Tribute to a Friend

His crude and rough manners disgust many. Taking advantage of girls and making crude and insensible remarks every now and then.

Many feared him. His over-powering presence scares us. And it seems like nothing would ever survive if placed up against him. You could never know what or when he will do something dramatic.

Most loathed him. Some would even take a punch from him to get him barred from a certain area. What follow his name were usually negative and notorious comments and opinions, some of which were agreeable to a certain extent. He is what you would call a scumbag.

Though born as a leader, his brainless and childish acts and stunts which he used to lead others are irritating and meaningless to most. He once brought his remote-control car and was playing with in along the corridor, creating disturbance and laughter at the same time. Another time he had led the camp with his dumb forfeit actions, one which we were made to follow. It was ridiculous but fun. There were those would will joined him readily in his crazy entices.

It has been almost a year now and yet, comments still follow his name. He had portrayed himself as someone to fear, someone to hate. And it seems that he has done the perfect job at it, because it is what most people thought of him.

I think everyone has a different side, one is what we would show the world, be it the true or fictitious side, and the other, the real person deep down inside, is something that we would keep in us as long as possible. We could never judge someone based on what we see and what we hear; there are things that we don’t see and don’t hear, things that are still part of the single being.

I am fortunate that I got the chance to see other sides of this person, the person who till date remains notorious in the minds of many.

It may not seem like it, but he is smart, in fact, he is intelligent. Being in the course that only those with single digits could get in prove something one way or another. He is knowledgeable and would only share if you were to ask. Yet, his brainless entices are the ones which no human of the right mind would carry out.

He is afraid of the dark. Unbelievable, but true. He created an account which puts his fear into something which many, including me, could relate to and it has become an outlet that we could use to joke about our fear. I will give him credit for being able to turn things around, and to look fear in the eyes.

You may laugh, but he is honest and will justify his actions (well, at least most of it). You could ask him things about his life as a delinquent, from things like smoking, drugs and gangsters; he would share things with you. I remembered him telling me that though he likes to smoke, he can’t stand the smell of other smokers. He is actually very self-conscious and would ask if there was any smoke smell on him after he smokes. He would explain whole-heartily, about how if he were to dress up his best in his most “zhai” clothes and hang out in someone else’s turf, the other party would still know. He shared some trademark symbols and tell-tale sign of gangs, one which I would not disclose.

Right up till now, he is the only one that made me cry and comforted me all at the same time. Like most guys, he is helpless when a girl cries. I would not tell you what happened, but I would tell you that I wasn’t crying on purpose and that what he said during that time that made me cry made sense to me, even now. He has taught me things, some of which i would never admit. Though he didn’t provide any solutions or what-so-ever, he rebuked my options which I wished to carry out then, and because of him, I chose not to carry them out. Perhaps I would never know if the path I didn’t chose would lead me to somewhere better or not, but I am glad that the path I took has brought me here today. Perhaps i have grown stronger, maybe even braver than before.

There was this once, when we ordered fast-food delivery at 4am in school. After payment was made and the delivery man was gone, we found out that there wasn’t any cutlery and straws for our breakfast meal. He called the outlet up and made some complains. And guess what; the delivery man came back with another 7 sets of breakfast meals with the cutlery and straws. We ate 14 sets of meal but paid for only 7. Thinking back, it was quite naughty of us, but I can’t deny that it was fun. At that time, I even helped him sew a red heart on his bag, the type of bag that looked like a rabbit-little creature, i could remember his was brown in colour. He just said he wanted a heart on it (I forgot the name he gave to his bag), and I am glad that I could do it for him.

He is influential. There are those that would like to be with him and those that would like to be him. People would follow him. The fun side of him brings people together and I guess that is what they like about him. His jokes, his creativity, his stunts, his “patterns’. I think no one would ever be able replace him and what he did, not in the hearts of those who feared him, not in the hearts of those who loathed him and definitely not in the hearts of those that admired and loved him.

There is this other side in everyone which many of us forget. That is everyone is someone else’s child. His dad adores him and trusted him, a lot. There was once when I overheard them making a conversation. Strange as it may seems, it was like any other parent-child conversation. “Have you eaten?” “What time are you coming home today?”

Perhaps even all that I have said, it wasn’t enough to change his image in your mind and I couldn’t care less. No one could change what he has done in the past but we can start thinking of what were the thoughts and motivation behind every action he made. Was it to seek attention? To cover his short-comings? To put a brave front?

It is true that you are what you want others to see you as. But there are still too many questions without an answer. And it seems like the real answers would remain as a mystery and lived only as our individual opinions.