Bits & Pieces - 1

I at times recalled the kind of ill feeling I harboured during my childhood. The ill feeling towards the idleness of adults around, especially after they came home from work. They didn』t seem to have to do anything other than watching TV, chatting over trivialities after dinners while flipping through newspapers nonchalantly, or something as outrageous as standing at the doorway saying hello to every acquaintance.

In stark contrast, I seemed to be the only one who was in a state of helpless desperation where endless homework always hung its glistening bare fangs over my face.

I especially resented (probably not that much serious) presumptuous neighbours who were in the habit of paying other households a visit without the thought ever crossing their mind that they might well be intruding. Their unwelcome visits simply increased my awareness of the bitter fact. And, their insignificant conversations more often than not distracted me from what I was supposed to do, which every now and then earned me a look or a word of reproach from parents (fortunately my parents didn』t enjoy those visits by neighbours either. They sort of rated such visits as the root cause for almost all the bitter hard feelings among neighbours).

「What for?!」, I would mutter the question whenever I encountered some inevitable occasions. 「Don』t they just have anything else better to do?」 「Why on earth he needs to tell each and every single person in the world that he got a flat tyre when he was on his way to work; or, she got the upper hand when she was arguing with the vegetable vender over a discrepancy of a few pennies on the price?」

I am not quite sure if I got the same feelings when I became a bit older. They might well have companied me all the way through till we moved to a new flat which was, like all flats or houses sold nowadays, much more self-contained and the stainless steel security door simply shut strangers away.

That was the kind of unhappy memory I am able to trace back to the earliest possible time. I have no idea as to why they have been residing in my mind for this long. They should have long gone when time went by, shouldn』t they?

I have tried, and am still trying very hard to find out why it is so.

(To be continued C if time allows me, of course)