True Friend...

Hi fellas,

People say good friends are hard to find. Indeed I agree with that saying. Life is all about having someone who you can be with and someone who you can trust. As a normal boy back then, I had a lot of friends. Some of them are just friends and some are real close friends. I know the definition of friend can be varied between one individual to another. But for me, friends are meant to be the one who I can assume to be like brothers and sisters, perhaps.

Back in my hometown, I had this one friend. He was a cool person. Cool as in he was very calm and he joked a lot. The thing is he didn’t have many friends. In fact, some boys didn’t like him because they thought he looked kind of weird. My house is close to his. Every time I saw him playing with his little brothers under their house. I wondered why some of my friends didn’t want to invite him to play with us. They told me stories about him and some were just plain ridiculous.

So, one fine day, I went up to him and I greeted him. He smiled and greeted me back. I saw he was fixing his bicycle and his hands were both dirty and oily. I made some small chat with him while my eyes were busy observing him, from his clothes to his behavior. One little thing I noticed that his hands from biceps and below were kind of a bit twisted. I was curious and I almost popped out the questions but then again I didn’t want him to feel bad. Anyway, I invited him to come over to my house to play with some of my little soldiers. He looked at me and smiled, without saying a word, he continued repairing his bicycle. Then, I could feel the existence of coldness in our conversation. I felt kind of a bit strange at first. So, I bid him goodbye and hoped to see him around.

A few days later, while I was playing alone in my house because it was raining, suddenly I heard someone knocking at the door. My mom opened and there he stood with a plastic bag of mangoes. He gave them to my mom and said it was from his father’s orchard. He was half wet and I quickly went to him and I invited him to play with me. However, he didn’t say anything but I insisted him to stay for a while. Then, he stayed and my mom made some orange cordial for both of us to drink and served some biscuits to eat. He was a very shy person. He didn’t speak much and I had to start each and every conversation with him. Then, slowly I could feel that he was a good person but he didn’t have many friends because he was shy. From that day onwards, I often visited him whenever I saw him fixing his bicycle or his brothers’ bicycles. And, he often visited me too. We both slowly became good friends. I learned how to fix bicycle from him. He started to become slightly open to me and he joked more than I expected.

I guess, there is so much in a person to see when one is closer to each other. I would have never expected he was a very calm and lively person to be with. But, he was somehow different when some other friends were around. I probably had this little ‘key’ which could open his true self without having trying so hard. During my school break, I spent my teenage years with him. Sadly, he was not good in a formal education setting. But, deep down, he had some skills in certain areas. He is married now and he has two boys. He does some odd jobs, here and there to keep things going, in my hometown. Whenever I go back to my hometown, I never fail to visit him, collecting some of my old clothes to be given to him, buy a pair of T-shirt or a shirt for him and he never fails to come to my house bringing some traditional cakes and some salted fish for me to bring back to KL. He would sit for hours with me, catching up some stories which I have missed. Then, we would go out and have some meals. Sometimes at night, he would come over and we chat. There is always something to talk about. We both could relate to each other well.

Mutual Friendship…