Conversation with an Old Flame

I can't remember the last time I had a real conversation, you know, one with not only complete sentences but whole paragraphs, and real pauses not punctuated with taking sips of beer.

So when an old friend called me up and suggested dinner, I was quite eager to excercise the lesser-used regions of my brain, namely the areas governing speech and thought.

Now, about this old friend, probably a brief recount of our history would help put the following into proper context. In primary school, I fell in love with her, or whatever schoolboys go through that make them do cartwheels in the classroom. She was like some anime babe to me, in a time when anime was not even a word I knew.

We had a weird kind of love thing going on. She was in a Convent school and I was in an all-boys' school. She'd send me beautiful sketches of stuff like a princess kissing a knight, and I'd send her ..er.. absolutely nothing. But I'd call her. Oh yeah, I wasted months of my pocket money calling her from a phone booth.

One fine day when we were about 14, I popped the question, like it was a bottle of the finest champagne. I asked her to go steady (do kids still use that term?). She said she cared about me a lot, but we were too good friends to yadda yadda yadda. I felt all that fine champage draining out over the pavement where I stood.

One thing about her, she was always desperate to get married for some reason, even since highschool. Well, we grew up, I moved elsewhere, and she finally got her family while I was still me, that same schoolboy.

Until that day she called me up out of the blue. A minute into the conversation, I knew something wasn't right. She avoided all my innocent questions about her kids and her husband, like so:

Me: So, how's the baby?
She: So, er...say around 7?
Me: 7 is fine. How's your hubby?
She: Okay. I'll see u at 7.

That's strange, I thought, and called another mutual friend of ours. Well, short version, she recently divorced, her man fucked off abroad, and she's a single mum of two babies. Uh-oh. What am I getting into? Probably nothing, the angel on my right whispered. She's feeling down and wants to look up old friends.

We met up, I suggested a mamak. Mamaks are great for maintaining neutrality when we're unsure of the boundaries. They're also cheap.

I saw her for the first time in so many years. How to describe her? Well, let me try with the understatement of the year: She looks nothing like the anime babe I was once so crazy for.

I know it's cruel of me to say, but you have to understand the weird dynamics we shared throughout the years, eversince our puppy love days. I cannot put it into words.

Motherhood, and divorce, and stress really took its toll on her. Well, we talked. I listened to her but it was hard with the devil on my left who keeps chanting "You shoulda gone steady with meee".

But as we filled each other in on the past years, I couldn't help but feel a widening chasm between us. She's gone on and lived life, tasted bitterness, and trying to give herself a second chance at happiness. She told me about her divorce, about her kids. Here's the short version: husband, gambling addict, loan sharks, wiped out savings, attempted suicide, lies, deceit, police, hiding. Then she said, "Oh, enough about me, what about you?"

Me? Well..let's see. I just broke up. I'm changing jobs. And er...later on, I'll go home, play with my Transformers toys, and shoot bad guys on my PC.

Oh yes, I was still very much the schoolboy. But I admired her. How she managed to go through hell and back, lugging along two kids. And I told her that - I admired her. If it was me in her shoes, well, ..who knows.

I'm starting to count my blessings.