Excerpt from "Life On the Edge"
星期三 十一月 28, 2007 10:22 pm
When it happened, I was only 6 years old, in Grade One. I didn't notice most of the time that I was alone on the playground until one day all of my other girl classmates circled me inside and stomped their feet. I stared at them and stunned by their look that apparently full of hateful and cold feeling. Why they hated me? I was sure that I had done nothing wrong. I just played alone. I was puzzled. But I ignored them and continued to play. Soon the bell rang and all of them ran back to the class room, I waited for a few minutes, and then I followed.
After school, as usual I walked home. On the way, I found there were some followers, first a few, sneakily, then many gathered, stamped their feet loudly. It reminded me of a movie about Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards gathered and followed their target along the street, with stamping their feet and calling the victim names to insult.
That thought scared me. I wondered why I was their target. I really did nothing. I was mainly in my own little world, playing and staying alone. Luckily they did not do any physical harm to me. But from that day on, there were always a group of girls followed me and stomped behind me and called me names. I could not remember what they called. Over the decades, I seldom think about that. Until today I read some books about psychology. The experts claim that many people tend to forget their unhappy experience and pretend it never happened, thus they may get less hurt.
True, I remember little about my childhood, especially things about that. Sometimes, I think they were merely my dreams, since they were so blurred and I never could remember who were among them, except me. I guess I survived a lot of dreams.
2007@ Anna Yin
