Do your friends take your childhood disappointments and misadventures seriously? As for mine, sadly, never mind. Never have they, as far as I can recall, been sorry about my stories spiced up with sour remembrances of days past. Am I inadequate with attention? Fine if they laughed. It was worse when those moments I wanted them to hear didn’t seem to have significance of sorts. Not meaningful enough.
Maybe, it's funny for me to be forlorn over spilt milk. Come on, is there really no sense in looking back and basking in the afterthought that I can still dignify, by dint of memory, even the foregone moments I once detested but now merrily summon. Like when...... I graduated a notch lower from the honor roll after my adviser in sixth grade favored a classmate less deserving but much better-looking than I was. (She never missed admiring his white-as-a-sheet shirt during classes.)
... My first elementary crush didn’t care to wink back sweetly at me after the flag retreat ceremony.
... I became the talk of the school campus after my classmates learned I didn’t vote for my party in the election for the student council in high school owing to a secret disagreement with our class leader’s platform.
... My mom figured in a verbal battle with my teacher in Electronics because she thought (like mother who claimed to know better) I deserved a grade higher than 90 (someone else got 98, by the way).
... My first girlfriend in high school did not show up at the back of the municipal church where we agreed to meet every Sunday. (Oops, sorry, mom, now that you know my real reason then for going to church.)
... I saw big brother’s butt full of welts from grandpa’s leather belt after I squeaked on misdeed my brother and I promised each other to keep secret. (Sorry, bro, for my selfish breach of trust so I’d be spared from grandpa’s fury.)... my father bellowed so loud after I accidentally hit Dad’s crotch. How I weaseled away from the house, but failed to outrun a good spanking comeuppance.
... I joined a hometown amateur singing contest and lost. Eating humble pie wouldn’t have been a big deal if only it was not my little sister who won the first prize and my big brother finishing second best while I failed to get the nod of the judges for, at least, the best in attire. If only Mom did not insist I sounded like Matt Monro…
... trying to live up to my mom’s belief that I could sing, I fell flat on my face while performing during a PTA meeting even as I felt that the audience tried to cast a spell to pop me off the stage. Oh, if only the guitar wasn’t tuned so perfectly!
... I had to wake up at dawn to collect ripe mangoes fallen from the late-night frolic of bats only to find out that being delayed by a mere second of sleep meant going home empty-handed. Too late for me to realize that kids in the neighborhood also harbored my mango principle: "Sweetness is surely reaped from prompt sacrifice of early morning dreams."
... I sent a playmate scurrying home in tears after hitting him with a stone from my slingshot. All the while, I thought my target was on cue only for sparrows and chickens I tried to shoo away from grandpa’s rice fields.
There’s still a whole archive of memory about my boyhood misadventures. For now, I reserve the other stories for the times when my friends would be open enough to consider that recalling those "detestable" moments could be entertaining as well.
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