The long and short of it

I don’t know why she keeps coming back to my mind.

She was a friend back in primary school, wait, I might not even consider her a friend given the vagueness of the memories and the age that we were at. Its not even in the upper primaries where we had a higher consciousness and the slightly less childish disposition.

I knew her back in Primary 2, or was it Primary 3? That little detail won’t matter. She is a simple girl, with oriental eyes that arch up at the end and a pointed chin that highlighted her thinness. A pair of pink glasses adorned her soft face as she finished up her visual with a smile.

She’s hardly without a smile.

Being back in primary school, there was this somewhat natural affinity with the boys and this silly in-born repulsion for the girls. Don’t you remember yourself back in the good old days, mocking a fellow friend for talking to a classmate of the opposite gender?

“Oh! You love her! If not why you talk to her?!”

“You touched her hand! You must marry her after school!”

But she and I had a surprisingly mature understanding. We did talk but with simple words that each other understood and we don’t linger after the last word is said.

During a school camp which was held for some reason which I cannot remember, all of us were having an early supper. I remembered she was seated somewhere along the long table and tried to take a bite at the big meat bun.

She looked up and sulked, “No meat one, just only eat the dough.”

I recalled that I didn’t make any remark though we did look at each other.

I wonder why I remembered that scene at the canteen. The way our minds are programmed, constructed with little rooms and pockets to be filled with bits and pieces. A flashback of dinner when you were 5. The fall you had when you were at your auntie’s place for CNY back in 1985. A conversation you had with a friend before the PSLE exam.

The details are vague; the surety is undeniable.

I recalled another incident with her and that was probably the most indelible memory I had of her.

It was early in the academic year and during a music class. We all love music class. Finally we can all get rid of the stripped mono-tone books and have fun playing the only musical instrument that was bestowed onto us.

The white fake polish of the recorder flustered in our hands and the teacher was nagging at us for our collective candor in playing out of tune.

It was like a loony toon orchestra.

The teacher was walking around before my friend was randomly pulled out to the front.

“You! Why aren’t you playing properly?”

The teacher grabbed the recorder and stared at her.

Yet all she could do was to look down.

The teacher was used to silence answers and promptly held the recorder with one hand and grabbed either her arm or her wrist by the other.

What the teacher didn’t know was that she had deformed fingers. They were shorter than the average fingers and yet of uneven length. Her middle finger is probably much shorter than her index. Bending the fingers was also awkward.

Of course she couldn’t play the recorder properly, her fingers are unable to manage the simple task of covering up the holes to make the proper tunes.

The teacher froze when the fingers were held up and you could see the gushing up of extreme guilt. And all she did was to look down and remain silent.

We didn’t talk after that and there wasn’t a need to. She will recover from the incident.

Until today I still do not know what condition it was. It could be Brachydactyly or it could be some accident but it doesn’t matter to her at all. That was the plate she was served with and its on that plate that she will be having her meal.

Oh, and I forgot to mention her name and I am surprised that I really am able to summon up that detail. She is Ying Ying and hopefully I can write a few more stories with her in it, the fictional ones, of course. My memory can only serve me that much.