just minishorts.

I woke up later than usual today and decided to give the gym a miss. Mum had gone out earlier for her morning walk, and seeing that the house was empty, I thought I'd dilly-dally a little.

It isn't always I get to do this, you know, just stand in front of the wardrobe, dreaming a little, and thinking of what to wear for the day. Today as I looked through the rows of clothes, it hit me that this was probably the 4th set of clothes that I'm wearing in my entire lifetime. Right at the top of the cupboards are plastic-bags of old baby clothings that Mum decided would be suitable for my kids when they grow older, and some other pretty stuff that I used to wear when just a girl, and just a teenager.

I'm still wearing some of the stuff I had when I was in my teens, mostly jeans really, and one or two evergreens that I can still fit into. But when just a kid, I had four sets of the turquoise pinafore, and at least five white blouses for the daily trip to school. That's not too long ago, only eight years back, the most.

Has it been so long, really? That time flies, that's pretty hard to swallow. No I'm not in denial really, but it's really hard to take all that in when I've never really left school. I still meet teachers every day, every week, (most of my colleagues are ex-teachers, and the freelancers are teachers); I still keep most of my books from high school, English namely, especially the ones where the layout designs are great, or the passages are reading-gems, except for a different purpose of course. You know what it's like being a kid in a Malaysian school, you'd have stacks of secondary school revision books from publishers like Sasbadi, Fajar Bakti, Longman… and how you'd keep getting all these books and mull over them like a bending armadillo and when you've just bought them how fervently you would swallow up the first few pages…. alas they're just new brooms, they sweep clean, but only for a while. Months later after the exams you'd sell/give them all away and never look back.

I'm different, I've never had the chance to give them away and never look back. Every single day I consider the irony of the fact that I consider these books more seriously than I used to when a child, and every time I remember how I'd curse 'the stupid author' for writing the loads of bullocks in those pages, I chuckle at the knowledge that I'm being paid to produce such bull shit. It's not that I didn't have a choice, I believe I used to have a choice but somewhere along the way I became a typical cynic and decided not to bother anymore. After all, it pays the bills.

Today I looked at my clothes, and the absence of the old school uniforms and the club polos, the presence of the nicer clothes, and I realized I needed other things, like power-suits (those I don't always wear, we don't require them here), and more slacks, maybe a nice kebaya or two, and some expensive pieces for the special occasions. You know, life is going to change a litle around here, and maybe, just maybe, I can get rid of those high-school books after all. Finally.