Friday, May 11, 2007
C.L.O
Ok, so there's this kid right, and she FREAKS me out. She's in the choir, and she has this habit of constantly and unabashedly STARING. At me and the other senior girls in the choir. Let me describe her for you. She's a tiny little thing, in year 7, slight and skinny. She's got straight, VERY fine orange hair (it's ACTUALLY orange, not red, not titian, we're talking carrots) and glasses, and she just STARES from behind them. It gets SO unnerving, because even when you TRY to ignore her, you get the feeling she's just....staring. From the corner of your eye, you can SEE her just...STARING! IT'S CREEPY, OK?
Now, recently, we had our school social (dance lah people), and CLO (oh, by the way, that's the uncharitable nickname I bestowed upon her: it stands for Creepy Little Orange) was alone there, while all the other kids were dancing in groups. She was dancing alone and doing all these sorts of ballet poses allllll around the floor by herself, just generally having a good time but looking very slightly very odd.
The next day, while she was walking into Room 23 (two rooms down from the English Room, Room 25), she walked past my classmates who immediately guffawed, because news of Clo's slightly odd dancing had spread.
And I'm not proud of this.
But I laughed right along with them, and a couple of the senior choir girls are in my English class and we laughed about her strange choral behaviour as well. I learnt later on in the day that she was the subject of intense ragging from her own classmates, and her seniors and EVEN right up to us in the Senior Squared section.
It felt wrong even then....but I did it anyway, forgetting my OWN golden rule of NEVER ignoring the underdog.
I beg you now, people who know me, to do a little recollective work. Try to remember another tiny little kid. She had razor straight black hair, talked funny and used to talk to herself, appearing totally schizo. She had huge thick glasses, red and gold in colour, and she walked alone a lot because people made fun of her skin. I especially recollect one time at a certain (horrible) Red Crescent Dance night thing where she did her OWN version of the (in her own head) Sexy Dance and was the object of utter ridicule for an entire week.
Strange. That kid was in Form One as well...probably the exact same age as Clo.
Well, this is her now:
Now, recently, we had our school social (dance lah people), and CLO (oh, by the way, that's the uncharitable nickname I bestowed upon her: it stands for Creepy Little Orange) was alone there, while all the other kids were dancing in groups. She was dancing alone and doing all these sorts of ballet poses allllll around the floor by herself, just generally having a good time but looking very slightly very odd.
The next day, while she was walking into Room 23 (two rooms down from the English Room, Room 25), she walked past my classmates who immediately guffawed, because news of Clo's slightly odd dancing had spread.
And I'm not proud of this.
But I laughed right along with them, and a couple of the senior choir girls are in my English class and we laughed about her strange choral behaviour as well. I learnt later on in the day that she was the subject of intense ragging from her own classmates, and her seniors and EVEN right up to us in the Senior Squared section.
It felt wrong even then....but I did it anyway, forgetting my OWN golden rule of NEVER ignoring the underdog.
I beg you now, people who know me, to do a little recollective work. Try to remember another tiny little kid. She had razor straight black hair, talked funny and used to talk to herself, appearing totally schizo. She had huge thick glasses, red and gold in colour, and she walked alone a lot because people made fun of her skin. I especially recollect one time at a certain (horrible) Red Crescent Dance night thing where she did her OWN version of the (in her own head) Sexy Dance and was the object of utter ridicule for an entire week.
Strange. That kid was in Form One as well...probably the exact same age as Clo.
Well, this is her now:
I like to think she looks radiant, happy, normal, and NOT like she's trying too hard to smile naturally. Shut up.
Did anyone know I was actually composing poetry? That I wasn't insane, but actually trying to create something beautiful, and saying it out loud helped me concentrate?
I don't blame you. I WAS a freaky weird ass kid.
But look what's come out of it: I'm a happy, normal, well adjusted teenager who can do all sorts of awesome stuff, I've got wonderful friends who think I'm worth keeping in two different countries, a collective worth of (one week short of) 17 years of experience, and one hell of a head on my shoulders.
In short, I was a Clo too, and I'd love to think I turned out well enough. No, you know what? I turned out DAMN well. And I'm proud of myself, and I'm so very grateful to the people who helped get me there.
Secretly, I am immensely proud of Clo for having the courage and let's face it, craziness, to dance to her own tune. She had such happiness on her face when she was dancing, and I think a lot of people envied it as well. It was probably jealousy on everyones' part that while they were all dancing like skanks JUST IN CASE some guy was watching, this little kid was effortlessly showing them up, just by living in her own world.
Maybe I'm romanticizing again. Maybe she really IS an absolute freakshow.
But SO many people could have come to that conclusion about me, and didn't.
A lot of you know that I credit Izzah with being one of the first people to ACTUALLY be straightforward enough with me to TELL me I was being an ass. I ADORED knowing someone had noticed and someone had cared.
I'm going to be the one that's nice to this kid, simply because...what, five, six years ago?, someone paid me that same courtesy. Maybe I'll even get to thank little Clo for correcting some serious idiotic flaws in my judgement.
Oh, and by the way? Her real name's Bridget. Suits her way better than Creepy Little Orange, anyway.
Queen Sana at 8:30 PM
