Were you ever beaten or slapped by your parents/siblings/neighbourhood bullies/mean cousins/younger-but-bigger-sized neighbour when you were young?

It all started when this friend of mine, PK and I were discussing how we were slapped by parents when we were young. I had been slapped by my mom (a few times), my brother (countless times) and my dad (once). But was caned thousands of times by my mom. Usually when my bro and I fight, my mom ended up caning both of us. Poor me, cos my bro was always the one who started the fights. And when discussing this, it brought back some unpleasant memories from childhood.

I had a rather unmemorable childhood. Reasons:

1) I was constantly bullied by my bro. He would make me get him water, buy him food, bring him the towel, wash his dishes, etc. and if I didn't, he would lose his temper and slap/hit/kick me. One time, when I was 11, I was so mad that he slapped me twice consecutively that I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the knife from the utensils drawer and ran back into the room and pointed the knife at him.

"You try hitting me one more time?!"

My bro was stunned. Not by the knife (cos it was small one), but by my reaction. For so many years, I bottled up my resentment and always did as I was told. I never fought back until now.

Luckily my aunt who was living with us then, came out of the bathroom and took the knife from my hand. If not, I might have ended up stabbing him. And myself.

2) My mom doted a little more on my bro and would usually acede more to his requests than mine. In fact, I don't remember playing with my own toys when I was young. The only toys I had was my brother's toy soldiers which I pretended they were food so that I could "cook" 'em, and two barbie dolls. The reason why my mom got me the barbie dolls was because my brother asked her to.

I have never had the habit of asking or begging and once my first request of buying a toy was rejected, I would never ask again. I never blamed my parents. I had seen how hard it was, esp. for my father to earn money that I knew we must not spend on unnecessary wants.

The silver line is I learnt that I can only depend on myself and I must work (literally) to earn the things that I want.

3) We didn't own a TV until I was around 7. At that time, we were staying in a rented room in a very old and run-down house in Mohd Sultan. The only friend my bro and I had who owned a TV lived on the first floor (that was when I was 5 or 6). We would always go over to his room and watch black-and-white TV. Once, while watching TV in his room, our friend kept asking us to go out and play. We reluctantly left the room and once we were out, he ran into his room immediately and his mom slammed the door shut.

This is an incident that i would never forget.

I told myself that I must never ask favours from other people. I told myself I must never let other people look down on me and my family. I told myself I must never do the same to other kids when I grow up.

4) My parents were often ranked No.1 on the billboard of gossips in that house. My dad, being a compulsive gambler and womanizer, often didn't return home till early morning almost every night. This, obviously became the source of my parents' quarrels. They would yell vulgarities and threw plates/glasses at each other. My brother took it badly and grew up crying in the middle of the night. I grew up fearing that they would separate one of these days.

Everyone in the household then, looked down on us because of our parents. Rather, they looked down on my mom, bro and me because of my dad.

I reminded myself that I must never look down on other people.

5.1) School was not a favourite place. I didn't enjoy studying what I didn't like. So naturally, I didn't do that well. Friends I hung out with seemed to come from pretty financially strong backgrounds so I could not indulge in the kind of activities which they enjoyed. Girls that i was nice to (I was in an all-girls school for 16 yrs) seemed to take advantage of me. I ended up very often by myself and had little friends. Sometimes, people mistook me for a mute cos I never seemed to talk at all.

Of cos, I did make some good friends, one of whom I still keep in touch with. So it wasn't all that bad =)

5.2) When I was in Primary 5, I forgot to do something that my form teacher told me to. As far as I can remember, it was only a minor mistake. But my teacher (who probably got up on the wrong side of the bed or didn't get some the nite before) flared up over this small matter and threw my book to the other side of the classroom.

"GO AND PICK UP THAT BOOK WITH YOUR MOUTH!"

I walked over. And picked up the book. With my hand.

I didn't like school then and this event obviously didn't make me like it any better.

Okay, I don't want to go anymore into the things that upset me. Keeping sad and bad thoughts is not something I enjoy. Will share some of my happy memories the next time =)