our season in the sun

This morning on my daily ritual while listening to the radio, I couldn't help smiling & simply laughing out loud (yes all by myself & people who caught a glimpse may have thought they saw a woo-hoo).

OF MOMOKS, BABUJI, TRAINS & PLANES
One of the deejays (PH) was talking about how yesterday he saw a parent trying to feed a kid with threatening remarks like "You better open your mouth now, wait the policeman will catch you". Then when the kid wised up & the adult realised that the threat didn't hold any water, she used PH and said insted "See, see the uncle will catch you if you don't eat" & the kid was crying while eating, out of fear more than anything else, I suppose.

Remember those ridiculous threats parents used to make just to get the kid to eat. I remember my mom telling my nephews "If you don't eat the babuji will catch you" & I swear the kids will tremble with fear. See, we had this tall big Punjabi neighbour, whom we wouldn't know if he was smiling or snarling under that thick curly moustache & beard of his (why are they called babuji anyway??). Besides the babuji, she had the whole arsenal of the sampah man, policeman & momok to terrify the poor kids into finishing their meals.

I remember getting my daughter to open the mouth with the 'here comes the train, where is the tunnel?' to eat her food. No, couldn't use the babuji, momok, sampah man or whatever man trick. And meals were always a sit down affair, no chasing her around the house like a mad woman with the bowl in hand (err, wait I might stand corrected on the 'mad woman' part).


OF BATU SEREMBAN, TENG-TENG & WHAT-HAVE-YOU
The topic then moved from the above to games they played while they were kids. And in a heartbeat, all those memories came flooding back. Then, we didn't have the vices of PSP, PlayStation, Astro & the Internet.

So we kept ourselves amused by playing using whatever we could find. Some games we played didn't have proper names so we'd just say "Jom main tiang" (get your mind out of the gutters - yes, tiang is pole but nowhere similiar or close to pole dancing). Let's see if I can recall the games I played when I was a kid (ahhh...seems like a lifetime ago)....

Batu seremban or 'five stones' (although in some cases, there were seven) - we started out using peebles or stones we found on the street. Of course the stones had to go through quality control lah, no sharp edges, must be able to fit the palm of our hand otherwise how to 'tangkap'. The more 'pompuan' ones among us would cut scraps of material, fill with mung beans or rice & make proper ones. We tried to but suffice to say our sewing skills leaves much to be desired so by the end of the game, chances are the rice or mung beans would have leaked out due to the huge gaps between the stitches. So we stuck to stones (and the mom screaming at us for stealing the rice / beans didn't help too).

Teng-teng or hopscoth - school started at 130 (afternoon session lah) but we would be in school at 1230. So early you say? Apa lagi, main teng-teng lah... Those were the days when you can jump from box one to box five as graceful as Nadia Comaneci & did the downward dog even before you knew what yoga was. Rain didn't stop us either, we'd draw on the floors using chalks (stolen from the classrooms of course, which also doubled up as shoe whitener when there was improptu spot-check) or if we wanted to practise at home, mom's boxed compact powder (with the picture of the porcelain skin chinese woman) worked. And yet again, she will scream... hmm, just realised mom used to scream at me to leave her things alone, a lot!!

Police & Thief or in certain parts of the country Police Sentry (the more atas ones would call it Cops & Robbers lah) - two groups, one police the other thief. Police catch thief, masuk dalam lokap but why ah, the thief always kena rescue one? I think it was just a reason for us to run around and scream our lungs out. Patutlah polis sekarang tak betul, thief asyik lepas lari jer.... To make it more interesting, we would have tembak-tembak sequence using pistol kayu. The boys would get the dads to make guns out of wood with a trigger mechanism using rubber-bands. Ammo? The berries we used to pluck from the trees. At that age, we would just call them cherries... the green unripe ones will be ammo for the pistols, the red ones we would pop into our mouth.

There were so many other games we used to play or if we got bored of the usual ones, we would make up new ones and called it whatever we liked. Duku lah (how on earth it got that name no one knows), tai chi (not like the exercise at all!!), marbles (I cried & begged my mom to buy them for me), cards (not the blackjack, poker or baccarat games but we would stack it high high & baling either with slipper or shoot with getah & the winner takes home the most cards. Bets would be how many card you were willing to put on the stack), chopping lah or poison ball (painful & dare not complain to mom if it hurt or got bruised. Silap haribulan, kena pelempang pulak), masak-masak, hide & seek, a-e-i-o-u...

Those were the days eh....we had joy, we had fun, those were our seasons in the sun. Excuse me while I reminisce & in between smile at those thoughts....