Childhood Series
An assortment of memories from growing up in Singapore.
01.
Composition books. One time, while I was practicing my Chinese characters, my mum looked over and pointed out a mistake I made. I had just woken up from a nap and was extremely grumpy, so to spite her, I erased the entire page and started over. I’m not sure what I expected, but her praising me for being so diligent afterwards made me even angrier.
02.
Fishball Soup. Fishball soup was quite possibly my favorite food growing up. Even in the extreme heat, I’d rush to the school canteen everyday to get it. My mum quickly found out about this diet and started making me sandwiches for lunch.
03.
Recess. I don’t remember having friends in primary school. During recess, I would spend my time digging for translucent roly-polys (which I recently found out were just plain grubs) or poking touch-me-nots.
04.
Uniform. I went to a Methodist all girls primary school where they had strict rules about appearance. There was a rumor that if you wore hair ribbons that were not either black or deep navy, the principal would snip your pigtails off. I never had any problems because my bowl-cut wasn’t long enough for hair ribbons anyway.
05.
Short stories. 1. We had a game in gym class called Turtle Turtle, where if you got tagged, you had to bend over like a turtle and wait for someone to crawl under you to set you free. I got tagged once and had to remain in the turtle position for the remainder of the game. I’ve faked a stomachache every time since that we’ve had to play.
2. Once, to get attention in school, I stuck a bandaid on my chin. Lots of people asked me what happened, and the stories became so wild that by the end of the day everyone thought I had gotten stitches from a great fall. I’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for the Singapore heat, making my chin so unbearably itchy that I ripped the bandaid off two hours before school ended.
3. We had two blonde girls in my class; both had short hair and both were named Beverly. The Beverlys always got special treatment, so naturally, the more beautiful Beverly got to be Cinderella in our class play. I don’t remember ever voting for her, but I do remember thinking that I’d have been a better fit for the role.
06.
Portrait. Me [cerca 1998]