YWCA
At the age of 3 I went to a nursery of sorts at the YWCA in Penang. The nursery was right next to the hostel so when we were out playing we would sometimes go to the hostel and see these grown-up women there who would smile at us and think we’re all really cute.
Then there was the fun fair. One day where we could bring our parents and play fun fair games like throwing a tennis ball at a bunch of cans. It was at this fair that I saw them selling huge pink fluffy balls on a stick. I tugged on my mom’s skirt and asked her what it was and for the first time in my life I had discovered COTTON CANDY. My mom bought me one to her regret because after that 5 KG of pure sugar I had, I was bouncing off the walls in the car. Harry Potter on a broom stick wouldn’t be able to catch me.
Nursery was also the first time I remembered injuring myself. I was running around when I stumbled and fell on to the concrete floor. No issue I thought. I mean I was still a little boy. Light and short. The ground hardly shook from my falling. I didn’t cry at first. All that changed when I saw my knee bleeding for the the first time. I don’t think I cried because of the pain. I cried because I saw blood and I didn’t know what to do with it. I cried because of fear.
I still carry this small scar on my knee till today. I’m not sure why of all the injuries I’ve had, this one became a scar and the rest healed well. Perhaps my body wants me to always remember this first fall I had.
St Christopher’s
My very first experience in a school environment was at my pre-school St Christopher’s. It was also the first time I was exposed to the concept of school uniforms. For St Christopher’s it was short sleeved blue shirts and dark blue shorts. Off I went to school each day in my school uniform, carrying a small school bag that really didn’t contain anything except my water bottle. I had no need for books yet because we weren’t really learning from textbooks.
So what did we do at pre-school?
We sang!
The teacher would teach us songs and get us all to sing along. We sang songs like “I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE”…. no I’m kidding.
We sang songs like “How much is the doggy in the window” to “One little two little three little Indian” which we thought was a funny song to sing at the time. That’s because we had a few Indians in our class and every time we counted the Indians in the song we would look or point at our fellow Indian classmates. All in the most innocent manner of course because we were just 5-6 year old kids. We had not been exposed to racism.
We played!
Every now and then the teacher would tell us we could go outside to the playground and play. There were swings and slides outside. It was a scene of little boys and girls dressed in their blue uniforms running around the playground in circles, rolling off slides and pushing one another one the swings. As a kid there wasn’t a happier time.
Once I was so carried away with riding a swing with a friend that we didn’t realize that play time was over and everybody had gone back to class. It was just me and him. On the playground alone on swings. In that brief moment of realization I remember feeling two things. One was fear from being alone, and the other was also fear… but from being punished by the teacher for not going back in time. My friend and I looked at each other and we could tell we both were thinking the same thing. We ran back to class as fast as we could.
As I took each running step closer to the classroom I tried to forecast the punishment the teacher might give me. Maybe she would call my parents and tell them how I’m unfit for this school. Maybe she would lift a table with superhuman strength and heave it at me. Or maybe she might lock me in a dark cupboard with spiders until school ends.
What happened next was rather uneventful though. The teacher saw both of us walk into class. She gave me a look and said nicely “Please sit down”. That’s it…. no need to duck from a flying table. No need to learn how to picklock my way out of a cupboard. Just… sit… down.
Next on the agenda in class was what the teacher called “Playing with water” (really… as opposed to playing with fire). I’m sure at one point the teacher must have told us not to play with fire but to play with water instead.
What “playing with water” at school meant was like this. We would each wear this waterproof apron, roll up our sleeves and step outside where there would be a few wide buckets of water each on a small stool of its own. Floating inside the bucket were plastic cups and funnels. We would get around the buckets, four kids to each bucket and then just literally play with water. We would fill up the cups with water and then pour them through the funnel and repeat repeat repeat.
Sounds like a super boring game but somehow as the time that was SUPER FUN for me. As fun as going to the movies might be to an adult. Perhaps it was our imagination as kids then. A bucket of water wasn’t just a bucket of water. Maybe it was a Hoover Dam and each of those cups was floating ships in the dam. Each small wave we created was a tsunami.
How I gave an inappropriate present
You know how there are things that you did as a kid that you’re not proud of? Well what I’m about to tell you is the earliest of those many kids I’ve done all at the age of 6.
I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. I told my mom about it and my mom brought me out to buy him a present one day. For some reason I thought it would be funny to buy him a present meant for a girl. So I told my mom that my friend was a girl. My mom was a little surprised though. She sort of knew that this friend’s party I was going to was a boy’s party but I kept insisting that it was a girl and so in the end we bought him a Barbie doll.
The day came when my mom brought me over to the birthday party at Sunrise McDonald’s. She instantly realized it was a boy’s party and she pulled me aside and said “I thought you told me this was a girl’s party”.
I didn’t really have an answer to that but it was too late. We were at the party and the only present we had in our hand was a Barbie Doll. We played around at the party until it came to a time to opening presents. All the kids gathered around excitedly and I watched my friend receive the coolest presents ever. His coolest gift was an elaborate Optimus Prime toy and seeing that toy was the first time I remember feeling jealousy as a kid.
Then came the time to open my present. My friend ripped the wrapper open and saw the Barbie doll. His face changed from one of joy to one of confusion. The kids around us were equally confused. From exciting screams and laughs went total silence. Then everyone turned to look at me. What I imagined would be funny turned out to be NOT funny at all.
In the silence I could hear my mom talking to my friend’s mom. She was embarrassed and she was apologizing for this mistake and promised to buy him another present.
I went home that day to a big scolding from my mom. She banned me from a number of things as punishment for what I did. I had embarrassed her, my friend and even myself. Things weren’t the same anymore with that friend of mine. We weren’t very close to begin with but needless to say I wasn’t invited to anymore of his birthday parties.
He once brought his Optimus Prime to school and I asked him if I could touch it. He said no.
Looking back I really don’t know why I did what I did. Heck this isn’t the only thing. I don’t know why I did many many other things as a child. The consequences of these actions though are something that I remember all the way till today.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space