Wear my name out, wouldja?

Its utterly mind-boggling when an old friend starts to wear your name out -as if he couldn't type out your name enough and he has to do it with every sentence. Add to that the oddest tone I've ever heard (technically, typing on MSN has no tone, but trust me when I say I know a weird tone when I see it) him use.

My name was clearly, and undeniably, going to go out of style and so he felt fit to use it with shameless glee.

Hi Pauline. How are you doing, Pauline.

I am fine, Pauline. Me too, Pauline.

Bye Pauline, I have to go now. Take care, Pauline. We had great memories, Pauline.

I may just go and change my name soon. Henceforth, I shall be known as 'The Journalist Formerly Known as Pauline'.

The conversation was brief, and truth be told, I ain't never seen my name in type so often before.

But back to him.

He was acting weird, no doubt about that. His usually chatty manner was diminished somewhat. I feel one part suspicious (maybe it wasn't him, but some creep pretending to be him to hack into my life) and two parts worried. He had always been a strange one, but never this strange.

Perhaps, if you care to, we can take a trip down my memory lane of when I first knew him.

I met him in National Service. Different camps, but we are both Catholics (one of the very few in camp, I doubt there were more than 5 of us rosary-wielding Roman Catholics there, many were Protestant or Methodist) and we were sitting under a tent, waiting for tea after activities. A mutual friend intro-ed him, and we struck up a conversation which, for the rest of my life, I will remember.

The very first few things he told me was his dreams of Jesus.

It was not until much later I discovered the extent of his religious fervor. He is a staunch (I hope that now I need not use 'was') Catholic, very religious, and possessing an odd charm and an even odder sense of humour.

Tall, too. Dark-ish (not K-dark, but more like a tanned, tennis-playing dark), with a great smile and a small freckle just above his lip. Generally all-round pleasant-looking. Rich as heck with designer clothes and a friggin' mansion in Kuantan. God, I had a huge crush on him, and I never told him. Though honestly I suspected he knew anyway. He liked me, that much I knew, though maybe never as much as I liked him. Liked me enough to help me walk through the mud to the infirmary when I twisted my ankle. Liked me enough to talk to me and spend time with me, and stick up for me.

We would walk to the small leech-infested lake and sit on the fallen tree logs on the sandy area and talk, for hours. Just talk. About him, about me, about everything. I regret now to say I have forgotten what the place looked like, in my head I bear only the vaguest memories of what the whole camp looked like.

But I remember him. He came back from overseas a few times, to his hometown of Kuantan, and would go to KL everytime he came back to Malaysia. The last time he did (2 years ago!), he brought along his girlfriend, a Hong Kong girl.

Not overly devastated by that, really. Some things just go away in time, after it has hurt enough. Some feelings fade, and they remain a hidden ache somewhere deep inside. This ache flares up every so often (such as now) but on general, as with everything in my life, I have hidden it somewhere in a dark corner.

Like a childhood toy, sometimes I take it out, look at it, and put it back neatly. Sometimes, just sometimes -rarely- I take out the old toys and throw them away.

But thinking about the conversation last night with him, I don't think the time has come for me to throw that memory away. I guess he left a huge impression on me, a huger impression than even he himself realises, me thinks.

Its strange. I don't even know why I typed all this old stuff out. Maybe, just maybe, I am beginning to see that some things just happen and seriously, only God will ever know why.

As with so many things as well, I think I have learnt that I have to let go sometimes. I think, maybe-perhaps-kinda-sorta, I have.

Even now.