Childhood Memories
For some reason, my TikTok timeline keeps showing me videos of little kids at school events who look dull at first, but then their mood lights up every time they see their family and loved ones in the crowd cheering for them. It's a lovely video to watch, and it always leaves me smiling whenever I see one of those, but then it also makes me think about my childhood.
In a bid not to be melancholy, I didn't have a lot of those growing up. I can barely think of an event in school where my parents showed up for me. Not for the PTA meetings or any of those things; maybe my mum showed up for one or two end-of-the-year parties, but that was it.
And no, I don't blame them because it honestly wasn't their fault. Both of my parents were busy trying to make a living and see to it that we had a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. The irony of it all was that during that time at school, I used to enjoy the fact that I knew my parents were too busy for these things.
That gave me the assurance that if I messed up in school and the principal wanted to report me to them, it wouldn't be possible. But now that I think about it, was I truly happy about that, or was I just trying to focus on the positive side of something that clearly also had a sad part attached to it?
I won't lie to you; watching those videos made me wish that I had experienced something like that growing up. But I'm also glad that I was mature enough to realize why I couldn't have those things, because unlike other families who could afford to take a day off work, our family couldn't back then. It was either we worked or starved.
And if I were presented with the options of my parents attending my event and making us starve or them not attending and us having food to eat, I think it's common sense to know that I would choose the latter any time, any day.