Growing up, I was an avid member of the talking club. Most schools shove an entire breed of future self-doubters into their debate clubs, where one is extensively taught to explore one's guts' feelings:
Stage fear versus menstrual cramps
Hot or cold flashes versus humidity-induced sweaty armpits
Stammering versus choking et al
And so my gabber self learnt to debate, recite, and stay in touch with any feelings that may cause an emergency verbal or other diarrhoea on stage. We were encouraged to develop a thinking strategy to work against panic attacks, like that split-second sinking feeling just before the results are announced. I am convinced now that we were being taught to cope with life ahead when our voices, once so gregarious, would be lost in a crowd forever.
And more than anything else, we were taught to avoid small talk. Clean, precise, concise copy with bombastic words. "Don't ho-hum around the point when you are on stage," my debate teacher curtly told us. "It's like making small talk about the weather, why waste precious talking time stating the obvious?" Clearly, he wasn't going to live in another country like me, continents away, where people are definitely obsessed about the weather.
While testing my gut for "feelings" I stumbled upon my very own way of coping with an imaginary world outside of these demanding overlapping high school society circles. It was making a wish list. Soon point format on a sticky note was expressing every ray of emotion and nothing like an impending debate to spiral it all out. While dedicating extra hours in the dungeons of recitation, I often found myself making that one last wish list NOT for Christmas. I would scrawl lists for my birthday, for the day after if I survived a tough competition but failed to win even the bronze, and a wish list for summer. Some cosmic poetic justice led the way to a yet unseen future where this wish list would revert itself. Back then, I planned all year long to spend my summers doing NOTHING. Being the only child has its perks - you don't get dragged out to do things, so you don't get into trouble much, so you don't blame the cat, and so your parents don't yell at you because you have done NOTHING at all.
Summer was an escape from ambition or lack thereof, and an escape from parental expectation - lack thereof was never a choice. Anyway, parental angst aside, the concept of a summer full of nothing now fills me with dread because last week, I flushed out almost 2 cartons of "summer notes" from my room. Spring cleaning in its purest form, and an ode to listless winter, I suppose.
Winter in Canada leaves me immobile. I don't skate very well and have never learnt to ski or snowboard or do much outdoorsy stuff except maybe make snow angels [but you've got to worry about that too if you leave pristine Ottawa to live in dog-peed snow in Toronto]. Between the tears mingling with snot on a treacherously icy day, I still haven't mastered the art of arctic living. Summer is where it's at! This is when my adventures in transit take place. This is when people come alive and remove their parka hoods to cess each other out. This is when you will see me narrate many a passages about travel, whether it’s on the local subway or squealing as the cold water tingle my nipples on a bold skinny dipping expedition in the dead of night. This is when the world moves, and this is when I stop sighing and wishing.
Wish list for summer:
Weddings: Gay, pink, straight, blue
A-l-g-o-n-q-u-i-n Park
That humble abode in London, not England
Blackouts
Long weekends in the City
Long weekends outside the City
Quick getaways to the nearest watering hole: The travelling slosh-head
Listless without lip-gloss: How the budgeted stylish travel
Couch chronicles: Visiting summer couch crashers
Etc.
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