the four right chords can make me cry

ok, you're having supper with your parents at 10 something at some coffeshop place. who's the last person you expect/want to see?

a) your dietician who just yelled at you for having 10 cream puffs for lunch.
(what the heck is wrong with that? cream puffs are nutritious k!)
b) your ex-boy/girl* friend. with his/her* new girl/boy* friend.
*delete as appropriate
c) your primary school principal.
*faint*

if you guys are my friends (as you claim to be!! hmmm...) you'd know that 1) i dont have, never will have a dietician. 2) i've never had a boyfriend (or girlfriend, im straight despite coming from st. margs) so option b is out. that means.....

yes. i met the ex principal of st. margaret's primary school at a food court at 10 something at night. weirdness of life.

i didnt see her actually. it was my mom who spotted her and insisted that i go over and say hello. inside my head i was like "dammit!!!!!" and i refused to move, sulking like a moony child, glowering at my mother's amazing selective memory. i managed to maintain my position successfully, right till we finished eating and were going off. then i made a fatal mistake. i went to buy myself a drink, and my deceptive parents were left to their own devices for a split second.

with my sugar cane juice in my hand, i come trotting over to... horror of horrors, my parents sitting at the table with my ex-principal and 2 other old people. ARGH! one of the many reasons why my mother pisses me off. the unreasonable predisposition to take my past and rub it into my eyes like chilli padi. sadism in parenting. i should write a book. meet us back in the car they said! i should have trusted my childhood experiences and never trusted my parents again!

its not that i was a bad student in primary school, therefore traumatised by memory of the principal. i was the student so quiet you'd forget she was there, and i suspect many times i forgot that i was there too. incredibly incredibly blur, much worse than i am today. so its not that i was scared she'd recognise me or something, i knew she wouldnt. and it wasnt that i was shy to talk to her, as my mother insisted i was. i was just terrified at what my mother would say to her. my mum EXAGGERATES. who knows what 3/4 lies she would tell this almost perfect stranger.... the possibilities were life-destroyingly embarassing.

and when i was in primary school i was terrified of all authority figures. it was then that this deep irrational fear was placed in me. strange adults who seemed bent making my life miserable, even now the faces of the most evil ones appear in my imagination to torment me. (like mrs tay, but thats another story for another day) teachers, i think thats what they called them. and i knew, that the biggest, baddest, evilest teacher of them all was called... the Principal. the very apparition that loomed but a few metres away.

so i was faced with a nightmarish scenario, a table of 5 old people grinning at me like fools and beckoning me to come over. you know what? i should have obeyed my instincts, hurled my sugar cane juice at their faces and bolted for the nearest exit. but no, i happened to be sane that night, of all nights. if i had the guts, i'd have given them a funny look, then gazed into the distance as if i saw my real parents there, and walk right past them. woohoo! that would have been so stylo if i could pull that off! (and i probably wouldnt be typing this cos my mom would certainly have killed me)

as it turns out, i did fairly well. I'M NOT SHY K!!?!? DONT TREAT ME LIKE AN IMCOMPETENT CHILD!!!! (sorry, had to let that out somewhere) where were we? ah yes... i managed to answer the "what are you doing now?" and "which school did you go to?" with reasonable fluency. the other 2 old ppl turned out to be my principal's sisters, who turn out to be my neighbours. i wanted to scream "NO!! THIS CANT BE HAPPENING TO ME!!!" and jump up on the table, frothing at the mouth (with sugarcane juice!). but i sat there and said "oh, that's coincidental!" politely and smiled my hollowest fake smile. oh how my thought-life differs from my actions.

and here's the clincher, folks. now that she's retired, my principal is into... MLM. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA! really really really really ironic, cos moments before in the car my mom was just scolding my dad for his failed attempt with Nuskin. and now, my principal is trying to get us to go for meetings too... in your face. like i told my mum, you brought this upon yourself. i wanted to avoid her and pretend i didnt see her (i genuinely wouldnt have seen her if my mom didnt force me to turn around and look), but NO... you HAD to humiliate me. heh. well, there you go.

and they seem like great old ladies. they were there after their chinese class. can you believe it, even now they're learning new things. and for a great cause too! to go to china and serve there! fantastically inspirational.

didnt turn out too bad for me afterall. (^_^)

posted by beckyboo @ 3:27 PM