Growing up in Scarborough, I dodged my bullets in Asiancourt. It was a pun on Agincourt to reflect the fact that all the Chinese people in the world were emigrating from Hong Kong to my neighborhood. My elementary school gradually became Chinese school with grubby Chinese boys trading YES cards and getting detention for speaking Chinese in class. Being a CBC, I didn’t join them in their activities except for one; having a crush on this one Chinese girl.

She was in the grade ahead of mine and so I did not see a lot of her, but she was pretty and the one that everyone tried to get the attention of. One year, I lucked out by ending up in a split grade class with her. That was great; I saw her everyday and had ample opportunity to impress her by being the nerdy, know-it-all, teacher’s pet.

This was, in retrospect, not a good strategy. I wasn’t successful in winning her affections but neither was anyone else. She stuck to her girl-cliques as pre-teen girls usually do, and then went off to some exotic part of Toronto (North York) for high school. I never saw or talked to my first crush again (although I never really talked to her to begin with).

And then along came Facebook. Through several sketchy connections I found her profile (protected, unfortunately) through a wall post as well as some old photos from our elementary school days. I can’t squint enough to make out how she looks like now, but I am not impressed with my younger self’s tastes. Maybe this is a case of Big Fish or maybe it’s just growing up.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: best-of, chinese, facebook, growingup