The following year, you became my junior in school. School days were a time to look forward to because I was able to see you in the morning on the way to school, at the school assembly and during recess. Just to be able to see you made my day complete. Such was the attraction that grew in me.
You still did not join my group of friends and I was getting impatient. You hardly ever noticed me. If you did I never knew it. Being a go-getter by nature, I could not simply hang around and wait for you to make the first move. I had to do something to make it happen.
Then it did! It was during the fasting month of Ramadhan. There was this new bachelor teacher in school by the name of Syed Ahmad. My girlfriends and I thought he looked as if he was afraid of women. He was quite pleasant-looking but he had a serious aloofness about him. We rarely saw him talk to the other teachers, especially the lady teachers. My best friend Safar and I decided to play a practical joke on him. We thought we'd send him a Hari Raya card and scare him out of his wits, when he saw that the card came from on of the lady teachers; a single one at that. So I bought a Hari Raya card and started writing his name on the envelope. I began with 'Syed' but somehow something made me complete the name with 'Ibrahim' in lieu of 'Ahmad', followed by your house address. That card got sent to you instead. Luckily Safar accepted my explanation on having second thoughts about playing a prank on that poor unsuspecting teacher. I said something about it being an improper thing to do. I did not tell her that the card was on its way to you. I still remember the words I wrote in the card 'A happy and prosperous Hari Raya to you', without really knowing the meaning of the word 'prosperous'. It sounded so bombastic so I used it to impress you.
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