Making My Stand

July 27

Born in the Land of Peace, known to many as Taiping, to a father who was into contruction and a mum who was then a factory worker, I was taken care full time by my grandparents and aunts who were then not married. Three years down the road, my sister Wendee came along, and my mum quit her job, with the very intention to fulfill her role as a full time homemaker. At the tender age of three, I already had a mind of my own. I refused to leave my beloved grandparents. I remember the first my parents took me home, hoping (and probably attempting to cut the attachment) that I'll forget the older couple. When night came and realising that they would not take me home to my grandparents', I started crying. Children, after a while would have probably given in to exhaustion but not me. I sat by the bed whole night through, wide awake and cheeks stained with dried tears. I was adamant to state my stand. So yes, I outdid my parents'so-called persistence and back i went to my grandparents' the next morning.

Being the only grandchild living with the elderly couple, I grew up pretty much alone, with neighbours' kids as playmates. We did all sorts of activities that 'kampung' kids would have done - running all over bare-footed, played hide-and-seek, climbed rambutan trees, mango trees, even coconut trees, and bicycled around. We raced each other barefooted, caught spiders, which we kept in match boxes, and grasshoppers too. We played with 'longkang' fish and caught tadpoles, getting ourselves filthy, smelly and sweaty. You can imagine my grandma screaming her head off each time she saw the filthy me. Once I had gotten a neighbour's flower pot partially broken whilst I tried to ride on her son, my fellow playmate's bicyle at the age of five. We hid the broken pieces, hoping that she'd never noticed. Yes, she did, and we got quite an earful.

I attended a co-ed school in my primary years. Growing up with boys (and girls), I learned to play as hard as they did. There were the girl games - batu seremban, the dance on the skipping rope made of rubber bands tied together. With the boys, there were chopper, a game which we threw tennis ball at the members of the opposing team, fighter jets play cards, and marbles. There were two incidents that saw me whacked two boy classmates of mine. One was me landing a big slap across his face and the other got a thump on his head. The one who got the thump was seated next to me in class and he was loud and a real chatterbox. The other got fingerprints on his right cheek because he was verbally bullying one of my girlfriends for being on the heavier side. Guess i was making a stand - respect your (girl) friends.