Tuesday, 4 October 2005

what happened to me?


The last bar of my petrol meter has been flashing for a few days. I haven't had the time (or money) to fill up. Petrol prices have skyrocketed, so it costs more to feed my car than to feed myself. Dad lectured me about my apparently empty tank, and my defense was that I've decided to live life on the edge. What's more exciting than testing the limit and seeing how far I could drive? I'm such a daredevil.

I recently bought DVD box sets: Veronica Mars, Dawson's Creek, Felicity, Gilmore Girls, The OC, and Smallville. I also have the complete series of Friends, but that's nothing to brag about. I mean, who else can say that they have a whole collection of teenage dramas like mine? I'm at least five years behind on TV, so it's time to catch up. As a teenager, while everyone else had their eyes glued to the television, I had my head buried in books. My parents were worried about me and barred me from reading after bedtime. So, I read under my blanket with a torch—subtlety had always been my specialty.

Libraries and bookstores were my sanctuary. While my family shopped, I sat in the bookstore and read as much as I could, enjoying the smell of the crisp pages and getting high on their scent. In primary school, I was the school's Library Monitor (much cooler than it sounds) and came to school early every morning to offer my assistance. I sacrificed an hour of my sleeping time to spend quality time with the books. Whenever new books came in, I was assigned to cover them with clear contact since I had proven to be the most qualified candidate. Now that I think of it, they probably only let me do it because no one else was dorky enough to even want that job. I was obsessed with the laminator; I could have made good use of it at home, but every moral fibre in my body stopped me from stealing it (my bag was too small to hide it in). So, what ever happened to that little bookworm?