One of the best years of my life were those when I was 13 and 14 years old in 1986 and 1987. We moved into our new double storey house when I was 13. It was a little girl's dream came true for me to be able to live in a semi-detached house with stairs and attached bathroom. We had rambutan, guava, mango and papaya trees in our garden. My mum painted my room pink ~ pink walls with pink bed and pink dressing table. It was also in that year that I finally had a puppy, given to us by our neighbor. But sadly, the following year, my much loved puppy was ran over by my older brother's school bus when he left the gate open and Ricky ran out to follow him. Till this date, I can still remember Ricky frothing when I carried him into the backyard. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I ran to my papa who was in the bathroom prepping to get ready for work and begged him to bring Ricky to the vet to save him. Sadly, the vet couldn't do much and Ricky had to be euthanized the next day. I will never forget that sad fateful day when papa fetched me from the ACS swimming pool after swimming practice and brought me to the public vet for me to say my last goodbye to Ricky ๐ญ
When I was in Form 1, like Drama Queen, I attended school in the afternoon session. Form 1 was my 'honeymoon year'. There wasn't that much exam or tuition pressure yet and I enjoyed every bit of being in Form 1 with my besties. I remember we had a chapel / singing class period once a week, where we had to sing old English folk songs, Christian songs and even nursery rhymes! ๐ Some of the songs did not make much sense but my besties and I enjoyed singing and laughing over the nonsensical nursery rhymes. Has anyone of you sang
"Ten Green Bottles Hanging On The Wall" before? We had to sing from 10 green bottles, down to no green bottles giggling away like hyenas before our singing teacher, who was also a fierce disciplinary teacher reprimanded us. It was also in that year that my besties and I caught a flasher flashing his fiddle to us. It was our first encounter and we were totally freaked out and traumatised. Next to the toilets were a piece of vacant land with banana trees and that no-shame flasher was cat calling us while pointing to his fiddle. My friends and I screamed blue murder and ran for our dear lives back to our classroom. Our English teacher summoned other teachers to chase after the flasher. He escaped. We really thought that we would be caught by the flasher and assaulted hahaha! We were really a bunch of dramatic crazy girls.
I had the most laughter and giggles with my besties when I was in my early teens. I truly miss those years and wish that I could turn back the clock and relive those days all over again.
Seeing how Drama Queen is enjoying her "honeymoon year" in Form 1 now reminds me of my own, though my enjoyment and happiness back then (32 years ago!) and hers come from rather different sources. Her happiness now is being able to sleep in till 8-9am everyday, the liberty to have her own mobile phone to chat with her friends and having long lunches with me at different shops almost everyday. I guess my middle child is luckier as she doesn't have to help to do the laundry everyday. My mum delegated my first house chore to me when I was 13 and it was the laundry department. After breakfast each day, I would have to help hang the laundry. At night, my brothers and I had to fold the clothes. We even washed bathrooms and mopped the floors but with a small fee from mum ๐
Today's lunch with Drama Queen was at Coffee Box, with the hubs.:
She had beef balls spaghetti and pandan barley and the hubs had char koay teow. I was still stuffed to my throat from a heavy double breakfast consisting of an egg, dimsum fish ball (from Ipoh), granola and later, freshly opened organic durians delivered to us from our usual organic vegetables supplier, right up to our condo basement. It was super delish and I am now very, very tempted to sneak into the kitchen to have another helping ๐
