The Day I Felt Completed As A Girl

It wasn’t until my nineteenth birthday when I first got my own soft-toy.

As a child I was more interested in joining my youngest uncle, Pak Su (who’s only 2 years older than me) and my younger brother playing combat, football, “baling selipar” or other games that were usually favoured by boys. I could recall fond memories of climbing up trees, proudly holding my ‘senapang’ (a wooden piece carved to resemble a rifle) and shouting directions and warnings to other teammates on the field as a football goalkeeper.

As I grew older, I was happier challenging my male classmates in bottle-caps games than playing “batu seremban” with the girls. During recess time, I would rather joined the long queue of hopefuls – mostly boys - trying out to be the ‘king’ at any one of the four ping-pong tables than joining my female classmates playing with skipping ropes weaved from rubber bands. Oh, by the by - nobody had ever heard of Playstation at that time...

I was a brash tomboy. I grew up with my Pak Su, my one-year-younger brother and their friends as my pals. I remember one boy named Ajim being my closest buddy when I entered school – he was also Pak Su’s best buddy. I can’t remember any girl being my ‘best friend’ until I was ten. And it wasn’t until I was eleven when I finally got my first female cousin.

As a young girl, I had never been interested in Barbie dolls, Care Bears, Cabbage Patch kids and all that. As a ten-to-twelve year old, while my girlfriends were busy experimenting with their moms’ make-up and collecting accessories, I was more interested in saving up my pocket money to buy a transformable Transformers action figure or a Hardy Boys book.

However, I was sent to a residential school when I entered my teen and I started to learn to behave more like a ‘proper’ girl. It wasn’t difficult to adapt – after all, by then, the girls had stopped playing with rubber-bands-weaved-skipping-ropes and no one was allowed to bring make up or wear jewelleries in the hostel. Yet I could still play ping-pong whenever I pleased. And since I was happy to run about and shout in the field, I took up hockey, often put in the defence position.

As a teenager, my love for books and all kind of reading materials grew tremendously – I did not stop reading Hardy Boys immediately, but I discovered more adult writers as I started to read books by Sidney Sheldon, VC Andrews, Jeffrey Archer… err, and Mills-and-Boons novels too (*grinning sheepishly*). In addition, I had friends who similarly enjoyed reading Artakusiad saga books – a series of fantasy adventure fictions by Ahmad Patria Abdullah, probably best described as “Lord of the Rings”-meet-“Dungeons and Dragons”. And I could also discuss the strength and weaknesses of Hizairi Othman’s writings with other ‘Dewan Siswa’ fans.

Since many other girls also loved reading, it helped in making me felt like I fit in. As time passed by, I became more and more influenced by other girls around me. Instead of buddies, boys were more often seen as ‘enemies’ – with exception of those my friends and I had a crush on, of course. Somehow or other, I changed and slowly morphed to a ‘girl’

Of course, some traits remained. I had never been – and still not – really interested in jewelleries and accessories. I had never care much for spending small fortunes on make-up. In fact, my brother spends more for his facial care regime than my cleanser-toner-moisturiser set.

But changes were inevitable. I learned to talk in a more polite tone, learned to be less aggressive and cheeky, learned to behave more like most girls. And sometime along the way, like many other girls, I fell in love with soft toys. Those cuddly fuzzy soft teddy bears or cute fluffy bunnies.

I had missed on them as a kid since my father stopped buying me dolls when he discovered that I was eager to learn about their mechanisms – disbanding all the removable parts, thus ‘mutilating’ the poor dolls in the process. I supposed such experiences taught and warned my father against buying bigger, more-expensive soft toys. Therefore, I never had any soft toy as a child.

Still, as a teenager, I was too proud and a bit abashed to go and buy my own soft toy. Thus, it wasn’t until my nineteenth birthday neared when I dropped huge hints to friends and colleagues that I was wishing for a teddy bear I could call my own.

I was confident that I would at least got one of those cute comforting nice-to-hug soft toy. By this time I was already in college, and I got along well with most girls, losing traces and traits of the tomboy I was once.

When my long-awaited birthday arrived, my wish was granted.
I got my first – second and third – soft toys all on my nineteenth birthday. There was the white-and-green teddy I named Ah Cheng, a purple-and-gray cuddly koala I called Kiki, and an almost-real-life-looking brown rabbit I named Gambit.

Receiving soft toys for the first time in my life almost brought tears to my eyes. Hugging them, cuddling them, squeezing them - it was almost like I could not get enough of the beautiful, adorable toys. My own teddy bear! My own hunny bunny! I felt so blessed and loved as I thanked each and every understanding and supportive friends who bought them for me. At long last - after all the changes I'd gone through - I felt completed as a girl.

My collection of soft toys had since grew - to date I have more than a dozen soft toys stored in my room, mostly received as gifts. Still, it all started on my 19th birthday. The day I was on the verge of being a young woman was also the day I felt completed as a girl.