The jump off line is from The Last Thing by Ada Limon.
Everything was such a big deal. I would stay up if I had to go out the next day. Life in Australia was so routine and lived at home that outing of any sort- out of the ordinary by definition- came with a tinge of excitement. Not so when I was in primary school in Hong Kong. I never stayed up for our annual excursion. Then again, that was always to the same wilderness park every year and plus I slept like the dead as a child. Becoming less true now.
Everything was such a big deal. Once, for the Chinese ghost festival we planned an excursion into the ‘spooky room’ at a classmate’s place which was just the parents’ bedroom. We joked about it beforehand but we still spooked ourselves out. OR at least, me and the little brother. I couldn’t remember about the classmate on that occasion- was she even there? I was closer to her little brother anyway and we had gotten ourselves a good fright. We set it up in complete darkness and we went in with torches. One of us wielded a frisbee which we pretended was a weapon against ghosts. Can’t remember what the other weapon was.
Everything was such a big deal. ENTERs seemed like the culmination of at least two years of study and the start of life. In retrospect, it was only a phase. A substantial part of what I learnt I’ve given back to my teachers. Such was life.
