Selective Amnesia

Selective Amnesia

By Joshua Sng Jianming

I don’t remember much about my childhood.

Psychologists say that this is a symptom of an insecure attachment style that is created by a childhood bereft of intimate and affectionate connection with one’s parents.

I guess it’s hard to form any connection at all when you spend the first six years of your life with your grandparents and parenting is relegated to a weekend obligation.

This is all I can remember: a steamed egg dish cooked in a small pale yellow enamel dish with mellow green accents that tasted of dark soya sauce and euphoria.

Late afternoons that stretched to dying evenings in Ang Mo Kio where I watched the then-unhindered skies fade to black from my perch on the tiled pelicans that roosted at HDB playgrounds once upon a time.

Afternoon naps on my Ah Ma and Ah Gong’s bed—the tiny National wall-mounted fan circulated warm, suffocating air around the linoleum-lined room, as my Ah Ma patted me gently on my hips in the most consistent rhythm.

Don’t get me wrong.

My childhood wasn’t bad. My Ah Ma and Ah Gong loved me and took good care of me. My uncles and aunts, my late father’s younger siblings, doted on me. They would take me to the cinema at Ang Mo Kio Central. A core memory of catching the live-action version of Masters of the Universe, starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, saviour and protector of the mystical land of Eternia, binds me to them forever.

But beyond that, I don’t remember much about my childhood.

I can’t remember it.

I’ve always assumed it was different for other people.

I imagine them in their immaculate living rooms surrounded by carefully curated photo albums, bound lovingly by hand. There are so many photographs, many of them yellowing and incomplete as some of the print on the photographic paper have become chemically bound to the plastic film that encased the photographs.

Mom and Dad and their two perfect children throw their heads back in laughter ever so often as they regale one another with yet another charming tale and anecdote from their past. Snowy, their powder-white Japanese Spitz, ambles cheerily into the living room and nestles within their laps.

Other people and their pristine lives.

I only have my amnesia as I peer beyond the glass into hipster cafes and bookstores before I’m rudely confronted by the reflection of the perpetually morose pseudo-teenager dwelling within the glass.