongue tight. I just kept mummed and just couldn’t utter a single word… But then, he started to write letters to me (which I still kept until now) and of course I replied to him and our postman will be Z always… I think it did took us a long time coz in the middle of me admiring and oogling over him, he got himself a Chinese ‘girlfriend’ and I was left disappointed but not crushed coz somewhere along the line I always thought that we were meant to be together.

Despite all that, we started to develop this friendship (that I call lurrve on my part and probably on his part was just a normal friendship) and we decided to meet up at our local swimming pool (I considered this as our first date) as we all love to go to the swimming pool after school for a swim (and you thought that with our frequent trip to the swimming pool that I have become this great swimmer – but no, still a crap at it!). In one of his litter he wrote that he’ll ring me and we’ll meet up on Saturday (I think!) at so and so time and I replied by giving him my home number and told him I was looking forward to our first unofficial date… So I waited, and waited and waited and when Saturday came, nothing! I was disappointed, my heart was crushed! How could he lie to me? What happened? I called Z and he said that maybe something came up and before we put the phone down he gave me R’s number… But it was a wrong number… Hmmm… why did he give me a wrong number? Oh well! I must dialled wrong. Later on, I found out that he did go to the pool with Z which I find that to be odd considering that Z told me R went to Johore or something but in the end I found out that Z told R that I wasn’t coming, that I back out…

So, to make story short, ultimately we never really had that date and I found out that Z has been reading our letters first hand before actually passing to us and it appears that my letters to R, Z re-wrote everything and sign off as me and R never got my letter…

One way or another, he was the one who’s in love with R and that he doesn’t want us to be together and so he wrote all this nasty things in all the letters that I wrote to R… No wonder we had a ‘lover’s tiff’ during that period… Well, not really a lover’s tiff but just that we didn’t speak to each other and I always get this cold shoulder from R. I couldn’t understand why he was up in arms at me or what has been said but R just wouldn’t talk to me…

Then one day, I found out that R was no longer studying in our school. Rumour has it that he went back to Malaysia to continue his studies there or something like that… I don’t know.

Anyway, I can still remember the weird dreams that I had of him and I still have all the letters that he gave me. I still kept it back home in Singapore. Just some of my memorable past that I thought I would like to cherish. I never threw away all the letters that he gave me or any letters that my friend and I wrote to each other… I guess, when I grow older and bored, I could just pick those few letters up and read them through and just reminiscing those good times that I had when I was young and naïve and a teenager. Does this make me sound like a granny? Well, I’m just a sentimental being you see!

Last year, I went in the Friendster website and just type in his name and voila! R’s name popped out and he’s THE guy that I briefly knew 17 years ago – now was that a coincidence or what? Of course he still looks good and well built and attached… and… gosh… what a small world!