Primary School Friend

The other day, I was “poking my nose” around at an event when a Malay police officer came up to me with a stern face and asked, “Are you Yvonne?”

I got a shock and thought, “What had I done wrong?” Shakingly, I said, “Y…e…s…”

To my surprise (and amusement), the next thing he said was, “You used to study at XX Primary School, right? I was your primary school friend, remember?”

I stared at his face and then I realized, “Oh yes! This was the quiet and plump boy who was always playing around with the other Malay boys in class!” He still looks about the same, except that he is much taller and muscular. What a pleasant surprise! For years, I had totally forgotten about this friend, whom like many other primary schoolmates, have accompanied me through one of the most memorable part of my life. To be reunited with this primary school classmate, was the best thing that happened to me that day.

Primary school seems like such an “ancient” term. After all, it is more than ten years since I finished primary school.

Have you lost touch with your primary schoolmates? More precisely, do you still keep in touch with them?

It is not that easy to “lose touch” with friends you grew up with, especially if you used to study in a primary school in your neighbourhood, and you have not moved in your entire life. By “not losing touch”, I mean that you still see some of these primary schoolmates around every now and then. Be it at the neighbourhood grocery store, at the hawker centre or at the bread shop. You may also bump into them once in a while when you take a bus or the MRT.

To “keep in touch” is another different story. It means to maintain contact with your old schoolmates, either by meeting up, through phone calls, emails or smses.

If you still keep in touch with your primary schoolmates, congratulations! You are one of the rare species these days. (Some people do not even keep in contact with their secondary school friends!)

I always feel impressed with those who remain good friends with their primary schoolmates. I have just one burning question in mind, “How do they manage to do it?”

For me, the number of primary schoolmates whom I still maintain contact with, can be counted by the number of fingers on one hand. My only consolation is that, I still stay in touch with some of my primary school teachers.

When I was young, I did not know the importance of “keeping in touch” with your friends. When I went to secondary school, I was the only one from my primary school there. At that time, adjusting to a new environment and new friends was the only thing most of my fellow peers and I had on our minds. At that time, some of us met up occasionally, usually to return to school to chat with the teachers.

However, about a year after I graduated, my primary school closed down due to the falling student intake and the teachers were posted to other schools all over Singapore. Gone was the school, with teachers dispersed everywhere and when secondary schoolwork turned more hectic, “keeping in touch with primary schoolmates” became a forgotten matter.

A few years ago, I suddenly had the idea of searching for all my primary schoolmates, and organizing a big reunion. The biggest hesitation was: would it be awkward for people to meet up after so long? However, I still took up the task as a "private investigator" but the plan soon fell through because it was too hard to find people whom I have not seen, and had no news of, in more than ten years.

Some people say that if certain things are lost, they are lost for life, and that sometimes, some things are better left the way they were.

Nevertheless, I still hope that some day, I might get to meet all my primary schoolmates the pleasant way I met my police officer friend, and to pick up these long lost friends one by one.