Last Saturday, I cleaned my room because it’s already a mess and my mother was already mad at me. Dust, cobwebs, and papers everywhere I don’t know how I survived from this mess. But there is one thing that took me long and made ma stop and thought again about my elementary life. “My Elementary Slum Notebook” Grade school was a lot of fun. The field trip, foundation day, school festivals and so on. There was no boring days in grade school compared to high school. The periodic examination was very easy because the some teachers reviewed the exact test we have the day before the periodic exams. In high school, it’s different. Here I tell you, you will change. It’s either for the better or worse. It’s because someone said that in school, you will gain education but fools are found. In other hand, it is a matter of choice. You can choose to study or to cheat. You can choose to have good friends or bad ones. In high school, there are strict teachers but all they want is to improve our studies. They are not like other teachers who do not care whether we learn or not.
Going back to the slum note, guess what surprised me? The pictures of Brad Pitt and my 11-year-old grade school crush named STEVEN. (He lives at the next street but he is not my classmate anymore.) Then I turned the page, this is what I saw.
After reading the first page where I (the owner) was supposed to fill it out, I laughed to loud that my mom could hear me from the kitchen. I could never imagine that when I was already 11 years old, I still don’t know what email address is. It is hard to imagine that the only foods I knew are spaghetti and fried chicken. Now, I come to see how many dishes I always ask my mom to prepare for lunch or dinner, Macaroni salad, chicken curry, steak, black forest cake and more. And I guess at that time, the pink invasion occurred. Almost all of the girls loved pink and it seems like pink is the national color of girls. But now, you can see men wearing pink shirts. Now, it’s the national color of brave men out there.
Roses? I hate roses! Why did I put it there? I guess, I have nothing to write that time. Today, the most beautiful flower for me is the “Forget me not”. It seems like this flower had a long story before it’s called “forget me not”. Maybe it’s a flower given by a man to a girl he loved and promised to come back. Hehehe *Laughs*.
Yeah, I know while you are reading this it seems like I’m too naïve during my grade school life. Books like Cinderella and Snow White were the only books I have in my shelf. Now, our world becomes bigger. We were asked to read three (3) fictional books for our project. I have read the set of “Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickets. I was also able to finish the seven books of “The Chronicles of Narnia” by Clive Staples Lewis recently. I just finished reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” by J.K. Rowling. About movies, I’m still a fan of Brad Pitt but not as fanatic as before. Now, I rather prefer to watch inspirational movies like Coach Carter, The Devil wears Prada, Kingdom of Heaven, Pursuit of Happyness, A Knight’s Tale and so on…
If my memory is right Many Moore was popular, but obviously I didn’t like her songs. I just wrote it not to look naïve. At present, I love a lot of inspirational songs like “I believe”, “Jesus Takes the Wheel”, “Time of my Life”, “Bye Bye” and more.
It seems like we were near to the end. So let me start making the long story short. “Time is Gold”, I just put it because I didn’t know what motto means at that time. Now, it’s this “Don’t let anyone define your limits just because of where you came from. Yes, not all can become a great artist but still a great artist can come from anyone. So dream big and make it happen!” My ambition in life? I still couldn’t decide what my ambition was. But now, I am brave enough to dream to become the finest writer in US. Now that I am fourth year student, I guess I will be taking B.S. Journalism in one of the best schools in the country in college.
It is hard to imagine, that at young age we were able to fill this simplest form of biodata. Yet full of honesty, this tells us about what our perception is about life. Now we can laugh at our past but after that we realized that we changed a lot. We are better than before and now striving for the best! We might turn those senseless answers to a more meaningful ones. We became naive for 6 years but when we entered high school, the world seems turning upside down and started to change. That is why when somebody is telling “You change a lot” answer him “Yes”. This slum notebook brings back my memories.
See how senseless my answers on the questions; what is your happiest moment? Memorable moment? Greatest dream? Now, life is no longer about searching for happiness but responsibilities. Set aside computer games and focus on studies. No more about love life but more about relationships on how we treat other people. As we grow, we change and we change from within.
