History of Me : Chapter 1

I partly believe that your past defines you as a person as much as the present. And since I'm in a nostalgic mood these days, and also because I'm afraid I won't be able to remember it later on, I want to tell a story about a boy (in other word, me). Don't worry, I won't tell the whole thing in one post since it's a bit long and it's kinda boring. I'm telling this not according to what really happened, but according to what I remember happened. Here it goes.

I was born somewhere in the month of February. The same date as Thomas A. Edison, as a matter of fact. It was early in the night, around 7 PM in a hospital in Jakarta called St. Carolus. The first two years of my life is a bit of a blank since I can't remember anything. All I know about that two years is that I was told I could walk when I was around nine month old.

The story continues when I was around 2 years old. I lived with my parents although my grandparents would take me at noon to play at their house and they'll take me back around dinner time. Most of those four years were spent at my grandma's house playing with the neighbours (Ka Pipit and Sammy, where are you now ?). I also remember her telling me to take afternoon baths (I used to bathe 3 times a day) and she'd clean my ear by pouring water into it. I was always scared that it wouldn't pour out. She used to accompany me to sleep too. I used to have this stuffed hand puppet that I couldn't sleep without. I wonder where is it now.

My grandma had this friend of her who's a principal in a kindergarden, so she often took me to play there. For one reason or another, I started attending the school for real for four years until I finished primary one. Some bad things happened during that four years as well. I got hit by a car while playing at school once. I flew for a couple meters and promptly taken to a nearby clinic. Lucky, it was nothing serious. I remember playing stupid games with my friends back then. The sad thing is I can't remember any of them now. My mom used to sell snacks there too so I could still see her during the day. I remember getting this small trophy for being first-ranked when I was primary one. I still have that trophy, with a small owl on top of it. I moved to another school after that. I was supposed to go to primary two but I was not allowed to do that because I was too young (I was five years old then), so they made me repeat primary one.

My family used to take me to this supermarket called Golden Truly. I think it was the only big supermarket back then. And everytime we went there, I always played in this pool filled with plastic balls. I loved being in those kind of "ball pools" for no apparent reason. They would leave me there while they went shopping and picked me up when they finished.

So that's the first five years of my life...

(To be continued...sometime)