Childhood Memories

//Childhood Memories//

There's kind of a "autograph-book" thing going on in the class right now...with like a few more months with each other...

And while writing everlyn's autograph book...I was suddenly remembered that I kept one myself in primary school too! So I went to dig for it...and I got more than I asked for.

I found the autograph book I kept in P6, the one I kept in P3, and a personal diary I kept in 1998 (primary 3).

It's like taking a trip down memory lane reading all these TOTALLY. I mean some of these are written almost 10 years ago. It's surreal.

So I started with the P3 one, I look at all the entries, and I cannot remember almost all of them. All the names look so foreign and I even feel weird pronouncing them. That was my life almost 10 years ago, and I couldn't remember most of the people in my life at that time already.

Atrocious handwriting aside, there's all these atrocious poems inside! Eg:

Girls are rotten
Made of cotton
Taste like mutton
Act like chicken

Birds fly high, hard to catch.
Don't be stupid use a net.

笑口常开，笑死活该。

These aside, it's interesting to see how almost everyone will have a friendship corner, ranking or grouping all their friends into "Best friends", "Good friends" and so on...and the most important thing is most people actually have a enemy list too. I guess being kids, we couldn't care less that the people we hated knew we hated them...it's just written there for all to see.

Then I moved on to the P6 one, fortunately this time round I still remember everyone that wrote inside.

No more corny poems, but the friendship corner stays. No more enemy list though. It's kind of telling isn't it, as we move on and mature from 9 years old to 12 years old, we are no longer comfortable with laying it all out for all to see: "These are the people I hate". We start to get more...diplomatic to put it in a nice way. More guarded with our feelings. Part and parcel of growing up I guess.

Another thing that really caught my attention is how almost everyone ended with "Let's keep in contact!" kind of statements. Obviously we can all see how things turned out. No one's fault that we didn't keep in contact. It just made me very particular and careful about using those words. I didn't be one of the many that write that but don't even make an effort to do it. Which is why I think I've been rather honest and open with my thoughts in writing the auto graph books now. No more "let's keep in touch!" or "let's hope we remember each other after 10 years" crap, unless I really feel like I want to do it.

Then I went to look at my diary, which I kept in 1998 when I was primary 3. If I'm not wrong, that little book was a gift from a teacher or something, and I didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to use it as a diary, and I did write in it every single day from 26th May 1998 to 18th September 1998.

I couldn't stop laughing reading it.

Apparently, halfway through, I grew tired of writing diaries, and regretted starting it in the first place, but me being me, didn't want to 半途而废, so I continued, reluctantly. I had that much determination then. I'm impressed with myself.

And what really kept me laughing is my level of "maturity" then, and more importantly, my "profiency" in both languages, that apparently I'm still damn zai in now. Example:

"Today, I had go to received my report book. I felt very happy when I saw that my total marks was 285. I also got first in class. I will work harder so that I can get a higher total marks next year."

"今天，我有一个好消息。我最喜欢的老师Miss Kong绝定留下来了。"

It's just hilarous. Period.

Looking at the writing, it's like a totally different person lived that life 10 years ago. I actually feel old. It made me wonder how did the process of growing up change me and shape me into who I am now.

For the better or for the worse? I don't know.

That's just growing up.

10 years later I will look back at this entry, and wonder the same thing too I guess.

The only constant is change. How true. (oh, and my "powerful" language skills never change too)