Grown Ups
Today, my cousin popped by our house during his lunch break to say hi to my family.
We were never close and I, in fact, for quite a long while, resented him for a callous remark he once made about some of my drawings, which I flippantly dismiss as mindless doodles most of the time but a select few know that I am in fact slightly proud of them. Just slightly.
I never quite forgave him for that intrusion (not to mention I still remembered the days when he would bully his younger sister and me when we were about 5 or 6), and any visit from him thereafter was entertained by a quick run up to my room to avoid contact, or if I am alone at home when he comes by, I am struck by sudden deafness and cannot hear the doorbell ringing.
So there we were, him chatting with my mom animatedly about domestics (he got married last year) and me gobbling up my lunch so that I could run for cover, when he launched into a passionate spiel about gardening. Gardening! This nightmare of children (my little brothers used to hide with me upstairs until he left), this giant >censored< likes to plant things. Make things grow. Water them. Keep things alive. Nurture them.
That revelation has caused me to rethink who I was and who I am now. I was no angel and here is an incident to help you visualise my not-so-angel-ness. Once, when a younger cousin of mine bullied my younger brother (she is about three years younger than him), I 'borrowed' her digital pet and pressed the reset button.
He (the cousin mentioned earlier, not this one that I bullied) is now 33 and starting his family, I am 27 and it probably won't be too long before I will too. We have both outgrown our stupidity and I have made heaps of mistakes, but the memory of having killed a kid's pet (albeit a digital one) makes me feel lower than a pedophile and there's not much room below that one. Spite is an ugly, ugly thing and outright hideous when the person on the receiving end is a kid 1/4 your age.
I have forgiven him for laughing at my sketches. As for What I Did, I'd like to pretty please press the reset button just one more time. This time, the victim will be my memory of that incident.
Ready?
*Reset*
We were never close and I, in fact, for quite a long while, resented him for a callous remark he once made about some of my drawings, which I flippantly dismiss as mindless doodles most of the time but a select few know that I am in fact slightly proud of them. Just slightly.
I never quite forgave him for that intrusion (not to mention I still remembered the days when he would bully his younger sister and me when we were about 5 or 6), and any visit from him thereafter was entertained by a quick run up to my room to avoid contact, or if I am alone at home when he comes by, I am struck by sudden deafness and cannot hear the doorbell ringing.
So there we were, him chatting with my mom animatedly about domestics (he got married last year) and me gobbling up my lunch so that I could run for cover, when he launched into a passionate spiel about gardening. Gardening! This nightmare of children (my little brothers used to hide with me upstairs until he left), this giant >censored< likes to plant things. Make things grow. Water them. Keep things alive. Nurture them.
That revelation has caused me to rethink who I was and who I am now. I was no angel and here is an incident to help you visualise my not-so-angel-ness. Once, when a younger cousin of mine bullied my younger brother (she is about three years younger than him), I 'borrowed' her digital pet and pressed the reset button.
He (the cousin mentioned earlier, not this one that I bullied) is now 33 and starting his family, I am 27 and it probably won't be too long before I will too. We have both outgrown our stupidity and I have made heaps of mistakes, but the memory of having killed a kid's pet (albeit a digital one) makes me feel lower than a pedophile and there's not much room below that one. Spite is an ugly, ugly thing and outright hideous when the person on the receiving end is a kid 1/4 your age.
I have forgiven him for laughing at my sketches. As for What I Did, I'd like to pretty please press the reset button just one more time. This time, the victim will be my memory of that incident.
Ready?
*Reset*
posted by Keem at 4:03 PM
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