Age of Innocence and Breaking Free by Sam Loh

Today Yeo Sek Siong responded to my text message I sent to him a few days back. We had some message exchanges. I kept him informed of the Group's email and the dinner event. I will need to follow up on him again for his decision to join the dinner. He curiously asked me what the "B" in my name stands for -- Benjamin, bo-heng, botak??



I am more inclined to accept it as "botak" though "Bee" is the correct version by birth. I figure that if I am going to cruise over the 50-yish barometer it is probably acceptable to be botak; for some of you, you probably may have to live with whatever there is left (if any if left at all). I was telling Goh Wee Ser in one of our 1:1 emails that it is not that bad afterall. You lose some, and you win some ==> ooh my gosh, you now realized that you have a big forehead!



I was not born in government hospital but in a downtown clinic in Pontian.I was the fourth addition to the line of children (final count = 9). I was told my father could not find a suitable name for me. He ended up naming me Bee Heng, a name he took from a goldsmith shop that was overlooking on the other side of the clinic. For a while during my teenage years, I thought it was too girly a name because the Bee ("Mei") in chinese character means beautiful. For nearly 50 years now I live with this name and constantly reminding myself that I should be thankful that I was not named any others. I could have landed with Ah Beng or Ah Terr or Kar Chern (buttock). Probably will be poked at if named Loh Kar Chern as it will end up as "Bo Kar Chern". I can't imagine anyone born without Kar Chern.



But then, there were just too many other distractions then to be too concern with name thingy stuff --> keeping long hair was cool, parting it left or right was lagi chill, grease lightning hair cream kau kau was acceptable. I wanted to dress to kill in school but with the only one white color long pants that I have. Wearing jeans was rugged. Come to think of it, did anyone in Group happen not to return the bell-bottom Wrangler, Levis and AMCO jeans that we swapped to wear? I am still looking for it after 49 years. The "bell" may still work. Loud music and parties were the in-thing; gate-crash normal. Big was fanciful -- songs were recorded in Catridge before cassette came into the market.



It was an age of innocence breaking free era and how I miss all those years. We all sebok for different things when we wanted to break free. We may have to live with some of our live challenging decisions, consciously or unconsciously made then.