Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Arroz, Huevo, y Picadillo" by Robert Arellano

It’s so nice being young! You feel so free, so happy, so sure life will go on forever. It’s so sad to find out that youth lasts so little…

Well, I was very young at the time, seven years old, and it was my first formal contact with education. True, I had gone to kindergarten, but that was more like playing. Now I was attending classes in an imposing building downtown where the Jesuits had their elementary school.

Now I carried books around and even a notebook where I scribbled important things. I brought the school home with me, for I had homework to do.

Not only school came home with me but also a schoolmate now and then. My mother had encouraged me to bring home for lunch one of my new friends whenever I wanted, so I brought home my best friend, a kid I had known for almost two months.

He seemed to enjoy it, so a few weeks later I asked him to come for lunch again. After the dinner he said to me:
“This is quite a coincidence, last time I was here we had arroz, huevos, picadillo, harina y papas, and today we had arroz, huevo, picadillo, harina y…”
“Coincidence?” I interrupted. “We have that every day for lunch, doesn’t everybody have the same thing for lunch every day?”

No comments:

Post a Comment