First Love.

I was 7 years old when I got my first typewriter.

My father gave it to me as a gift. He always thought I would make a good writer, since I loved to tell stories even at such a young age. He always acknowledged and appreciated how rich my imagination was. When I was babbling away in a room surrounded by children my age with their mouths agape, engrossed in my story telling, or whenever I spent each afternoon after school scribbling down short stories and ideas on the back of my notebooks instead of doing my homework; ooh, my mother would have my head for it, in Filipino, the palo-sa-puwit-para-sa-batang-makulit treatment; yet my father would always take my side. He saw through my stubbornness and understood that there was something more going on inside my head; that I wasn't just acting out. I would've written more prose and poetry for him back then, if I only knew that I would have him in my life for merely three more years.

I couldn't recall what model or make the typewriter was, but for me back then it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I had such a natural connection to it --- the moment I laid my hands on it I never wanted to let go. I even had a name for it: "First Love." So, I dropped my chewed-up pencil and my battered notebook altogether and typed away, day and night. First Love and I, we were inseparable.

Of course at that time, having a typewriter was such an old, outdated thing, for not only was the love for retro and vintage items so strange to everyone at the time; the late '90s was also the period of new discovery, the dawn of technology and digital revolution; when computers were deemed majestic and everyone was so hyped and fervent about rushing into the future.

I remember the kids at school having their homework digitally printed out in all types of fonts; letters and words in varying colours and sizes, while mine was manually printed out in black ribbon-ink, with correction fluid smudged and splattered all over it. My classmates used to make fun of me, and my teachers used to dismiss my work as average, paying attention to the other kids' visually painful, multi-coloured projects instead of the actual content.

I didn't care much. The wondrous clickity-click of my trusty typewriter drowned out all of their mocking. Besides, I have always accepted the fact that I was different from all the other kids at school. I actually liked being different. For them I was weird, but for me, I was unique. And my typewritten works were a testimony to that.

But then eventually my family did manage to get hold of a computer. I gradually turned my back on my typewriter, especially because it brought back too much memories of the only person in my life who knew and was genuinely proud of what his young daughter aspired to become. Gradually, too, I stopped telling stories. I stopped imagining. I stopped dreaming. I forgot how being different felt so good, and I focused all my attention and energy into being like the others --- miserably ordinary.

If I only knew that letting go of such a gift would be one of the biggest losses in my life, I wouldn't have done such a regretful thing. Too many times, I have tried to once again be able to imagine, dream, create; write. Unfortunately it isn't as easy as it once used to be.

I am now 25. I am a fairly fast typist, but my boyfriend makes fun of me for hitting the keys on the keyboard too hard every time I type. I try to explain to him each time that I acquired all my typing skills by practicing on an old typewriter, where I had to exert so much effort that by the time I get to the fourth page of an A4 size paper my fingertips were literally numb. He just shrugs to this and laughs anyway.

Like I said, I am now 25, not a bad typist at all, but not a good writer either. The words that come out of the tip of my fingers sadly don't have the magic they once possessed.

I always wonder what my father would be thinking of me right now. From where he is, is he looking down at me with beaming eyes, proud of what I have become --- a nurse working her behind off, thousands of miles away from everyone that she loves, battling on to save lives? Or is he shaking his head in dismay, mumbling to himself, "look how unhappy you are for not being brave enough to follow your heart."

Anyhow, I am writing all of this in my iPad using an app called "Hanx Writer" (developed by Tom Hanks???) that mimics the function and even the wondrous clickity-click of an old-school typewriter. We will have to see where this takes me.

P.S. I hope First Love is not being very jealous of Hanx right now.

***

"I look around,

To the strangers with blank eyes surrounding me

I look down to where I am,

amidst a few other lost souls, I see me

I ask the woman inside,

'What have you done with your gift of life?'

I look to the horizon where I know I ought to be,

Over the ocean of eyes that won’t even see me."

--- Written by me, 20 February 2012

***

END.

By La Belle Rocher, 08 February 2015