Wednesday, January 4, 2012

A SELF EFFICIENT CHILD

           I believed that our childhood ends whenever you have to buy your own Jell-o.
                  Being a child is tough anywhere in the world, but specially in any latino countries, and mine was not an exception even today, whenever I tell this story, some people (specially woman) feel like they have to, or do cry. 
                 For this I have to go a little bit back in time, (just a little) to when I was 7 years old, at that age I was in second grade in the "Lidice" Elementary school and I was being raised by a single parent, my Father (Superman to me) whom always (whenever I was asking him for some money) told me "you have to learn how to work to earn your own money" or "the golondrinas will not going to feed you" and at the time when I was asking him to go with me somewhere, because it was to late, or to dark, or to far, he used to tell me "You have to learn how to do things on your own, not always I'm going to be with you" and I remember coming back to him with "of course you will always going to be here with me" unfortunately for me (as for everybody) time would teach me a lesson in that remark. 
                     I remember been very specific on whatever I wanted,  and whatever it was I was getting it, even if I had to work for it, and this has to do with me liking jell-o a lot, to the point that when my dad stopped giving me money to buy it, I went to the store, shop, or whatever it was, (I didn't care, I just wanted to make some money to buy my own jell-o) and I told the owner that I wanted to sell jell-o for him, and I have no idea why he'd agreed and there I was, with a big tray with at least 15 jel-lo pieces, (including some of my favorites) and that would take me a couple of hours to sell them, and later on there I was me a happy kid, eating my favorite jell-o that I bought with my very own earned money.
              Earning money to buy my own jello was not always easy, for example one day in an effort to sell all of my merchandise, as innocently as it may have seemed to me, I tripped and fell and logically my jello pieces(about 8) were all over the ground, but knowing that I could not lose that many pieces, I picked them up, washed the dirt off of them put them back in the tray and sold them all!.  
          Needless to say that some (if not all) people complained about it, saying that they felt like if dirt were on them, and I just said, "really? that's weird!, I don't know why, nobody had said nothing to me before" after that, I never bought jell-o from any of the kids on the street, Jell-o has fallen off from my new priority list, I still love jell-o, specially the cherry flavor, I guess is not because I'm not a child any longer, but because is not as exciting as it used to be.
                  I'll come back to all of you with more (no, no more jell-o stories), meanwhile stay safe, eat your vegetables, and you'll read me later alligator. over n' out.
                 

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