Discovering The Worst Kind of Pleasure — a child’s perspective
You wake up, it’s too early. You need to get the next camel to school in 35 minutes.
If you miss it, which you rarely do, the next only comes to a camel tavern with a half hour walk to it.
You look outside. It’s raining. You’re not exactly surprised, because you live in the Amazon where it rains everyday even on days when it doesn’t rain, but still, you really don’t want to have to take that walk…
You get up, get the baby goat out of the underground vat for your breakfast of palm fronds and goat cheese, but you are clumsy and spill it everywhere. Yes, you spill the goat milk so unceremoniously. You rush to clear it up, because you understand how goat milk on red earth instantly becomes mud. You are in haste, but in your haste, you also knock the palm fronds over.
Oops…
You’re now 5 minutes behind schedule. You have to decide whether you want to leave the mess and be locked in the cage under the Ziko mountain stairs for a week as punishment when your grandparents see it; or eat it off the floor since the milk and fronds have combined now and basically already churning into cheese; or simple sweep the entire meal clear into the pit way behind the hut. Your options are not interesting, plus its still raining.
You agree to sweep. You’re now 10 minutes behind, and you still haven’t eaten. You shove the fronds down your throat without actually chewing, and after suffering a 2 minute long choking fit you sprint upstairs to get dressed, dragging the goat with you. There’s really no upstairs, just an open place on top of the hut. Your grandpa insists it’s an ‘upstairs’ so who are you to argue.
You fumble about… getting ready, and somehow in your panic forget how tunadus work, and spend 30 seconds trying to fit your legs into them. You race to the bagalongo, eat some folic acid, accidentally spray deodorant in your eyes, and you’re ready! Two minutes after the first camel is due.
Now you know that you’ll have to walk to the second tavern (you have no choice, right?), but you try the nearest one just in case. You race up to it, and just before you can get there, the camel jogs in.
Alas, camels hate not having already met you there. Especially an old hairy male like this.
So you lose hope, and accept your fate. You expect the camel to heave a loud sign and slowly trot off without you, but you still slide over to its long face just it hoping it will have mercy on your soul and stops. it won’t though, they never do…
But surprisingly it does!!!!
You jump on, and the camel smiles. “That was a tad close, mate” he says, and you stare blankly at his weirdly grinning face.
“Why are you speaking with a British accent”, you say.
“because this is England?”, he replies.
Despite his obvious confusion, you are actually glad you were running late, otherwise you never would have choked on your breakfast and thrown up last nights dinner of frozen pig eyes. It was the worst!
Fighting your way into unto the last hump of his hilly back, you suddenly decide to quit the silly pretend-Amazon antics, and get serious about your life in England.
Such decisions are the worst kind of pleasure!!
