Typhoon Roll
I am
four years old with thirty cents (a promotion! See the previous episode vol. 5) in my hand, feeling a little
older than the Homerun Bar time. I don’t have to be terrified of Grandma
Fumi’s arrogance either, because I am just waiting for my turn to purchase my
favorite bread. It is the Wednesday
Little Bakery in my school, not a general store in her neighborhood. My friend,
Hitomi, is standing before me in line.
She comes to school with two long braids every single day without any
exception. A nice straight line parts
her hair equally. Her hair smells of
grains of rice because her house is next to the rice grinder facility in
town. Though my nose is tempted to get
close to her head, it behaves itself. My
nose already knows it’s not a pleasant scent anyway. It’s a unique and irresistible scent,
however, my nose knows it will disappoint me if I actually inhale it in through
my nostrils. I try to distract myself by
holding my coins really tight, fighting against yet another temptation. Should I touch her hair? No, I have no intention of pulling her
beautiful braids. I just want to feel a
tiny amount of the short and soft baby hair at the bottom of her perfectly
straight hairline. Hitomi’s mom, for
some reason, cut some of her hair so that it was too short to be made into a
braid. I keep thinking, “It looks so
strange, but I wonder how it feels like.”
Suddenly, “What are you staring at?”
Miho says in a confronting behind me.
Hitomi turns around. “Well, n-n-nothing,”
I stutter. Both Hitomi and Miho stare at
me. I smile apologetically even though I
am not doing anything wrong. Can they
read the thinking bubble above my head?
Right
before my left hand is about to reach her neck, Hitomi swiftly leaves the line
with her bread. The fantasy crime is
officially out of my mind. My long awaited turn finally arrives. I am lighthearted and feeling lucky because Mighty Hard Bread (remember Donkey’s
Bakery?) is not available. Chipping my
teeth by eating bread sounds awful, especially at school. Donkey Sweet
‘n Soft bread is still my all-time favorite. But that is just a past luxury. I sadly and happily admit that a
school-bakery-truck doesn’t deliver any kind of bread that the Donkey Bakery would carry. “A cream sandwich please,” I decisively say
as I genuinely smile. Ms. Aoki smiles
back to me, but sympathetically addresses, “I am sorry, we have no more cream
sandwiches today. Wait until next
Wednesday. How about a Typhoon Roll?” That’s why I love Ms. Aoki. Not only is she the prettiest and most
thoughtful teacher in the whole galaxy, but she always knows how to solve my
problem.
A Typhoon Roll, which looks
like a real “eye of a typhoon”, could be an appropriate substitute and would
ease my disappointment from the lack of cream sandwiches. Its long flat square bread is rolled with
some white whipped cream between the swirled bread. On the top of bread, they spread a really
thin chocolate icing. I reluctantly, but
somewhat hopefully compromise to purchase a typhoon roll. While licking some white cream after unrolling
my Typhoon Roll, I still dream about the yellow custard in a cream
sandwich. It is almost as if both the
white whipped cream (real) and the yellow custard cream (the imaginative ingredient
from the cream sandwich that I dream of) are melted onto my tongue at
once. My imagination fills up my mouth with
more than what I actually eat. Miho asks
me, “Isn’t it good?” “Yes, it is more
than good.” Miho wonders why my
over-victorious smile is on my face. Wednesdays
are special days for Miho and me.
On some
Wednesdays, Pre-Kindergarten students are told to go home without shopping at
the little bakery. The dark condensation
hovers over the sky through the windows in this morning. They are about to drip some rain drops. Sigh….
A rainy day equals rain boots, a simple reason for why I feel blue. If only I had a choice of rain boots or
regular shoes. My stubborn and
unreasonable parents are single minded in many areas, particularly in
this. Technically, no flexibility has
existed in my family before. The family is exclusively dictated by parents. If you sneeze, you have to take some icky
tasting powder medicine and go straight to bed.
On the contrary, they never allow us to have pain killer pills for headaches.
Headache medicine contains bad
chemicals, according to them. For
stomachaches, suspicious black smelly herbal pills are the remedy. These fishy black pills are respected and
therefore approved because they have grown in the Buddhist Temple where famous
monks have trained. What an ordeal for a four year old child! Nobody ever comprehends my parents’ philosophy of the boots.
Accordingly,
when moist air fills in the air, kids need to wear rain boots. I have to admit,
though, that my rain boots are not the black ugly ones which my brother
wears. But my silly looking rain boots
humiliate me anyway when the sun comes back in the afternoon. My whole body gets crunched under the peer
pressure. Someone will talk behind my
back about how horrible I look like with my unreasonably stupid boots. Unlike my friends’ boots, there are no flowers,
stripes, or polka dots. The cancerous
point of my boots is that they are too tight on my feet. My mother is such a conservative
shopper. According to her, she is the
wisest consumer in the area, and never shops for new boots until they are
ripped. Being tight is not in her criteria
to shop for new boots. My school tennis shoes
are a little tight, but at least they are red and have my favorite princesses
on them. Just thinking about my boots makes
me nauseous.
No comments:
Post a Comment