Remember, remember.

No, no, nothing to do with what has become the catchphrase of highbrow art.

Besides, it's nowhere near November. And while we could work on something for the month, it just wouldn't be the same, would it?

"Hey, hey, look it's May."

Nothing else really lends itself to that sort of WAH SO PRO feeling, hmmm?

"Keep in tune, it's bloody June"

"What's up girl, it's twenty-fifth April."

Hmmm. This might work.

"Unfurl your member, for sexual September."

No? Artless cretins.


But yes, where did the time go. Do excuse me, two people and small yappy-type dog. Been busy and looks like will be for a while yet. Do not, however, confuse it with a terribly exciting life. Some people look forward to planned exotic destinations and beautiful women. And there's me going, "Come on, gotta get home and play Chrono Trigger".

As far as highlights go, we met a primary school classmate, unseen for a little over ten years, a couple weeks back. She's doing well, her teeth are clean, eyes bright and her coat has a nice glossy shine.

Something seems amiss. Ah yes, species.

She really is doing well, though. And one begins to understand the allure in meeting people, once dismissably familiar and now something halfway between old friend and new acquaintance that one has to rediscover.

The instrumental voice with its unique lilt. The same contours of the face, subtly different. I get there and prove that I am retarded with directions before sitting down with her, getting the beer she'd ordered for me and talking about dead people.

...hey, if you think that was sudden, you need to hear how she did it.

Out of nowhere it cometh. "You do know Mrs Lim killed herself?"

I explain carefully to her that, having just met for the first time in over ten years, she was supposed to start with the little details and build up to things like those. And I thought I was whacked.

People die. Have been doing it, last time I checked. I've been fortunate up to this stage of my rent-a-life to not have to deal with people I care for, offing it. Mrs Lim, brought to sudden sharp focus in over a decade, was our primary school form teacher. If I recall, she also taught us English and Science. I've always got along with the English teachers and was in the Science Club of yore. She was part of my little world.

"You do know Mrs Lim killed herself?"

I couldn't feel a sense of loss, as much as I wanted to. It'd just been too long. She was a lovely teacher, with a nasal, scratchy voice that was unique in being not at all annoying. Those were different times. Very different.

Times of grass and grasshoppers and catching fish in the drains
Times of one-dollar bowls of food, in a place still called a tuckshop
Times when the ground was so much closer and you smelled the earth when it rained

And just so much, so much more, because everything was new and wonderful and you didn't have to pretend to be anyone else other than a small fat kid. If you didn't like someone, you could just not friend them. The world was just yay big and anything else beyond that was for'in lands. You could wear a two-dollar Ninja Turtle T-shirt and be the envy of your friends.

Life's different when you grow. And I'm not sure all, or any of it is better.


We got to how Mrs Lim had killed herself just before another old mate arrived. She was mentally distressed, having been assigned just about the worst class around. Then she got a form of cancer and was wheelchair-bound. At this time, my own teenage delinquentism didn't help. She had to write an appraisal of me, in all likelihood the feather that tipped the scales in my favour. Shortly after, she flung herself off a balcony.

I was...affected. Little fragments of a long-forgotten, knee-high world came to mind over the night. Even the ex-classmate's cute boyfriend was no great distraction.

Once again, I can't pretend to be morose about it. The distance is just too great. But I do wish I could have spoken to her before that happened. Claiming absolute reverence and relevance, my question was how she'd flung herself off of anything, in a wheelchair.

Such a fragile thing, consciousness. Good bye, Mrs Lim.

I remember you now and I think I will continue to.