I will pass a kindergarten, which I was once in, and a playground before reaching the void deck of my HDB block. Today was no exception, I did the same. As I walked passed the playground, a thought came to me.

The thought:

When I was small, I spent my afternoon at the badminton court in front of my HDB block, if it was taken up, I will go to the playground instead. I saw the playground, which was once a playground with sand, concrete walls and swings, developed into a safer type - made of plastic, and no more sand. I still went to the playground, even though there was no more sand to play with.

Thinking back, it seems weird that making friends in a playground is so simple. Whenever there were some other kids, you could just go up and say, "Ermmm, do you want to play hide-and-seek or blind mice?" The naive, easy-going, and friendliness of being a child will just simply take over. "OK, you'll be the catcher."

And there goes, we started to play.

Soon, years past, and now, we are all on our own separate life. Living life that will never intersect like the old times at the playground. Come to think about it, I don't even have any form of contact with those friends anymore!

The more I ponder, the more interested I am to know what they have became.

Now the thought is over.

Let's proceed on to the occurrence that follows:

Some of them actually got into the same tuition centre as me, and under the same tutor, but we never talked even if we met by chance. They had their own friends of their age, and so I did not bother to approach them. Banishing the thought of even trying to bring back the memories of our old days.

Time passed, people changed, and that's only the beginning.

As I sat in every tuition lessons, I will carefully hear to source out something from the tuition teacher who is calling up some of them to remind them to come for tuition, or to reprimand them for not turning up for tuition. I eventually only managed to find out about those who turned bad, surprisingly, though I was not expecting all of them to get straight A's and became the topic of my tutor.

It was saddening to hear that one had quitted school, and even smoke. I understand the reason why he had done so, but all I could do was understand. I had no means to contact him, and he would probably have forgotten about me, too. Another one always skip tuition lesson, and thus I got to hear the tutor call her parents most of the time; to report her absence.

That was the thought and the occurrence that happened.

What do you think about this fragment of my memory and thought? Did you made any friends in the playground like me?

Air - Playground love


-Shaun