Halfway through my first year of grade school, it was time for the annual sports festival. It's something I used to look forward to.

I'm not built to be an athlete. In fact, I'm slim, and also very short. I'm first in a lot of things, and “in line” was surely one of them. Curse the school system for often arranging us by height.

Even now my friends tower over me.

As I'm on the smaller side, I am expected to be agile and nimble. Hence, my name is usually first on the team sheet for activities such as obstacle courses.

There was an obstacle relay this year, and I got listed down with minimal consent. All I heard was the class representative asking me if I had joined in any of the games. I said no.

It was time for the relay and I didn't disappoint, though it did require more effort jumping on tires. The same goes for the hurdles.

I breezed past the section with the cones, and went around the sole chair at the opposite end of the starting line. After the chair was a long sprint back.

The wind blew hard across my ears. I could hear the cheers of the crowd, but I couldn't actually understand what they were. My eyes could only see my team in the distance.

I wasn't even aware of my opposition; all I could think about was to run back as fast as I can. I made the tag to a teammate as soon as I reached the end, and let him have his turn.

I didn't feel a single bit tired after, but I sat on the open bleachers anyway. A classmate approached me, her name was Princess. I believe she was my first crush.

'You looked quick out there!' she claimed.

'Thanks,' I said while grabbing a cup of juice as a refresher. 'What sport did you join?'

'They made me join the Grape Relay.' A lack of enthusiasm on her reply.

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'Grape Relay?' I questioned. I didn't know there was another race besides the one I just did.

'See, you bite the end of the spoon like this,' she took a spoon from the ground and pretended to bite it, 'and you balance a grape at the end. Then, race!'

'Oh... so did yours fall off?' I joked with her. Princess, in return, showed an embarrassed smile.

'Yeah, it did. I stepped on it too!' She showed me the sole of her grape-stained shoe. A piece of grape skin still there.

'You could still eat that you know?'

'Gross! No!'

Princess was a singer, or maybe she still is. I haven't updated myself of her since ninth grade. She had a cute, bubbly voice, glossy black hair that touched her shoulder blades, and not exactly a chubby frame. I don't quite get it as well.

With the event slowly began to close, so did the energy of the students and the teachers. We were all tired from all the cheering. As the day wound down, the only things left to do were to either go home, or help clean up. Princess decided to go home, and so did I. We waved at each other goodbye before hopping on our respective school services.

Me and Princess usually talked during assemblies. Those occurred in the morning, before we enter our rooms. We lined up at the school gymnasium, alongside fellow afternoon class goers at various levels.

Princess usually arrives at around 10am, two hours ahead of schedule. Her trolley can usually be seen at the head of the line. I, on the other hand, had my fair share of being at the tail end.

I did have times where I took the first school service trip just to have more conversations with her. My service had three trips, I'm often at the second. Not too early, not too late.

Our topics circle around what shows and movies we've seen recently. Her favourite seemed to be “Wall-E”, I had seen the movie too. It's about a small compactor robot following around a floating iPod of some sort. We recreated a few scenes from there, and rave about how cute the tiny sweeper robot was.

If I wasn't talking to Princess, I'd be playing with the boys in class. A small group of us formed a game where we battle out using our hands. The index and middle finger served as the legs, and the thumb and ring finger were the arms. We called it “Super Finger Federation”.

It started with me and two other boys, one of them named Kerwin. We had our own characters with their own unique abilities. The “battle arenas” varied, from trolley handles to things like “floating platforms”, more commonly known as our left hand. Eventually, around half the boys in class started playing our silly game.