I picked up the chit from my class bench and read it carefully, ‘I like you — if you like me come to library in recess.’
This note was accompanied by a slab of heavenly, imported Kit Kat. I immediately unwrapped the chocolate, crammed the entire thing into my mouth while simultaneously crumpling the note and tossing all the evidence into a nearby bin, before the other students trooped in.
I had no intention of meeting this young suitor — he exuded a peculiar odour of stale cheese, and more importantly, the note had not been addressed to me but to the snotty girl who shared the bench with me in art class.
Sabotaging snotty and smelly’s potential romance (due to greedy hunger pangs known only by boarding schoolchildren) was my first brush with Valentine’s Day. A day that I am convinced is only for young, wide-eyed innocents who love has not yet had an opportunity to bruise.
It’s a celebratory day for the fresh pink hearts who read aloud from an age-old handbook of romance, where impeccable princesses meet peerless princes, and after twelve over-the-top ceremonies inspired by Bollywood that render their parents penniless, they live happily ever after.
But for the rest of us? Well, we have our own dusty fables, set in a magical land where nothing is perfect including our eyesight, and often age and gender become inconsequential as queens banish kings, and knights forget about dragons and rescue each other from their stifling armours instead.
I recently met a frail elderly woman with curly grey hair and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched jauntily on her aquiline nose to discuss a project that was of interest to both of us. I asked her a few polite questions that we ask people when we first meet them — about children, husbands etc. When she chattered happily about being a grandmother, stating that she didn’t have a husband anymore,
I offered my condolences assuming he had passed away. ‘No,’ she said with a broad smile, ‘I divorced him when I was 68 and now I have to deal with calling the cable guy and tallying the driver’s overtime but aside from that, it’s fine.’
Intrigued, I inundated this complete stranger with a series of rather personal questions: ‘But why in the world would you leave him at the age of 68? If you have tolerated him for so long, why not put up with him for just a bit longer?’
This note was accompanied by a slab of heavenly, imported Kit Kat. I immediately unwrapped the chocolate, crammed the entire thing into my mouth while simultaneously crumpling the note and tossing all the evidence into a nearby bin, before the other students trooped in.
I had no intention of meeting this young suitor — he exuded a peculiar odour of stale cheese, and more importantly, the note had not been addressed to me but to the snotty girl who shared the bench with me in art class.
Sabotaging snotty and smelly’s potential romance (due to greedy hunger pangs known only by boarding schoolchildren) was my first brush with Valentine’s Day. A day that I am convinced is only for young, wide-eyed innocents who love has not yet had an opportunity to bruise.
It’s a celebratory day for the fresh pink hearts who read aloud from an age-old handbook of romance, where impeccable princesses meet peerless princes, and after twelve over-the-top ceremonies inspired by Bollywood that render their parents penniless, they live happily ever after.
But for the rest of us? Well, we have our own dusty fables, set in a magical land where nothing is perfect including our eyesight, and often age and gender become inconsequential as queens banish kings, and knights forget about dragons and rescue each other from their stifling armours instead.
I recently met a frail elderly woman with curly grey hair and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched jauntily on her aquiline nose to discuss a project that was of interest to both of us. I asked her a few polite questions that we ask people when we first meet them — about children, husbands etc. When she chattered happily about being a grandmother, stating that she didn’t have a husband anymore,
I offered my condolences assuming he had passed away. ‘No,’ she said with a broad smile, ‘I divorced him when I was 68 and now I have to deal with calling the cable guy and tallying the driver’s overtime but aside from that, it’s fine.’
Intrigued, I inundated this complete stranger with a series of rather personal questions: ‘But why in the world would you leave him at the age of 68? If you have tolerated him for so long, why not put up with him for just a bit longer?’
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