A Recreational Remembrance of "Golden Monster"

"Golden Monster" was my primary school classmate, a friend I would fondly remember of. He got this epitaph because of the Chinese character "yellow"（黄） and "gold"（金） in his name, also partly because of another fact that he is a boy----a popular one with a strong character, thus would befit the title "monster", though the more tender side of him will be discussed later.

I thought of him today when the memories of my primary school "parting messages" came into my mind. It was customary in my hometown that graduating studenst should get a collection of "parting messages" from their classmates. In that stage of life, most of those messages were definitely not about the sorrow and bitterness of parting which we now so easily relate to when talking about graduation. Those messages were mostly tongue-in-cheek jokes about one another----a lot of fun could be made on any respect of a person: his "exotic" looks, his habitual actions, his off-tune singing, and of course, his future "partner". "Golden Monster", the popular and charming casanova, of course, never escaped from what was inevitable for him:D:D:D Now let me bring you into the world of this interesting "Golden Monster".

In Primary 1 and 2, "Golden Monster", the nondescript-looking boy with a medium height, was just a vague form in my memory. I did not remember him participating in those games like catching, seek and hide or "three-word-phrase", which a lot of boys joined with girls. Not yet did he rise to fame at that point of time, when more talented, eloquent and versatile boys were getting all the attention.

The time when I for the first time closely got to know him was in Primary 4, and it was all but pleasant experience. By some sort of "luck", we attended the same writing tuition in the same education centre. We both took other lessons in the centre. He was artistic and played the accordion well. I was far from artistic but took the electronic piano course nevertheless. Then it came to writing tuition. We became adversaries soon after a few lessons simply because I did not like the shape of his face, which was a bit gourd-like and displayed an amazing resemblance with the Chinese character, "wind" (“风”）. That was a strange shape which I called "feng face".

Since then, the battle started. When my composition was praised in the class, he would give that kind of "constipated look" and stuck out his tongue to make a grimace meant to be annoying, yet ended up being amusing. When his writing was read out as the exemplary piece, I just did the same, changing the tongue part into a derisive pout. Sometimes my sister joined the battle, too. For example, one winter day, we managed to triumph over him and his gang in the snowball fighting; a narrow victory, but an appaudable one.

His fame began to rise in Primary 5 and reached a climax in Primary 6, for the reasons unbeknownst to me. He lived in the residential area of a "Police Officer Educational School";my house was just next to his with a solid wall apart, since I lived in the residential area of a "Political Laws and Management School" just adjacent to his. The funny thing was, he became the "King of the child" in his area and had many followers, predominantly girls. He could sing and dance exceptionally well, true, but except that, I could find no other commendable areas other than his neat, elegant handwriting. He is poetic, true, with a bit, no, a lot of narcissism, but that did seem to inspire me why some girls would like to stalk him in P.E. lessons, and flush=.= He was flamboyant to the point of clumsy, I have to say, especially when he performed the "superman dance" with Jay Chou's "Half Beast"（半兽人） in our last music lesson and in a moment of fancy and clumsiness, fell and ripped open his superman cloak.

He had an English name, Roy, and a dog with an English name, David. This may shed light on his grasp of English, which was quite good but not as good as me, except in oral----he was yet another rhetoric speaker. That might account to why many girls were infatuated with him: his honey words. That was just a speculation, though, since I knew by instinction that he was quite upright. Back to the dog. David was a typical Peking dog with a lovely and furry face and a waving tail. It was exuberant for the most of the time and not in the slightest feared to meet new people, including me. His previous dog was put to painless death after an indigestion accident. Roy cried for many days for this. That was one of the moments that I found him not quite like a "monster", which was in the first place, an epitaph only.

When the graduation was coming, I could not remember very clearly those anecdotes because another "monster", Double Swe, urged me on getting into the foreign language middle school, a local elite school. I finally got the chance with a top score in the diagnostic examination and secured a place in the school with an insecure mark just above the cut-off point. However, not as fortunate as me, Double Swe did make it in the diagnostic exam due a passage written in the wrong tense. Golden monster, on the other hand, appeared quite off-word with all the fad of getting into the top school, but he had his own ambitions, which I only knew of later, maybe too late.

After graduation, I only met my primary school friends once in a free-ice-cream-provided cafe. "Golden Monster" and "Double Swe" were both in the gathering, appearing with quite fashionable clothes that were so different from my school's dressing style. They looked older than me, for sure, though in fact both were supposed to call me "Big Sis".

After the gathering, our connection was broken as I moved houses several times and changed my phone numbers along the way. It was not until I graduated from the foreign language school that I began to seek my long-detached friends.

At present, my friends are faring well on their journeys of learning. Double Swe get into an elite senior high school with a high score in the admission exam while another friend, GY, will possibly get into a good university by DSA with his mathematical prowess.

Golden Monster, of course, find his own way. After one year of junior middle school study, he moved to Shanghai with his family to get a better chance in university admission. When we talked on the phone three years ago, he challenged me on the spelling of "individual", which greatly bemused me. Our voices all had never changed. That is the magical part about it, no matter how old we grow.

When I come back this December, I will have already reached the "legal adult age" in China, so will they. What will become of us then, when all of us scattered in the different parts of the world reunite? Poking fun at each other? A possible occurence.

And just think about it that I dedicated one whole post to the honorary "Golden Monster", my childhood "arch foe"...