Facebook and a memory

Memory is a strange thing...

"Years later, I found a request from a school friend on Facebook. Well, I can't really say friend because our conversation throughout the 12 years (assuming he too was in school right from J. Kg) was zilch. I knew him as one of the hundreds of other guys in school and that's about it. He hadn't changed much in all those years, just become taller, a plague all the boys of my school seemed to have been afflicted with as soon as they passed grade 10th. And like all Facebook friendship requests from "he was in my school/college but I don't remember him" go, I accepted it. But I as hovered there, over the 'add friend' button, it was just one memory that seemed to play in my head in loop. 4th grade. He would sit ahead of me and once, while the teacher was dictating something, I caught a glimpse of his handwriting. I don't know why but I kept staring. Maybe because he was left handed and I had been constantly told how "bad" being left handed was. I would often write with both hands as a kid and - this is perhaps the only thing I regret in life - I was forced to stick to writing with only my right hand as using the left was bad. But, I digress. I sat there, teacher's voice forgotten, staring at that loopy text. Blue gel ink on white paper. In my mind hours passed but it was merely seconds as I got back to my notes; the handwriting, the paper and the blue ink forgotten.

And yet, as I stared at that 'add friend' button, it was just the loopy handwriting I could see. Not the words but that moment. It played in my mind like someone had turned the rewind button of an old cassette player on and forgotten all about it. My first voyeuristic experience that seemed to me somehow wrong, innocent as it was. 16 years. 16 years and all the name conjured up was a memory of a left handed boy with a loopy handwriting."

Yes, memory is a strange thing.