okay, so i’m dispensing with the capitalisations for this post because i am mostly likely going to write it as i think it and i don’t want to be hampered by all this shift-pressing nonsense.
good.
i must take you back to the beginning… by which i don’t mean the big bang. or even the evolution of the homo sapien. but year one. i didn’t go to kindergarten, so my first experience of primary school was 1/2m - a composite class. now, i never bought into this whole “boys have cooties” stupidity, and would play perfectly happily with boys and girls from either year. these friendships were never complicated with big things like love.
early in the year, i got to know a couple of grade two kids – augustin jangles (a boy) and aisling (a girl.) we quickly became best friends and would spend every little lunch and lunch together. a few other kids from both years would join us, but we were the core group. we visited each others’ houses, came to each others’ birthday parties… we were best friends.
soon after my sixth birthday, things started to change. and by change, i do not mean we stopped being friends. no. soon after my sixth birthday, i began to have the strangest feelings. we spent all our spare time just talking to each other (may i remind you that we were six and seven. most kids are out playing.) i remember sitting under the step tree in autumn and trying to out-do each other with scary stories. i didn’t know what was going on, only that i went to school on my sickest days… i would have gone on the weekends if i could have. and then it dawned on me.
i was in love with augustin.
now, don’t tell me it was a crush. don’t tell me it was puppy love. don’t tell me it was infatuation. that would not be cool.
then… the horrific but inevitable happened. the school year finished, and we were moved into separate classes. we spent little lunch and lunch together as always, albeit more infrequently. i think i was trying to subconsciously convince myself that i was not in love with him. but there was no use. and so our best friendship dissolved into saying hi to each other at lunch… and then simply to smiling at each other in the corridors. from his end, the wistful smile of a forgotten friendship, from my end the agonising smile of burning, pent-up love and desire.
and THEN… the positively torturous happened. my family moved halfway across the world – to the Old City. and our casual acquaintanceship vanished for four years. we had no contact.
but then, we returned. i attended our old school for half of year six (even though i had already finished primary school in the northern hemisphere), but of course, he had left the year before. i hated that school without him. one day, i was casually leafing through yearbooks… and i found an entry of his. he wants to get married, have three children and become a marine biologist (it will be HILARIOUS if he ever finds this. SO SO FUNNY.) the end of that year, i went to the school fete – a fete that painfully reminded me of baking together… going on the big yellow slide next to each other… shared candyfloss – it was uneventful. i walked despondently into the carpark, and LO AND BEHOLD, there he was. and the first words out of his mouth? “…do you remember me?”
we didn’t speak again for another four years.
and then i got facebook. it’s a wonderful thing. in a moment of weakness, i searched his name. and there he was. we had a brief correspondence and became facebook friends. from time to time, in moments of weakness, i wander through his photo albums (did i mention it’s a wonderful thing?) there are a great many photos of girls – he must be either a complete lothario (highly unlikely), gay (plausible, going on some of his getups) or just very, very friendly (most likely.) his adorable face still makes me smile.
and GUESS WHAT?! by complete coincidence, we are attending the same college. both of us went to highschools with colleges attached and we both left our respective highschools to attend this college.
but i don’t think i’m going to figure much in his life.
as always, comments are most welcome. even comments of the “you pathetic loser, pull your shit together” variety.
i really don’t hear that enough.
