the area slowly empties of people, like how smoke dissipates at the introduction of a light breeze. I tap my feet impatiently, arms folded, scanning the compound for any sight of her. To my dismay, it looks like she‘s already went home. I shrug mentally; it was 9:30, probably long past her curfew.
Seeing that I had nothing to lose (or better to do), I decide to step forward to move the boxloads of food off the table.
Prawn shells, cockle shells, egg shells all go into the styrofoam containers; the tablewrap is folded onto itself to form a makeshift garbage bag. Grimy muck comprising of prawn foam, egg yolk and various forms of half-eaten food drip onto my hands. I grimace at the foul sea-foody stench.
The seemingly herculean task (there were a good 10 tables in the area itself) was finished in a matter of minutes. Chairs, stacked haphazardly along the side, tables lay slimy and half-dismantled with bottles and plastic bags strewn about. The people who were cleaning were starting to leave. As I had passed my Threshold some time ago, I figure, why not stay and help even more?
Let me explain a bit. The Threshold is a certain limit where the feeling one feels increases exponentially as he approaches this limit. In this case, the limit was 10pm and I did not feel like staying back in school. However, once this limit is passed, this feeling vanishes completely.
Probably just me, I’m weird and I like it.
I mop the floor, pick up sodden ice-cream wrappers, rearrange class benches, pass balloons to Ms Tan to pop (she thinks they’re really therapeutic and it’s her birthday too), break ice and scatter them across the Central Plaza, all while shooting my mouth. I can’t explain why but I had a lot of fun, expending my energy on these so-called chores.
It was as if something had been taken off my chest and that I could breathe and laugh freely again.
Months back, I committed an extreme folly during the other Fac Outing. Was this some form of atonement? Was this random act of cleaning in place of not entering Faccomm?
Whichever the case, I had a lot of fun with my class.
The first time in a very, very long while.
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