4.75 - one of my favourite numbers this year. It marks the end of my preschool years, and serves just a quarter term more till I can officially be of age to go to Grade One…again.
The joys, of being a leap year – forever young. That, I think, is my life’s theme song. Even when I’m 64 years old, I can still say with an utterly straight face, without even a hint of a lie, “I’m 16 dear,” when anybody teases me about my age.
I’m not complaining, oh no. I love being a leap year. It’s different. Totally keeping in theme with my life story – where I somehow always manage to do things in a completely contrary manner to those around me. Almost as if the day I was born, was a prelude to what the rest of my life was going to be like. I was supposed to be born in March you see, I popped out early – too eager I guess to assault the world with my over enthusiastic tendencies and bouncing off the wall abstract notions. So I came in peace too soon (either that or Pluto really was tired of me), walked without crawling, talked (too much and too fast) by the time I was two (and never stopped since, nor has my speed dwindled – just increased at an exponential rate), went to school a year before time, and generally fast forwarded my life so that here I am, at the age of 4.75 years, attending University. It’s one of those things that makes absolute sense in its arbitrariness: the day I was born – it was MEANT to be. God took a look inside the soul he’d created and went, “hold up a minute, the rest of the year is too systematic for this one, push her forwarda few days, the 29th Feb, perfect – now they can’t say that we didn’t warn them”.
So what did I do for my non-birthday? I got depressed. We’ll not get into that, though for a good portion of my day, it felt as if maybe it wasn’t such a happy notion that I was alive. Abandonment, dear readers, is the worst feeling ever. Especially when those who make you think that you’re important to them, then act as if you’re not – a lesson well learnt: actions speak louder than words.
Lin and Bean to the rescue though: an impromptu little ice cream party, with a truly unique rendition of Happy Birthday echoing at every table in the vicinity and all eyes glued to the merry scene and surprised and according to Lin, priceless, expression on my face. “For she’s a jolly good slum-oooooo and so says all of us. Hip hip! Hooray!”
Ah, lovely people of the world, true friends come from farms, little places like Port Elizabeth where every other Indian is ‘Rajesh’, and from Phoenix (even if they had gold teeth, I couldn’t possibly love them any less); true friends come from random chance meetings that you never ever could have guessed would change your life so utterly; true friends come in all shapes and sizes (this is perfectly exact); true friends are drama queens and G’s, mad and funny, sensible and perfectly imperfect; true friends pulled me out from my little well of idiotic self-pity and made me feel that there were at least a few people who were happy that God decided to take my little blemished soul and push it out of the assembly line on that 29th of February 1992.
To every person who remembered that I was born sometime around this time 19 years ago and wished me; To D and her debatable leap-year-birthday ratio and the 14years of solid and unblemished friendship; Bhen and her bloodlessly solid sisterhood; Nimz who sent me a wonderfully unique and true-to-self message; to Kerl-i who was my first birthday call and graced to walk up and down in the heat; to Tarryn who came to Howard early and Bhai who’s always been my sunshine in the rain, pillar in the wind, and shelter in the storm; to Lin who brightened my day…and most of all to Bean: Bean the wonderful, silly, absolutely cooler than ice G, who always has my back – Thank You.
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