Amongst Other Things

If anything the house move has opened up an entire treasure trove of things that would trigger the sweet (and precious) memories of childhood.

Closing his eyes, he pictured how they looked when they were cradled (probably clumsily) in his hands. The boxes which held the plastic components would have been in pristine condition. They might have given off a faint musky smell (from the cardboard).

They must have made him a happy, happy young lad.

Almost three decades later, he found them stacked up in a cupboard in the new place. The boxes were now in a dilapidated condition and their plastic contents might no longer be complete. This stemmed from how clumsy he was in looking after his toys and years of neglect when he graduated to electronic toys.

But these plastic components kept him occupied for hours on end as a child. First, they introduced him to the essential need to read instructions (because without them, the stuff that he built would not make any sense), which was something that he brought to adulthood. Secondly, they removed his dependency for a playmate (though the flip side to this was how they hampered the growth of his social skills, which he also carried to adulthood). Thirdly, he might have learnt about how life could present many goals.

Every single piece of them gradually led him to a goal – of a completed piece or the beginning of a story. When put together collectively, they were the tools with which he could exercise his imagination. The world was filled with stories he could create and then tell (to himself and years later, the ex-sarong kebaya girl). Because they were his sole form of entertainment, his attention span was almost entirely focused on them. They kept him occupied for hours on end and he would cry only when they were forcibly taken away from him.

In the heart and mind of a young boy, they were his world before he learnt (years later) about escapism and virtual worlds.

So when he saw these boxes again as a not-so-swinging bachelor with a bulging paunch, they triggered swathes of emotions within him. The condition of the boxes resulted in a slight pang of pain in his heart. The faded colours on them were telling of their age. They were the toys, precious and priceless, of a young lad who grew up in the 70s, way before the era of electronic devices with sensitive touch screens. They were very much a part of him and his growing-up years.

The brand of these plastic bricks exists today. There were threads about people collecting them on internet forums. Memories of playing with these plastic bricks would send him looking for the stacks of boxes of the newer models whenever he found himself in a toy shop. In between sighs of how much more fortunate the current young urns are, he would gently brush his fingers on the smooth surfaces of the boxes as though he was gently clasping the hands of an old childhood friend.

They were not exactly cheap toys now, which made him wonder how much dearer they were thirty years back. Given a chance, he would like to know how many of them were gifts and which of them was that that were paid from the blood, sweat and tears of his parental units.

The boxes are now sitting in a bookshelf. His eventual plan was to open them up slowly and restore them to their “glory” as they were almost thirty years ago.

And one day, perhaps way into the future, he would sit his son down and tell him about these little plastic bricks which somewhat defined his life (in some small ways).

Note: Photo will be published once I figure out how to.

(1/365)

He was at the place where they spent the most time together. It was where they watched movies, relished their pasta and savoured cheesy pizzas; in between, they shared with each other stories of their days. The bubble tea place in the building’s basement was where he introduced her to his favourite tea — longan and red date milk tea (the look on her face, as it becomes clearer to him now, suggested that it wasn’t the best drink she had in her life).

He went back to this place again today, where all of these memories came from. In his wallet, a stack of old movie ticket stubs were stashed. He had intended to get one of those scrapbooks where the hitherto precious memories could be kept for posterity. Now, they are remnants of unwanted pain…

Cradling the phone in his hands, he stared at her name and number one last time. The thought of storing their whatsapp messages, months of them, crossed his mind only briefly. Taking in a deep breath, he gently tapped on the phone’s clear glass screen. In his heart, he hoped that this little gesture would bring some form of closure for his life. That and sending the old movie tickets on their way to their fiery end.

For him, December was akin to a Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde month with possibly equal amounts of hope and despair spread evenly across its 31 days.

Hope brought along smiles. He remembered the trip to get Christmas presents for her. He could still picture himself in that little shoppe which sold all sorts of artsy and handicraft stuff, poring through the designs of wrapping paper on offer. In his left hand was a bag, which held three bars of her favourite dark chocolate, from three different places on Earth. They came wrapped, without a ribbon ‘cos he thought it to be a little tacky. In his other hand was a gadget, also a gift for her. The wrapping paper he was looking for would hold it as the second gift while the third was a card, in which he would write words straight from his heart. It was meant as a tacit expression of his interest in making things between them work.

He could remember how light-hearted he felt as he boarded the train with the three gifts in his hands. He would love to see the expression on her face when they were presented to her, even if she could choose to unwrap them in the comfort and perhaps, privacy of her own room later. But what mattered more for him was a positive response; any form of it.

He thought nothing about what she could give him. A simple card would suffice, he thought to himself, I would be more than happy with that.

The parental units were the sources of despair. The impending move – having lived in this same place for half their entire lives (and almost in its entirety for him) – caused them to be easily irritable and grumpy. His idea of a relatively smooth transition to a new abode was shattered repeatedly but decisions and actions that, at best, perplexed him. There were moments when taking on a neutral stance was impossible.

Now, midway through the first month of the New Year, he looked back at December misty-eyed. It represented the final month of hope before everything was taken away from him, seemingly, on the first day of the New Year. He thought he was closer to love than anything he had experienced. There were the weekly trips to the movies, the dinners, the conversations, and her company.

For him, December was nothing more than a bittersweet month.

Yesterday marked the second week of silence. It is dead.

Here are some lessons learnt:

(a) Learn to trust your instincts / gut feel / sixth sense. If something doesn’t feel right, most likely it is the case.

(b) A gesture is worth more than a thousand words. Likewise, the lack of it.

(c) A surprise call is the litmus test.

(d) There is no right or wrong. There’s only interest or no interest.

(e) To lavish at your own peril.

(f) Listen to your heart but let the head veto most of the decisions.

(g) Wrap your heart, protect it because it is your life and when there’s only the dreadful silence you have as company, it’s the only solace you have.

(h) Read the signs. Analyse them at every conceivable angle if you like but if in doubt, let your head make the final call.

(i) The key word, as always is, mutual. It takes two hands to clap, not one.

(j) Moments of bliss are deceptively fleeting. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever jump the bloody gun.

It was like finding the final two missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that had not been completed for the past 10 years. It was only because of the impending move that he found them, nestled in a forgotten corner of the old CD rack.

The two pieces of CD, New School Rock Volume II and III (he got onto the BigO trend after Volume I was released), reminded him of his teenage years. It was a time when he was straddling his interests in rock, modern rock, grunge and indie. BigO gave him an insight into the local music scene, which experienced a fair bit of a revival in the early nineties for various reasons. He was music illiterate, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to be part of a scene which was different from the bubblegum pop that the local radio stations (which were undergoing some changes to the way their playlists were fixed) were wont to play.

In the spur of the moment then, he wanted to shave his head, but stopped short only when the mirror reminded him that the shape of his head would scarcely complement that intended skinhead look. He ended up with hair at an inch’s length and covered them with a beanie. He wore this look (complete with plain coloured T-shirts – mostly black or gray – and Levis jeans), including the said beanie under the humid tropical weather daily to the polytechnic. That was until the hair grew back to an appropriate length where they needn’t be hidden under the black woolly cover. Today, he would sometimes scoff at the teenagers bearing that look but a voice would gently remind him of his adolescent folly back then.

Years later, he would get a rare compliment about the way he dressed during his poly days – a wee bit of deviance (from the crowd) but pleasant enough.

He ripped the songs to his computer via iTunes. The artistes featured in both CDs were fairly popular bands then. He wondered what each of them was doing today, close to twenty years on. Some of them could well be the men (or women) behind prams and carrying bags of stuff meant for their little one(s) that we often see in buses, trains or shopping centres. They could have left those band playing days behind them, plunged themselves into the working world and doing well as professionals in their own right. Every now and then, an item, an image or a scene would trigger that memory of their days in black T-shirts, Levis jeans, silver chains and rings, a guitar strapped across their chests and legions of screaming fans downstage.

Those were the days indeed and he was glad to have experienced it, not to the fullest, but close enough.