Childhood

What are your childhood memories made of?

Mine are made of these: Bahay-bahayan in my neighbors’ yard, with the leaves and flowers we plucked from our mothers’ gardens serving as food and money; Chinese garter; hide and seek; siestas; climbing guava and mansanitas trees that inevitably led to climbing rooftops; jumping rope; swimming and painting lessons; handmade stationeries made from magazine cut-outs; baby dolls; bicycle rides.

And friends.

This is what Thai movie Fan Chan (My Girl) is all about.

Jove has long been recommending this movie, but I couldn’t find a DVD with English subtitles. Apparently, Thai movies are not packaged for an international audience yet so only a few of them have English subs, if you are lucky.

Now, I have waited so long for a copy with English subs and I am afraid it will not be happening any day soon, so when I saw a DVD copy of Fan Chan at the video shop the other day, I picked it up for my holiday viewing, nevermind if my Thai is still soooo poor.

I have earlier given my Ajaarn (Thai teacher) a copy of the movie and she enjoyed it because it brought her back to the '70s, where the movie is set. She added that the songs there were the songs of her generation that is why many Thais had flocked to see the movie to get a glimpse of that era where they grew up in.



Fan Chan is about childhood friends Jeab and Noinah, whose fathers are both barbers. They live in a three-door apartment building. Noinah’s family lives in the right unit while Jeab’s family lives in the left; their fathers’ barber shops are on the ground floor. In the middle apartment is an “uncle” who has a store and where the customers from the barber shops would often go to after getting a haircut. The fathers are not exactly friends, but the mothers are very close.

Though the fathers do not see eye-to-eye, they tolerate the presence of their respective children in their homes. Jeab always oversleeps and Noinah would often go up to his room to wake him up. But even a simple nudging wouldn’t do so she would end up resorting to jumping over him just to get him out of bed. And because he oversleeps, he always misses the schoolbus and it has become some sort of a ritual for his father to chase the bus in his motorcycle every morning. And each time, the bus would always stop by a road with a tree that bears yellow flowers, so Jeab could jump in.

Jeab is a thin little boy. Noinah is a cute girl who always wears her hair in a pair of braids. They are quite inseparable. They sit together on the bus and during breaktime in school, Jeab would end up in her company because the boys in his class – particularly this gang of five led by a fat bully – wouldn’t let him join in their games. Jeab would often look at the group longingly, but because they always exclude him, he ends up playing with Noinah and her friends.

This resulted in the boys teasing him for being gay. And the more that Jeab wanted to join them. His chance came one afternoon when the group was playing football with another group and was losing. They saw Jeab standing there longing to join them and they called him in to fill the gap. In no time, Jeab was scoring for the team, albeit quite accidentally, with his little, frail frame. He became the hero of that game paving the way for his unofficial entry into the group.

But Jeab still had Noinah and he still had to join her and her friends in their games. He also had to watch TV with her in their neighbor’s store and this made him miss another football match which his new friends lost. When he got to the football field by the beach, the game was over and the group was not really happy with him. The resident bully started to taunt him, which caused Jeab to throw a punch. He goes home with a red eye and swollen lips. The taunts continue in the bus and though they still sit together, Jeab was no longer keen on talking to Noinah.

One afternoon, Jeab went to see his new friends again. The group decided to initiate him if he really wanted to be their buddy. First, he had to ride the bike without his hands on the rail. Second, he had to jump from the top of a bridge naked. And lastly, he had to cut Noinah’s Chinese garter. He did the last one while Noinah was playing with her friends and she started to pounce on him. He pushed her roughly and she fell to the ground, tears in her eyes. That was the end of a summer and the end of their friendship too. Noinah’s family soon moved away and they never saw each other again. Until now.

The movie starts and ends with Jeab preparing to go to Noinah’s wedding. We see the grown-up Jeab, ironically with long ponytailed hair, but we never see the grown-up Noinah. We only see her back, dressed in a wedding gown, when Jeab arrives at the reception. But when she turns, it is still the young Noinah we see, just as Jeab will always see her in his memories.

Childhood friendships could teach us a lot about what friendship is all about. It’s doing things together, but also accepting that there are some things you cannot do together. It’s standing for each other in the face of bullies, even if it means ending up with a blackeye. It’s having fun together – whether it involves a scrape on the knee or running a kilometer just to chase after a loved one. It is naïve loyalty and devotion. It is giving and taking.

One of my favorite childhood memories involve a bicycle. My mother taught me how to ride it and one afternoon, my friends and I were biking up and down our street. At one point, one suggested I try riding without my hands on the rail. I had so much confidence and without any second thoughts, I raised my hands. And I headed directly for the ditch. God knows how many scrapes I suffered on the legs but good thing that my skin was young and healed well without leaving any trace. (But I do have an ugly colloid on my left knee from a race with my cousins; I tripped and fell on the lubak-lubak street. When I saw the deep gash on my knees, I was screaming for my mother. I could already see the bone. The whole street must have heard my wails that afternoon as my mother placed me on the kitchen sink and proceeded to wash my wound calmly.)

That bike took me many miles away from home on summer afternoons. Kahit kulang sa hangin yung pangalawang gulong, do you think that stopped me? We’d go from our village to the next, biking through marshlands and cogon, the afternoon sun beating down on us. We’d visit friends, eat ice candy and banana cue, play house and circle around the village before heading home; sometimes chased by dogs although we wisely avoided those streets notorious for rabid dogs. By the time I returned home, I was amoy araw. But I was happy.

Sometimes I wish I never grew up, that my only concern was to get home before my parents did. This was long before I started having crushes and all I had to deal then were the physical scrapes from the stumble-and-fall of childhood. Now, the scrapes are beyond physical and sometimes, they do not heal.

(In reviewing Fan Chan, please consider that some things may have been lost in translation as I could only deduce from the action and the few Thai words that I know.)