The prompt comes from Everything needs fixing by Karla Cordero. I had no idea what the piece is about when I was writing it and after I re-read it for the first time, I still think it’s just a collection of random jumbled recollections about my childhood. But now that I’ve come to see my Wild Writing pieces as collages, I think perhaps this is what this piece is: a collage of my childhood.
When I was a child I didn’t really know what it means to be sad. Life was always good to me. I was always lucky.
When I was a child I had never seen a rainbow in real life. I only knew they were supposed to come out after the rain. But I never saw one with my eyes.
When I was a child I had no trouble sleeping. In fact, I could not really not sleep, even if I vowed to. One year I learned about the Chinese custom of staying up all night for Chinese New Year’s Eve I think it was? I somehow decided I would try my hand at it. I stayed up watching cartoons. But then I think I crashed at around 2 am or 3 am.
When I was a child I lived in Hong Kong. Such a different world there. All noise. All fast pace. We had subway there. Each station had multiple exits labelled A, B, C up to F. Sometimes there were less, not sure if there were more. I could find my way better there, using buildings as landmarks. I’m a city girl, that’s how I navigate, using buildings. And tall buildings, that’s a mark of Hong Kong, or was. Now it’s the norm of all modern big cities, especially in Asia. When I was a child I took piano lessons for a while, in a bid to increase my music score. In Hong Kong, every subject counts, except for Bible Study. I went to a Lutheran primary school. It was called Sharon’s. I found out only after I graduated, when I looked closely at the school emblem. Before I only knew it by its Chinese name.
P.S. the photo isn’t me, this is just a freestock photo of a Chinese girl child.
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