How's this for a blast in the past

If you think this is chilling, then you would love this;

Someone who comes back to bite you in the ass after three weeks is shocking, but what do you do when a whole heap of pictures from your fifth grade years come rushing back to you and hitting you over in the head with a shovel?

Now let me tell you a little story about fifth grade;

That was the most awkward year I ever had in my life.

It was in that year that I realised that kids can be mean.

Too mean. Soul-destroyingly mean.

I was chubby fat. And it didn't help that I was in that awkward stage where I was growing out instead of growing up.

And mean kids started calling me Jumbo. Yes, as in the Jumbo Hotdog from Jollibee.

I got so depressed I begged Mum not to make me go back to school.

Of course she dismissed it.

Kids are mean because they like you, she said.

Umm... no mum, kids are mean because they are mean, I thought.

To make me feel better, she brought me to Australia for a few weeks to visit my cousin and to see Kangaroos hop around and Koalas get drunk - or high.. whatever.

When I got back, nothing changed.

Bumalik na si Jumbo, that's what they said to me when I got back.

At least it was already January and I only had two more months of the unapologetic mental tortures.

I was happy when the year was finished.

I couldn't even remember if I made any friends.

I managed to block that time out of my mind.

Some people say that High School could make or break your social aspirations but to me it was fifth grade.

I didn't even care if I made any friends at all, I just wanted the year to be finished.

But after more than ten years, all these photos of us back in fifth grade invaded multiply and I was shocked to see myself looking happy with a bunch of normal, not mean but happy kids.

I showed mum the photos and I told her that I was really surprised that I actually looked happy in the photos.

Maybe because you only focused on the Jumbo part, she said.

You forget that there are good memories in that year as well, she continued.

Maybe. Scratch that. She's right. I was angry and humiliated that I blocked it out of my mind.

Now I'm in contact with at least four people again. Trying to reconnect with them and to catch up.

Man, it feels good to do it. To bury the past.

I'm actually curious what happened to the bullies that made my life a living hell.

Eleven years is a long time.. but at the same time, I'll never forget the time they called me Jumbo, it made me what I am today.

And it feels good..