Washing Dishes

I don't know why, but as I was washing my dinner dishes earlier this evening, I thought of you; not exactly hamaarii pehlii mulaaqaat - the first time we sat beside each other, more like. As long as I live, you know I'll never let you live it down.

It might've been the first music lesson for the class; it might've been the first week of school. Ol' Maureen Wong had arranged us in alternating genders in the auditorium - prolly an attempt to preempt the havoc we'd later make when we got to know each other as a class - but for that very lesson, this seating arrangement worked; we were silent.

My heart might've been thumping madly overtime. I found the two guys I'd been sandwiched between cute. Yes, I thought Shawn was cute (in his serious, scholarly bearing); and yes, I thought you were cute (in your goofy, screwball way). I can't remember the lesson ol' Maureen Wong was giving now - it's inconsequential - but then again, there isn't much I remember from that class apart from being seated between Shawn and you, and ...

Damn straight I'll never let you live it down. The next time I fly home - and then will I be home for good - you will take me out. You must. We haven't seen each other for years now.

The last time we went out, it was the week before I was due to fly off to Melbourne. It was an impromptu lunch that you bought me at Mos Burger's. Throughout lunch, we talked a lot but I remembered nothing. I was busy wondering if I should risk a hug, wondering when I'd see you again, wondering if you'd forget me.

After lunch, you walked me to the bus interchange and I tried to get you to go with me to collect my plane tickets. I might've whined, I might've begged - I don't remember now - but no matter how lighthearted my whining and pleas seemed, they were tinged with a quiet desperation. You prolly hadn't noticed.

As the last passengers in the queue boarded the bus, I was still imploring you to go with me. You said you couldn't, something you had to do, some people you had to meet, something or other.

At the very last moment, I gave up and hurried to my bus. You didn't seem to expect that. The very moment I had turned from you, you reached out. I threw a backward glance at you as you pat me on my departing back - a little awkwardly it seemed - and called out bon voyage or something in that vein.

I can't remember if I'd watched you from the bus until you were too far away to be seen, or if you'd turned your back and walked away the moment the bus pulled away from its bay. What I remember is thinking about how I never did get that hug, how I'd never in fact tried to get one. That was one sloppy, hasty parting.

So you must take me out when I fly home. We'll go somewhere quiet, have a coffee or sundae, and we'll talk. We'll talk about nothing and we'll laugh at everything; we'll talk and laugh as if we hadn't not seen or talk to each other for the longest time - the way we always seem to fall back comfortably into each other's company despite meeting just once or twice a year.

Then I'll drag it up - our 'first meeting'.

Do you remember it? How in the middle of that music class ol' Maureen Wong was teaching, you suddenly started wriggling in an obscene manner beside me - well, it seemed obscene to me, okay? - and, you know, I was throwing you sideway glances and worrying that you were doing something extremely dodgy.

(At this point, you'll start laughing and trying to get me to shut up or picking up the story.)

Finally, after enduring enough of your obscene wriggling, even though we hadn't talked to each other before and as shy and reserved an ex-Methodist-girls'-school girl as I was, I whispered to you, what are you doing?

You'd whispered back, there's something in my shorts!

What?! I hissed back, incredulous.

There's a thumbtack in my shorts and I'm trying to get it out! you whispered back - maybe through gritted teeth.

I goggled at you as you wriggled some more. How the hell did a thumbtack get in your shorts? I must've asked you that because I now know how: in the classroom, you sat right at the back, by the notice-boards, and your favorite position was to lean your body forward and your chair back on two legs, its back scraping the notice-boards. Notice-boards full of thumbtacked notices. Serves you right, I maintain.

Anyway, you seemed to have wriggled for an eternity in that music class. I started giggling. Stand up and maybe it will fall out, I helpfully suggested.

It was then you very reluctantly admitted the thumbtack might be not in your shorts, but in your underwear.

I had wondered then how the hell it got in your underwear. (A couple years or so later that I found out from Andy or someone else that you tucked your shirt into your underwear - maybe that had something to do with how the thumbtack got into your underwear.)

By that time, I was near hysterical with giggles and hyperventilating trying to suppress them. Ask to go to the toilet and get it out! I choked out between my barely-contained giggles.

Don't want, you stubbornly replied. You must've been either shy or embarrassed - I'm betting on the latter.

So you wriggled and wriggled in your seat to no comfortable end. I was having such great difficulty containing my giggles I felt smothered. So I threatened, either you raise your hand and ask to go to the toilet, or I'll do it for you.

You silently chose to continue wriggling in your damn seat; I raised my hand. (I don't always make empty threats, yo.)

Yes, what is it? the surly ol' Maureen Wong asked in her stern voice.

He - he - he has a thumbtack in his shorts, I gasped, breathless with giggles.

Ol' Maureen Wong then sternly asked you to stand up and shake it out, and it was then you had no choice but to shamefacedly confess - and that too in front of the whole class - the thumbtack was in your underwear.

The whole class burst into laughter. I think even ol' Maureen Wong might've cracked a smile or two when she ordered you to the toilet to remove the damn thing.

So there you have it - my very first memory of you; the first of many that I would collect, I now know. A memory that, strangely enough, bubbled and surfaced with the soapsuds in the sink as I absently washed my dishes.

If I remember to, I'll tell you how my memories of you always seem to hit me at the weirdest of times - and that too with the impact of a Shinkansen - when we next meet, Pumpkin.

(Your mom still calls you that, doesn't she?)