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Your First Real Automobile

If you haven’t already read my friends’ accounts of their firsts, here are the links:

Melody Chen tells of her first bungy jump. It would already have been memorable before even considering the fact she is terribly acrophobic, and that her first jump was filmed for a reality tv show, later broadcast to homes across the region. Actually, it was her blood curdling screams that most people remember Mel’s first jump for.

Randall Tan’s first pair of football boots – the magical pair that kicks the ball further, curls it into the imaginary net behind the keeper guarding the goal made from a pair of slippers, which were worn before we got our boots. Every kid in the 80s knows how it was like playing soccer in our slippers – if you could kiap your slippers while taking a free kick, you could do anything.

What firsts jog your memory? Have a think and check back here, maybe after checking out the Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TSI – released this weekend, and hopefully becoming several people’s memorable first cars.

You Never Forget Your First

The thing about being first time parents that always tugs at the heartstrings is the number of firsts you experience in a short span of time. I remember vividly the first time I mistook another person’s baby for ours, tapping at the nursery window in the hospital, promising to be the best dad ever, vowing to be a better person for five whole minutes before the maternity ward staff nurse wheeled out another bassinet with our actual son who was crying his lungs out because he was hungry.

I must have looked quite daft as I wheeled him to my wife’s hospital room, all my steely eyed, firm jawed conviction evaporated, and all I could think of was the hint of a smirk on the staff nurse’s smile.

It has come in quick succession, our son’s first solid meal, the first word (“Dog”), first unaided steps, first Halloween, first Christmas, first New Year’s, first birthday, first flight, first unaided kick-scooter ride, first ski lesson (followed by nine mountain ski descents), first first nursery class, first school bus ride, the first time he said a rude word because he heard one of the songs Papa wrote for work (Kow Peh Kow Bu).

It’s all a blur, but somehow, each one’s as memorable as the other. There’s been the anticipation, excitement, joy and pride, over and over again in the last three years and a bit, and we’re looking forward to the first skateboard ride, even though that’s a little way away while we look for a board that’s small enough for him.