The world of fashion is an exclusive circle. Designers swathe themselves in the elite, the sophisticated, the glamorous, the youthful. They certainly would not hang out with my primary school mates and me.
In my primary school days, I remember how bedecked with stickers our pencil boxes were. Our pencil boxes had a menagerie of Country Flags animated with Cartoon Holograms crashed into Angled Pics of Ferraris and Porsches and kicked into Action Shots of Football Stars. They were not mere rectangular metal objects to keep stationery in, they were easels to work our collages on, our sleek models parading the latest in haute couture. We eagerly awaited the arrival of new collections of stickers at the school's stationery shop. And once the word was out, there would be a long line of students during recess time, gleefully awaiting new materials to work with.
Then, the introduction of the aerosol spray sent shockwaves through our world of pencil box decoration. A revolution. A whole new way of dressing and living our pencil boxes up. I tore away the stickers leaving a wounded red rusty layer, eager to use this new material. The funniest thing was, no one used solid colours. We were all aspiring Versaces with gaudiness and tackiness being the epitome of taste. And as the sun shone in the classroom, the metallic boxes glimmered on our desks, while reflecting the light unto the ceiling and the walls making the classroom look like a disco filled with underage patrons.
Of course, the metallic shine of our pencil boxes which so glittered our eyes began to fade, and so did our interest. By the time we got into secondary school, everyone had pretty much dumped the fad already. Secondary school pencil boxes were all generic types, compass sets boxes, boring monolithic beings. And if the owner did 'upload' anything on to it, it would probably be just scribbles of a phone number or some homework to do. I do not even use a pencil box now. Pen and ruler chucked alongside lecture notes in a rush for early morning classes.
The aerosol spray probably did our designing interest in. It was the final material used for decorating pencil boxes. No one could possibly revert to stickers after using aerosol. I did not know it then, but when I sprayed over my pencil box's stickered past, I was in a way dividing two epochs, the pre-stickered and post-stickered, I was growing older.