a pocketful of stars
When i was in primary school, i was a tomboy with bunny teeth, underweight and asthmatic, played Street Fighter with the boys and exchanged Sailor Moon cards with the girls. I was a school prefect with straight As, my dorky prefectorial role was to guard the school garden during recess break and i joined the Computer Society for my ECA. Welcome to my very balanced childhood. I think the wildest primary school memory i had was somewhere in Primary 3. My standards for childhood insanity were pretty low, so please forgive me. But the whole incident seemed so absurd to me that sometimes i wonder if it had just been a figment of my hyperactive imagination.
*clockworks in mind start ticking away*
It was an ordinary school day in an ordinary school week. Lakeisde (Little) Girl went back to the classroom after recess break as usual. The only difference lies in two small bottles of shiny plastic stars that she bought for 30 cents each. Okay so i can't remember how much it really was. Spare me. But does anyone still remember those toys and trinklets they sell at the primary school bookshop?? For the girls, it was the stickers (the amount i spent on them could be used to buy a small village), the cut-out paper dolls and their paper clothes, glitter dust, cartoon purses, cutesy autograph books, slippery water snakes and...tiny coloured stars in plastic bottles.
While waiting for some unfortunate teacher to arrive, i put a few stars on my palm and looked at them in awe as they caught glints of light in their tiny surfaces. They look like what i had imagined real stars will look like and i was mesmerized. And then...i can't remember what had happened exactly but the next thing i knew, i deliberately dropped them on the floor. The falling stars caught the attention of the kid next to me and he (or she, i really can't remember) immediately picked them up happily. I do remember he asking me to throw more to him.
Which i did.
Then another kid behind me wanted me to throw some stars to her too because they look so pretty when they are falling softly on the floor.
And i obliged.
More kids around us wanted to see "pretty stars" and with a sweep of the palm, i scattered more on the floor.
Before i knew it, MOST OF THE CLASS was on their knees and hands, scrapping and picking tiny plastic stars on the dusty floor.
I remember explicitly - even the class monitor and the guai kias of the guai kia gang. They were jostling and pushing and scrambling in front of me at my feet. I sat there in a trance like a queen bee, scattering more and more plastic constellations around me. And everyone was shouting, "MORE! MORE!" and laughing and laughing somemore. It was magical. And absolutely insane. I think we were all seriously deprived back in the 1990s where DotA, handphones and MSN were completely non-existent.
Anyway, that's about it. I just looked out at the sky through my bedroom window and i knew straight away that i needed to share this with the world. My adolescence, the naivete of children, the baffling simplicity of Generation Y and a 10 year old girl's obsession with a pocketful of stars.
*clockworks in mind start ticking away*
It was an ordinary school day in an ordinary school week. Lakeisde (Little) Girl went back to the classroom after recess break as usual. The only difference lies in two small bottles of shiny plastic stars that she bought for 30 cents each. Okay so i can't remember how much it really was. Spare me. But does anyone still remember those toys and trinklets they sell at the primary school bookshop?? For the girls, it was the stickers (the amount i spent on them could be used to buy a small village), the cut-out paper dolls and their paper clothes, glitter dust, cartoon purses, cutesy autograph books, slippery water snakes and...tiny coloured stars in plastic bottles.
While waiting for some unfortunate teacher to arrive, i put a few stars on my palm and looked at them in awe as they caught glints of light in their tiny surfaces. They look like what i had imagined real stars will look like and i was mesmerized. And then...i can't remember what had happened exactly but the next thing i knew, i deliberately dropped them on the floor. The falling stars caught the attention of the kid next to me and he (or she, i really can't remember) immediately picked them up happily. I do remember he asking me to throw more to him.Which i did.
Then another kid behind me wanted me to throw some stars to her too because they look so pretty when they are falling softly on the floor.
And i obliged.
More kids around us wanted to see "pretty stars" and with a sweep of the palm, i scattered more on the floor.
Before i knew it, MOST OF THE CLASS was on their knees and hands, scrapping and picking tiny plastic stars on the dusty floor.
I remember explicitly - even the class monitor and the guai kias of the guai kia gang. They were jostling and pushing and scrambling in front of me at my feet. I sat there in a trance like a queen bee, scattering more and more plastic constellations around me. And everyone was shouting, "MORE! MORE!" and laughing and laughing somemore. It was magical. And absolutely insane. I think we were all seriously deprived back in the 1990s where DotA, handphones and MSN were completely non-existent.
Anyway, that's about it. I just looked out at the sky through my bedroom window and i knew straight away that i needed to share this with the world. My adolescence, the naivete of children, the baffling simplicity of Generation Y and a 10 year old girl's obsession with a pocketful of stars.
Labels: introspection
