That pink diary
I kept a pink coloured diary once, when I was seven years old. It was a 300-page blank book, with the sepia photograph of a dancer in ballerina's clothes on the cover. I kept the book for over five years, and I wrote many many funny things in it. Like how I have a mother and a father, and that I didn't have a dog, and that I wished that dad would buy me a dog too.
Sometimes I would come home from school and write about my best friend M, who gave me a piece of chocolate to munch on that day. In those days I didn't know how to spell the word 'munch', neither did I know how to spell 'chocolate', so I ended up saying 'my new best friend M give me a sweet today, it is very nice', errors courtesy of all the grammar that a seven year old kid could possess. In this diary, I was only seven years old for about 15 pages, after that there are drawings of strange human beings with heads too big for their bodies, or legs too thin to support the torsoes.
And then after several pages of rainbow sketching and fairy portraiting, I'm suddenly nine years old, with better Mandarin, and no English. When it was 1989 I wasn't very much of an English speaking kid, too many years of being trapped in an SJK does that to kids sometimes… today I distinctively remember my mom forcing me to not speak Mandarin in the house. In the pages where I am nine, I write about the funny thing the boy who sat beside me in class said to me, and that I thought he ought to take a bath in the morning before coming to school.
I'm twelve years old in the remaining pages, with no explanation of what happened when I was eight or ten or eleven. I'm speaking in a queer mix of English, Malay and Chinese, throwing around the words as if they were my second nature, and talking about the strange way my school's English teacher pronounced the word 'squirrel'. Or the time that I wonder whether I would be in the same school with my crush of the year after I left the SJK.
…
Today I found my very first diary, and today I remember that I had a crush of my own when I was 12 years old.
Maybe we girls start being 'hiao' at a very young age.
April 29th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
thanks for the laugh. such sweet memories.
April 30th, 2006 at 12:46 am
this is such a great post. Very sweet. Thanks for sharing
April 30th, 2006 at 4:10 am
nice yet sweet
April 30th, 2006 at 11:16 am
sweet,very.
April 30th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
i think you should keep the pink diary. something nostalgic to remember for the rest of your life. you can passed it down if you want to. or even better, finished up the whole book by jotting down the things you’re experiencing when now you’re 20+.
April 30th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Hey, I was only 13 for TWO pages.
April 30th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
old diaries rock. =)
May 1st, 2006 at 1:31 am
If I was that kid I would’ve tried to slip my hand up your skirt and then ask if you wanna come home with me and do it doggie style
May 1st, 2006 at 1:33 am
Yeah I agree, girls are so hiao. The moment got hair can be hiao already.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:22 am
Really sweet, Chooks. Really sweet.
I had a pink diary once as well - but it had a B&W picture of a lil’ boy and a lil’ girl kissing on the cover.
Came with a pink heart-shaped lock too - but my brother thought me how to pick that with the cap of a Reynolds ball-point cap.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:41 am
Wow…you were a precocious writer even then. All the promise and signs were there even then. Indeed, a wonderfully precious keepsake to treasure.