The Cold Back Then

These days aren’t like our days.  I mean the cold back then was damn biting - stinging right to the bone. I’d walk many kilometres to school, barefooted, limping all the way on frozen feet that I could hardly feel. Sometimes I’d bake a stone on wood fire, wrap a paper around it and clutch to it on my way to school. But the silly stone would be stone cold a few steps of my way. Besides, I couldn’t even hold it properly. I had only two hands and was expected to carry my Tastic Rice plastic school bag, a fire wood, a couple of bones (I hated the bones. They never told us what they did with them and I was grateful they didn’t cook them for us), sometimes empty beverage cans too (recycling, I learnt later. The buggers made money from that yet they didn’t acknowledge us for the free labour). Luckily the food plate could squeeze in between the books in the plastic bag. The plate had to come – or I’d sacrifice the bones and submit to a few lashes. But picture me – a petite and fragile boy with all this heavy load, walking through solid cold, sneezing occasionally, phlegm from my nose trickling over my mouth and all I could do was to blow it off. That was sturdy initiation. And when I tell you, today, that I’m a man, you better believe it.