Like many weight watchers, eating ice cream - the creamy, sinful kind - makes me feel guilty, especially if I over indulge. One sultry afternoon back in November 2010, I didn't finish three scoops or god forbid, a tub. I still felt bad despite the ordinary portion I had. It was a tiny, modest cup of sweet corn ice cream costing a mere SGD1. In my part of the world, that flavor is as common as vanilla is in the West. As I was letting my ice cream melt in my mouth, old memories, uninvited yet welcomed just the same, fluttered back to me.
I savored them all.
I thought of all the faraway places where I'd sampled ice cream. First, there was a bus terminus a little outside Santiago. I'd just been spit out by a collectivo from a trip to Cajon de Maipo - the day was dry and hot and an image of a helado, cold and sweet, danced in my head. Next, I was by the beach off Somerset West: an ice cream shop just opened nearby as evidenced by a screaming sandwich board the owner left outside the store. A hippie walked past me and happily shouted 'Have a lekker day!' I felt the sweltering sun over South Africa and the heat made me rush for the ice cream line. Then came a little gelateria in the middle of the foodie capital of Alba - a late night sorbetto sounded celestial after my heavenly Italian dinner at a slow food restaurant on the ground floor of Piazza Savona...
And then the memory that gave my heart a tumult came. I was not quite eleven, back in my hometown in Malaysia. It was past six in the evening. My school uniform was still crisp. My hair - tied in a pigtail with a blue ribbon at the end - remained unruffled even though by this time, my friends with pigtails and pony tails had let their hair down, literally and figuratively. A tag on my school tie said 'Prefect', so you can imagine how perfectly a goody-two-shoes kid I was. School was over; I was waiting for the orange school van to cart me and my girlfriends home. We were laughing, chatting and eating ice cream to while time away. We were standing outside the boys school opposite our school because it was our van's pick up point. It was convenient for us, too, given an ice cream vendor had made himself a permanent fixture nearby. In my right hand, I had my favorite ice cream - the luscious sweet corn on a cone - a treat classified by my parents as junk food. A reminder from them not to spend my pocket money unwisely rang somewhere in my mind. But when you're not quite eleven, such advice typically fell into oblivion.
One of my friends cracked a joked and we laughed out loud. Suddenly, the girl to my right stopped laughing. She, with a frown like an old maid's, nudged me a few times. I followed the direction of her pouted lips. 'Your trouble's back,' she remarked.
My laughter died. Some ten meters away, three boys stood. The one in the middle - lanky, very fair, and handsome - was my trouble since the beginning of my last year in elementary school(that's like Grade 6, I think). He was all eyes on me. I knew he was watching me like a hawk. I was surrounded by my van mates and if any one of them started to stray from the group, I bet he would make his move. He'd become bold and start making a few hand signs, all gibberish to me, all meaningful to him. But not that day because I quickly reminded my friends to stay close to me, protect me.
There was however nothing evil about him. In fact, he was this sweet, angelic looking guy who constantly wore his heart on his sleeve for me. I nonetheless thought he was the naive one who didn't understand anything about compatibility. He's Chinese, I'm Malay. He's Buddhist and in contrast, I'm Muslim. And sadly, he's deaf and mute. I'm not. To me, all these differences conspired to keep us apart. Never the twain shall meet...
The first time he tried to communicate with me, my friends thought he was a zany. Entertained, they convulsed in laughter. I, totally confused by his moves, kept quiet. After about five minutes of fruitless moves, he gave up and left us. The next day, he, full of determination, marched to our group and made his second attempt. One of us luckily realized he was deaf and mute. My girlfriends, understanding his plight, instantly became thoughtful and tried to help me interpret what he wanted to tell me. Then someone cracked the code and exhilaratingly told everyone he had a major crush on me. He blushed. My other friends jumped up and down in excitement, clapped their hands and did high fives. I grew mortified. Every time he completed making his signs for me, my girlfriends would reassure him with their spasmodic body language that I got the message. Baffled as always, I tried my best to remain unmoved. He'd nod at my friends, thanking them, I suppose, smile shyly at me and leave us. Worse still, I'd be teased by my friends during the endless rides home. It was as if I was guilty of being in love with that boy, instead of the other way around.
One fine day, something in me snapped. I lashed out at my friends during a ride home that I was never ever interested in him! Were they blind? I screamed. Couldn't they see that we were different? Couldn't they see I never said anything back to him? I had a temper of an exploding Vesuvius. Silence reigned in the school van for a while. I don't know if my memory serves me well, but I had a faint recollection of our driver asking me if everything was fine at a traffic light junction. 'Yes!' I snapped back, 'I'm not in love at all with that boy!'
The ice cream eating sessions thereafter turned out to be more somber. If ever my ice cream posse got a little thinner, the handsome boy would still approach us. Focusing on me, he wove his hand signs. I kept a stoic face as I feigned disinterest and channeled my concentration on my sweet corn ice cream. My friends simply looked at him apologetically, not wanting to help him out after my outburst. One time, when none of my friends was looking, he slipped a little note into my schoolbag. I chucked it away without reading it.
I gazed with regret on my melting treat that sizzling afternoon last year and thought what a total jerk I was to completely ignore the boy. All he ever wanted was probably a simple friendship. I could hardly eat the ice cream because the guilt I felt was intense. When I got home the same day, I starting writing a story based on the boy in my childhood...All because of a simple sweet corn ice cream.
One more thing - I thought of a song before I started my manuscript. Here's me signing off with A Simple Kind of Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRpZJ9EgJho
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More to come - a synopsis on Blind, Deaf.
I savored them all.
I thought of all the faraway places where I'd sampled ice cream. First, there was a bus terminus a little outside Santiago. I'd just been spit out by a collectivo from a trip to Cajon de Maipo - the day was dry and hot and an image of a helado, cold and sweet, danced in my head. Next, I was by the beach off Somerset West: an ice cream shop just opened nearby as evidenced by a screaming sandwich board the owner left outside the store. A hippie walked past me and happily shouted 'Have a lekker day!' I felt the sweltering sun over South Africa and the heat made me rush for the ice cream line. Then came a little gelateria in the middle of the foodie capital of Alba - a late night sorbetto sounded celestial after my heavenly Italian dinner at a slow food restaurant on the ground floor of Piazza Savona...
 |
| Helado on a hot day in the outskirts of Santiago |
 |
| Yummy ys off Somerset West |
 |
| Sorbetto on a summer night in Alba |
And then the memory that gave my heart a tumult came. I was not quite eleven, back in my hometown in Malaysia. It was past six in the evening. My school uniform was still crisp. My hair - tied in a pigtail with a blue ribbon at the end - remained unruffled even though by this time, my friends with pigtails and pony tails had let their hair down, literally and figuratively. A tag on my school tie said 'Prefect', so you can imagine how perfectly a goody-two-shoes kid I was. School was over; I was waiting for the orange school van to cart me and my girlfriends home. We were laughing, chatting and eating ice cream to while time away. We were standing outside the boys school opposite our school because it was our van's pick up point. It was convenient for us, too, given an ice cream vendor had made himself a permanent fixture nearby. In my right hand, I had my favorite ice cream - the luscious sweet corn on a cone - a treat classified by my parents as junk food. A reminder from them not to spend my pocket money unwisely rang somewhere in my mind. But when you're not quite eleven, such advice typically fell into oblivion.
One of my friends cracked a joked and we laughed out loud. Suddenly, the girl to my right stopped laughing. She, with a frown like an old maid's, nudged me a few times. I followed the direction of her pouted lips. 'Your trouble's back,' she remarked.
My laughter died. Some ten meters away, three boys stood. The one in the middle - lanky, very fair, and handsome - was my trouble since the beginning of my last year in elementary school(that's like Grade 6, I think). He was all eyes on me. I knew he was watching me like a hawk. I was surrounded by my van mates and if any one of them started to stray from the group, I bet he would make his move. He'd become bold and start making a few hand signs, all gibberish to me, all meaningful to him. But not that day because I quickly reminded my friends to stay close to me, protect me.
There was however nothing evil about him. In fact, he was this sweet, angelic looking guy who constantly wore his heart on his sleeve for me. I nonetheless thought he was the naive one who didn't understand anything about compatibility. He's Chinese, I'm Malay. He's Buddhist and in contrast, I'm Muslim. And sadly, he's deaf and mute. I'm not. To me, all these differences conspired to keep us apart. Never the twain shall meet...
The first time he tried to communicate with me, my friends thought he was a zany. Entertained, they convulsed in laughter. I, totally confused by his moves, kept quiet. After about five minutes of fruitless moves, he gave up and left us. The next day, he, full of determination, marched to our group and made his second attempt. One of us luckily realized he was deaf and mute. My girlfriends, understanding his plight, instantly became thoughtful and tried to help me interpret what he wanted to tell me. Then someone cracked the code and exhilaratingly told everyone he had a major crush on me. He blushed. My other friends jumped up and down in excitement, clapped their hands and did high fives. I grew mortified. Every time he completed making his signs for me, my girlfriends would reassure him with their spasmodic body language that I got the message. Baffled as always, I tried my best to remain unmoved. He'd nod at my friends, thanking them, I suppose, smile shyly at me and leave us. Worse still, I'd be teased by my friends during the endless rides home. It was as if I was guilty of being in love with that boy, instead of the other way around.
One fine day, something in me snapped. I lashed out at my friends during a ride home that I was never ever interested in him! Were they blind? I screamed. Couldn't they see that we were different? Couldn't they see I never said anything back to him? I had a temper of an exploding Vesuvius. Silence reigned in the school van for a while. I don't know if my memory serves me well, but I had a faint recollection of our driver asking me if everything was fine at a traffic light junction. 'Yes!' I snapped back, 'I'm not in love at all with that boy!'
The ice cream eating sessions thereafter turned out to be more somber. If ever my ice cream posse got a little thinner, the handsome boy would still approach us. Focusing on me, he wove his hand signs. I kept a stoic face as I feigned disinterest and channeled my concentration on my sweet corn ice cream. My friends simply looked at him apologetically, not wanting to help him out after my outburst. One time, when none of my friends was looking, he slipped a little note into my schoolbag. I chucked it away without reading it.
I gazed with regret on my melting treat that sizzling afternoon last year and thought what a total jerk I was to completely ignore the boy. All he ever wanted was probably a simple friendship. I could hardly eat the ice cream because the guilt I felt was intense. When I got home the same day, I starting writing a story based on the boy in my childhood...All because of a simple sweet corn ice cream.
One more thing - I thought of a song before I started my manuscript. Here's me signing off with A Simple Kind of Life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRpZJ9EgJho
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More to come - a synopsis on Blind, Deaf.
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