Childhood friends

Can't sleep. I am thinking of my childhood. About how I was a school bully, and how ridiculously bad tempered I was, how many people I had beaten up.

Yes, me, tiny me. I was even more tiny when I was younger. Skinny, short and dark, like a little monkey, someone had said. I guess I was strong because of my bad temper. I would go berserk and become the incredible hulk.

Somehow I have never really gotten into trouble for it. Maybe because I was a girl, they don't cane girls, only boys. The teachers would just tell me, 'Next time cannot like that', and I would think to myself, ok, I'll try something different next time. So I have kicked a boy down the stairs, slapped another, poured laksa (soup) down someone's head, poured a box of chalk over another, strangled a girl, whipped a boy with a cane... but never the same thing twice.

Then when I was 12, I decided to mend my ways. I was looking around my class, at my classmates, and thought that I was friends with them all except for one girl, who was my enemy. I thought that since I was graduating, I might as well make friends with her, so I could leave the school in good condition.

I walked up to the girl and told her what I thought. 'Can we be friends?' I asked. She was hesitant, but she said ok. I made an appointment to go out with her that week, and showed her my secret place at the railway tracks.

That's Mabel, who became my best friend after that till university. She later confessed to me that she had agreed to be my friend then because she was afraid that I would beat her up if she hadn't.