Habits die hard.

When I was driving my car, a Toyota Corolla, the car which I had for about thirty years, I used my right hand to flick on the turning indication lights while I flick on the windscreen wipers with my left hand. There were only four gears with the fourth gear pulled to the back. I had always been fast as everything could be performed without any thought on it.

However, at the beginning of this year, I scrapped my old car to receive RM5,000 for it. If I had sold the old car, it would have fetched me very much less than a thousand ringgit. The condition for the five thousand ringgit in return for the scrapped car was that I bought a locally made car. So, I got myself a Proton Saga.

With the Proton Saga, whenever I wanted to signal to turn either left or right, I use my right hand to flick a lever and discover that the windscreen wipers started wiping under the hot sun. Oh, no! I should be using my left hand to flick the lever on that side for the signals. It was just the opposite of what I had for my old car. I found that it was difficult to change the habit of right hand for signals and left hand for wipers. Thus, I had to think before I act each time. Certainly, the action is slower. Every now and then, the hands, or is it the mind, would move the wrong lever and I would realise habits are hard to change. Once, I almost put my gear into reverse while moving as my mind automatically instruct my hand to pull the manual gear lever towards me which could be the exact action for the highest, the fourth, gear in the old car.

Yes, habits are established automatic actions that are difficult to change. Even if there is change, the change would take a long time. That is an undeniable fact.

With that understanding, we ought to realise that our children must never cultivate bad habits as once those habits had been inculcated in the child, there is so much problem for anyone to help that child change for the better.

Some of the habits can be an embarrassment to a person or a source of merriment to others. Those who study people and their mannerisms will find people interesting in many ways. There was one teacher who liked to wipe his sweat on his sleeves, causing those sleeves to be smelly and dirty by midday. There was even one teacher who would put up his legs every so often onto the table where the students could report whether he was wearing any socks. Once the student caused us to laugh by pointing out that the teacher concerned was wearing not only two totally different socks as could be seen from the designs but one of the socks was so dirty, possibly very smelly too (The boy who indicated the socks held his nose tightly closed as he cheekily pointed out the sock.), and it had such a big hole in it.

One young lady teacher with a beautiful figure had the habit of sitting onto the table top where all of us could have an eyeful of her beautiful legs and more. Perhaps, that was not just a habit but one of those clever ways of exposing ones' jewels without appearing to do so and secretly enjoying the admiring glances that move towards that direction.

Actually, writing about habits have lead me back to those good old days when there was so much fun in those wholesome mischief that we had. Of course, we did all that as we were just as curious as any teenager eager to know and to learn what made the opposite sex tick. It was good wholesome fun as we were innocent then, unlike the rascals of the present day (Perhaps,I judge them too harshly for they must be just as curious as I was and still am.) and we did not think anything more than what we appreciated. As for having fun at the expense of others, so long as the person we had fun on did not realise it, there was no harm done. We just had our smiles, our laughter and our jokes and those things drove whatever gloom there was away. For that short time, happiness was ours to have.