Flashbacks #0001

I was washing a fruit juice container when I recalled something about childhood.

The bottle was made of (almost) the same material as the milk bottles you see in supermarkets. I remember when I was young, I envy those kids whose refrigerators uses these milk bottles to store cold drinking water. The smell of milk that came out from a glass full of cold water from my friend's house fridge would somehow trigger excitement, even made me "high". Because it was something that I wanted to have, but never get.

You see, we couldn't afford to drink milk like the other kids during primary school. When I was schooling as a kid, the school, like most schools in Singapore, encouraged the parents of the children to order milk for their children (I suppose now that recall, the purpose was to build up the physiques of us younglings). Most of my classmates would happily pick up their packet of chocolate or strawberry flavour milk when they were delivered to our classes, and drink them during recess time, or bring them home after school.

(I remember during one of those years, the chocolate milk cartons were changed to the rectangular shaped as we see now, and featured the winning entries of a drawing competition. It's one of those scenes that are etched in my mind. Though it didn't mean anything significant, I remember that. Maybe I was wondering why didn't our teacher inform us of the competition.)

My mom would tell us (in an unapproving tone) that the dairy company is trying to get the money of parents by tricking their children to order milk monthly (well, I don't blame her. She only have a certain amount of money for the family then, when my father was a heavy gambler. She certainly will not let a monthly subscription take up a major part of the food money for the entire family, just for one person). And so, I had never order milk in school. I would look at my classmates packet of chocolate milk longingly. If I am lucky sometimes, one of them would say they wouldn't want to milk and gave their milk carton to me. I would be exhilerated, needless to say! :D Sometimes, I would pay for it. I wouldn't mind forking out 30 cents out of my 50 cents pocket money for a packet of chocolate milk.

Happiness = Priceless.

(I figured this would be the beginning of a series of adhoc writings of flashbacks from the past. Arh... The wonderful memories of childhood and years that have gone passed us.)

+Image of Pyramid Carton taken from Tetrapak website+