My friend (Wondre)

If you still remember my "writing plan" blog, you know I still own you this one: my friend Wondre (of course, as well as the last part of Yuphen. Sorry that my writing was sort of slow recently). I have been holding this spot for Wondre for a long long time. I know she is special, but as the time passing by, I unconsciously blocked the memory about her. As the life goes forward, I do not dear to look back, as if it would dig out some of my flaws that I had been tried to forget. And besides, we haven't contacted each other for a long time. So I am not the only one to be blamed.

All of a suddenly, she re-emerged with an email. For certain reasons, it reminded me how important my past was to me, and how great a friend she was, and how many memories we had shared (I know she will be reading this blog some time. But I promise, this blog is not intended to use these cheesy words to please her. It is just how I would have written without knowing she would be reading. Okey, stop over-analyzing. Just go to the facts).

Oh, one more thing before I get into the real meet. You know Gmail tried to match the ads (showing up on the right side of screen) with the content of email, right? For some reasons, one of the matching ads for Wondre's email is called "Device to beat kids". I do not know how that happened: She just innocently mentioned something about children. Get serious please, Google!

I met Wondre for the first time in high school during a gathering organized by the Literature Club (I, Wondre and Zexum were all part of it. Until today, Wondre and Zexum are still best friends, as far as I know). There were some silly activities during the gathering in a classroom. I think Zexum made a speech or something, since she was the leader. Wondre and I happened to live in the neighborhood close-by, so I was responsible to escort her home (I remember in high school, boys need to escort girls back home if there are evening activities. I do not know whether it is required by the school or it is just a made-up rule by boys). Anyway, we had a very interesting conversation on the bike for about half an hour. For some reasons, we promised to write letters to each other. It might started as a joke or something, but it turned out that we really took it seriously.

Before I go on, here is some background information. Wondre wrote beautiful essays (of course, great hand-writing too, always in blue ink and semi-transparent sheets, as I later found out). In the Literature Club, I was the fake one. I did not write well. Even I tried hard, I paid a lot of attention to the structure, the logic, and hidden meanings, the moral lessons. After I finished a "masterpiece", I bearly could read it myself. It was like looking at myself in the mirror in the early morning with sleepy eyes: it does not look like me. The same for my essay: it does not look like mine, as so many things were hidden or got over-analyzed. Wondre's essay was different: very visual, always creating an atmosphere with few strokes, almost like a master painter who can always get to the essenses of the nature, or the people, or the spirits that might be floating around.

So for me, Literature Club was a cover that I could divert the spot light of "math nerd" away from me. Also, it was awe-struck by the fact that people of my same age and similar experience could creat something so beautiful, and I just cannot (well, English, my second language, have gave me a greater freedom to create, as I do in this blog. Thank you very much, English). For that reason, I admired her, as writing came so natural, as she breathing in thoughts and breathing out words like a fish in the water.

So get back to track. We began to write to each other. It was our secret communication. One morning, when I arrived school, I would found a letter sitting neatly on the teacher's big desk in the front of classroom. Then she would got one. And then it was my turn. During some period, the exchange was so frequent that we wrote every day. Two reasons kept me going with the letter exchange.

One, it was a joy to write, especially to Wondre. I was a sensitive boy, and I often suspect whether or not I was normal at all, so I tended to suppress my sensibility. Writing to her made me feel free. She was not in my same grade, we did not really know each other well, and even better, she was younger than me, so I felt very secure to write to her. By convincing myself that it was to give Wondre some advice and guidence in school as an older brother, I really acted selfishly so that i had a chance to discover myself.

Second, it felt great if you had a secret friend that you can always talk to but nobody else can. Every morning, when I got the letter from Wondre, I acted like no big deal, calmly passing the rows of seats, put the letter in my backpack, waiting for a quiet moment to read it. But what really went through my mind was something less noble: I peeked at other people, noticing that they were guessing how my secret friend was? was it he or she? if she, was she my girlfriend? What were we writing about? How came we had so many things to write about? Let me tell you, it felt great to be the center of the attention and gossip, especially it had nothing to do with my academic achievement and had every ingredient of something romantic.

You may ask, was Wondre my girlfriend? Well, it was complicated. No, I did not have any intention to have a girlfriend then (To be honest, I was not mature enough then to understand the meaning of relationship then. I thought that 1) having a girlfriend was not good when you were a high school student, 2) but if you had one, everyone will envy about it. So it was a forbidden fruit. With my moral self-rightousness and the incredible lack of self-confidence. a girlfriend was out of the picture.) However, I had every intention to make it look like one. As I mentioned above, I liked the feeling when my classmates guessed or teased about who my secret pen pal was.

To make the deal sweeter, I kept my parents and my Niangniang guessing. Because during the school recess, we wrote to each other through snail mail. My Niangniang asked me a couple of times, and I refused to answer. Since I did not have mailbox key, I eventually figured a way to take out the mail using two small stickes. It felt great because I finally had my privacy. How pathetic, I might say now. However, back then, this kind of small things kept me together so that I did not snap and lived rather peacefully with the oppressive environment in my family. (Oh, please do not get me wrong. If you read my earlier blogs, you know I love my families as a fact. However, living in my family as a 15 years old kid was a miseable experience. I am happy I eventually have got out almost unscratched, but I do not blame them for everything they did, because they meant well).

So one day, I embarked on a journey to visited her in her hometown (2 and half hours by bus) in the summer. I did not even tell my family, as if that was as rebellious as I could go: a secret day trip to see a secret friend, maybe just to prove that I can do it. The bus was over-loaded, so when passing every checking point, we had to dodge, as if the bus was under a massive attack. When I arrived there, she and I climbed a small hill to have a nice view (or maybe there is a temple there or something). I forgot most of it, but a joke that I always remember. It is not even funny, but we had a good laugh then. Okey, okey, the joke is as following: When we walked on the trail, she said,"Xiaolu (little alley), Tongzhi (comrade)", but I thought she was calling me "Comrade Little Deer". Funny, huh? Anyway, we overplayed the joke again and again during our walk, as it was the funniest thing in the world.

Then I was about to head to college. One afternoon, we biked all the way to the suburban on a land-bridge. She told me that she liked to watch the train passing by under the feet. I was not sure why it was so enjoyable, but I wanted to see it too. The other side of the bridge was still under the construction, so there was virtually nobody on the bridge. We talked and talked until the train came, with the smoking flushing out of its industrial chimney. It came, it went. To this day, I still did not get it: why watching train was interesting? (Well, I guess people are different. Last year I had a housemate who can watch the fire burning for an eternity). Anyway, I think we talked a little about the future. I did not remember what I said about my future, but I know I felt then that college was the best thing to me: I could get away from my family, and besides, in college, all my dreams would come true, and besides, as I grew up, my hometown was now too small for me--I was going to fly far and high, leaving my old friends far behind.

Eventually, college turned out to be great, but not as great as I thought would be. We still communicated with letters. One way I got a letter from Wondre, with a 2-inch passport photo and a depressing letter. I was quite freaked out. I thought Wondre would do something stupid to herself. (To this day, I still do not know whether I was over-worrying). I think I immediately wrote a letter back, blah blah blah. I told it to my then girlfriend Yuphen. She was worried too. Just to comfort her, I promised her that Wondre was like a willow branch, wavering under strong wind but never would snap itself. I do not know whether I could convince myself with that, but that thought made me feel better.

Eventually Wondre went to a college next to mine. She did not change too much since high school. To me, she was still the little girl I knew, writing beautiful essays and suffering from being sensitive. How Zexum, Wondre and I were in the same city again, thousands of miles away from where we started. We had some gatherings to renew our friendship, but they were more like a formality that I neither loved or hated, so my memory there was all blured.

Later in college, one of my best friends (well, my friend "Jegal", if you still remember him) told me that one girl was calling into some radio show to confess the love for me. I do not know how he got the link, as I assumed that in radio shows everything was supposed to be anonymous (that's the whole point of those kinds of radio shows right?). However, I immediately thought of Wondre. It does not matter whether my guess was justified. It was probably false anyway. What really mattered here that that the thought came natutally to me. All those years our friendship was quite "aimei", tracking all the way to the letter-writing. I never denied to my friends or family whether she was indeed my secret girlfriend. Until today, I still believe that, besides the events I described in "Yuphen" blogs, it is the most romantic event of my entire life. I kept these letters until two years ago. (When I visited my home two years ago, my dad told me that he was selling my apartment. Then I burnt all the letters I have, including Wondre's. For me, that apartment was an era. It was the last thing that confined my freedom, but it was also whether I wrote these letters, whether my Yaya died, when my Niangniang made delicious meals, where I got up at 6am for a morning run, where I studied to nail the college extrance exam, where I sang aloud to disturb neighbors. I felt very very sad, so I burnt my memory. And now, I feel my eyes are all wet. I think of my Niangniang now. Last week when I called her, she was not well. I think she is losing it to the old age).

Anyway, back to Wondre. That's pretty much all the important events that I remember now. A couple of days ago, her email emerged, probably in a hope that Zexum and I can be together. I told her not to bother. I really appreciate all her effort. I still do not know what she did, but she mentioned something vaguely in the email, and saying sorry about them. Well, really, nothing to be sorry about. If sorry has to be said, then this blog will have too many "sorries": sorry to guess Wondre as the calling girl without a reason, sorry to burn Wondre's letter, etc... But I don't. They are all part of the whole story about Wondre and me, and it just happened this way. They are treasurous.

Finally, let me say this. The life is a circle in every possible way. We started writing secret letters to each other, now I share this rather "secret" blog to Wondre. From the blue ink on factory-titled sheets to the cyber-font on computer screens, something is unchanged. I am still honest as I was before, still struggling here and there, but still with great ambitions, still sensitive, but now with a better writing style. My mind could still overwhelm me, and my heart could still break once a while. However, in this blog, I am safe to speak, safe to stipulate that, on the receiving side, my friends are watching and caring, sometimes with me as the secret boyfriend. Oh, so nice to be young,pure and innocent.