I Think I Feel Much Cleaner Now

Just when I thought I've gotten rid of all the junk sitting in various corners of my room, there were yet thirteen bags full I've managed to collect and tightly fastened into non-recyclable shopping bags. Ah, what fate lies in wait for them.



Do you remember them book bands? You know, don't you? I found my trusty neon thingamajig in a box within a box and God help the nostalgia, this book band pre-dates everything else in my room! (It's funny, Malaysians. We use butter tubs as lunch boxes, plastic shopping bags as bin liners, old tees as doormats - if that's what you call them feet-wipes your mother puts outside the toilet, and shoe boxes as storage containers.)

Anyway, book bands are such nifty little things, aren't they? They keep your exercise books in check. They also kept me in check - when I was a mischief and my mother would grab whatever was in reach and gave me a nice spanking, and said book band wasn't very nifty then.

I threw away many things. All held memories. My first ever soft toy, for example. It was a green bunny with a yellow bow-tie and it was RM13, I think. From Daya (or was it Jaya) Supermarket in SS2. One which I very affectionately called Whiskers. Whiskers unfortunately has grown much darker than I remembered it. He was black.



Then there was one stray piece of evidence that I hadn't done very well for myself at school. History answer sheet. Score? 41 of 60. So much for being in the top students class. Clearly everyone else trumped me so badly that I felt the need to hide it in that box within a box.

And finally, the fads of school.

The straw roses (and I don't mean dry grass, I meant the cylindrical tube you drink your overly sweetened carbonated beverage with).

And the 'friendship bands' that cost you tons of patience to braid, not to mention a fortune on DMC threads and in those days, you just had to have every color conceivable, or at least one from each color group anyway. And there was no such thing as too many groups. There had to be light pink group and dark pink group.

Oh, and fancy 'autograph books' with like Hello Kitty's on it that said 'Nama' and 'Alamat' on every page for all your friends to write in and sign their most cursive signatures in a host of colors. Again, there had to be light pink and dark pink.

And lastly, a school memento that my mother treasured so dearly.

It was the annual prize giving event itinerary booklets from primary school. Every year, for academic excellence (derived solely from promises of sets of Garfield stationeries, video game consoles, Transformers action figures and Tamiya cars), I went up the stage. (In secondary school I was smarter, I had learned that the bribes my mother offered were fake so I slacked off). I, however, decide that I want to keep my bragging rights. I was awesome in primary school, OK. I'd get perfect scores in English and Math, and be top of the class and some years when I was promised much bigger things, I'd be top of my year. And that had resulted in my name being printed in bold in those booklets. And they have turned brown and disgusting, with so many unidentifiable stains on them, crime scene investigators would have a field day with them.

Yet, my mother insists on keeping them still.

In any case, my room has considerably less stuff now and I feel clean.