Every generation has a different set of memories edged on their psyche
WHEN I heard that Judith Kerr was at the Mountain to Sea book festival in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown area, the name rang a bell. After all, I was once a school librarian and, why of course, she is the author of a number of children’s books. The one that stands out in my memory is When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit.
I can still remember the rows and rows of the said book on the library shelf. It is strange I didn’t read them as a child, only as an adult.
The book is a semi-autobiographical story of a young girl and her family escaping the Nazis and the journey they made. Basically, it is about the experiences of childhood that remained edged in her psyche.
What are my experiences of childhood? Simple pre-Internet fun that I still hold dear.
Things like the VCR player and the diskette or floppy disk are quite alien to the current generation. We played outdoors and our friends were few but real as compared to virtual friends. Even the food we consumed was simple — I hardly heard of the terms “sugar-free”, “gluten-free”, “fat-free” or “dairy-free”.
When I visited the Shannon Hydro electric dam recently, the tour guide said one young visitor was more amazed by an object on the table than the actual dam itself. The object was a telephone. He had never seen one before and thought that mobile phones have been in existence since the last century.
I miss speaking and hearing my own dialect. Other than my family members, I don’t have anyone to converse with in that dialect. There are so many ditties, proverbs and phrases peculiar in every dialect and when I recall them, they are usually in my mother’s or father’s voice. It is strange but I can remember my parents’ voices so clearly, as if it was only yesterday that I saw them last.
Even ear piercing was so different these days. As a child, we had to wait till the goldsmith made his rounds. Then all the female children would gather in a neighbour’s house. We were excited and afraid at the same time. The grandmas present told us it was nothing more than an ant bite. When it was my turn, I sat on a stool. The goldsmith held a gold earring that was open like a fish-hook. He rubbed some alcohol on the ear-lobe, held a thumb-size piece of ginger behind the ear and very swiftly jabbed the fish hook through. Then he pulled the ginger away and with a pair of pliers bent the straight end that had gone through the ear lobe into a curve. It felt like an ant bite alright. A big nasty ant.
Then there was this experimentation with audio equipment and photography. I bought my first Sanyo tape recorder and Kodak camera when I was 13. The tape recorder was so magical and I remember recording my own voice and then sending the cassette to my pen-pal. In those days, snail mail correspondence was novel. The camera had wound-up film inside. I had to bring the used roll to the photo studio for developing and then wait for a week to see how the photos would turn out. Initial shots were either over exposed or under exposed. There was no instant viewing or deleting or Photoshop.
I bought a handheld dymo label maker and took great pride labelling my personal possessions, even my tumbler. No one called that obsessive compulsive disorder!
There wasn’t a week that couldn’t be enhanced by the Princess Tina magazine. A random browsing through e-bay showed that some of these are still around! I had a good collection of vinyl records, and album covers were works of art to be admired. Even the sleeves of the records had printed lyrics. In terms of fashion, flares and platforms were the order of the day. Wide-collared shirts and tie-dye T-shirts were fun, too. I even had my hair done like Sandy’s in Grease.
I loved the Bazooka bubble gum, pink soft stuff that could be coaxed to become big balloons. The only fear was my mother telling me that swallowing the gum would bring about a possible death.
Then there was this must-have: macramé plant pot holder!
For every generation, childhood experiences are different. I could only imagine what my parents’ childhood would have been through the stories they told me. Likewise, my children would have a totally different set of childhood memories, too.
Dr Koh Soo Ling was a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Mara and now spends her days enjoying life as it is.