Best Buddies

I have had a blessed life despite what just happened to me. Although I'm no extroverted party animal, I have had the blessing of buddies who remained my kindred spirit through the years. Granted, I have had a miserable childhood. Yet God in His Mercy had been good to me. 

I grew up among strangers under the watchful eye of my mother in a double storey shophouse which was never Home to me. Love was an alien concept in this house where survival depends on your ability to watch and learn. It was at this shophouse in a moment of solitude that I first reached out to God. Back then, the family members were deeply ingrained in Taoist practice and God was the Outsider, the foreign influence which causes you to hang between Heaven and Hell in death. But that's a story for another day.

The one thing I remembered most about my childhood was that I had no friends, not until I started attending school. Even at school, social interaction was awkward for I did not have much communicational skills. At home I was a liability nobody wanted. My brother's apprentices were kind to me. So was his clerk. I remembered becoming very attached to a Miss Yap who was a General Clerk at the shop. When she resigned, I was devastated. There was something rotten about Friendship if it can affect you in such a manner.  Miss Yap was my first friend.

By the grace of God, I have had numerous Best Buddies since. There was a time during my teenage years when one of my best buddy raised a question on the issue of our friendship. This buddy of mine had been transferred to a different school and was beginning to experience the sense of loss that I had first felt with Miss Yap. I remembered the words I wrote in response to hers as if it was yesterday when it was first written. I reserve the right to this quote.

"Companionship comes and goes but Friendship remains forever." - Carol

This maxim, tried and true, became the cornerstone of the numerous friendship that were to follow in later years.