old friend

how do i begin this post? too much thinking and analysing in my life. maybe i should just jump in with both feet and let my feelings bring us along.

today is a very interesting day for me. i was supposed to catch up with an old friend that goes all the way back to primary school. can you imagine meeting up with someone you have not seen for .....*counting fingertips* 21 years? the last time we saw each other, i was probably wearing pig-tails, for goodness sake. pig-tails at 14? okay, maybe i was being a tad melodramatic but it was supposed to be a figure of speech anyway.

back to story. anyway, he was someone that i have totally written off my book as never being able to meet up again. in the movies, you see people bumping into each other after decades apart and you go "no wayyyyy". it is way too corny and fate doesn't always deal you such a fair hand. you usually end up bumping into the class misfit or the one person that you totally want to avoid. yes, i had a couple of those as well. even in the very slim chance that i may have bumped into him on the roads, i will never recognise him. heck, his physical image in my mind's eye is so blurry that i will need high-precision glasses to fine-tune the picture.

but life is strange. and so it was, i had the chance to meet up with a very old friend again today.

it is a very strange feeling. the name itself is very familiar. the sound, however, is alien and the looks even more so. almost as if the face and voice were a total separate entity from the name. i looked at him. no bells were ringing in recognition of the person. all the time a tiny voice in me kept going "sooo, this is how he looks like now". a very itchy curiosity was scratched.

it was a very pleasant lunch, albeit a short one in my opinion, considering that we had 21 years to catch up with. towards the end he did seemed a little eager to dismiss me but i have never been able to understand how this one ticks. was it me? anyway, we walked down memory lane a little and satisfied all the idiotic curiosities that were burning inside me. questions that i never thought would be answered. he may have been perplexed at the non-stop firing squad i was aiming at him, but i consider it close to a miracle that i am at last able to ask these questions that perhaps have been in my unconscious mind for a long time. i have always imagined in that grey cranial temple of mine that there was a doctor walking around bearing his name badge but i couldn't have been further from the truth. it's almost like in the movies, after 'the end', you have this dying curiosity to know what happens after that. i have been given the opportunity to find out about the epilogue.

lately i seem to be meeting up with more and more old friends and each time, i feel very satisfied. almost like i have found some lost treasure. you know what they say, "new friends are like silver but old are like gold". granted, they may or may not be a totally different person from when i knew them and are no more closer in terms of familiarity than the stranger on the road, but i am very happy knowing that each and every one of them are presently healthy and doing well. and hopefully, happy in their life :-)