I haven’t wrote a fictional, lighter piece in a while so I thought I’d put together this short narrative. Like many stories there are elements of my own life embedded into it. I am also sure many of you can relate to some of the streams of written thought I go on. I’ve made a commitment to myself to do more non-fiction writing in 2019 so here’s a quick one!
I stared at him across the room. Timmy. My part time friend and part time enemy “frienemy.”
Like always he was the centre of attention. Table packed with the most attractive girls from our class, the guys from the hockey team, and today a few young admirers I recognized from last night’s big game.
I did not have the luxury of such a fan base.
Like every other noon o’clock it was my daily period of solitude.
Today my friend Chen was sick – that or his parents took him back to China again. The rumour going around was that all us had the Asian flu. Including me, who I note never ever had stepped a single foot in the motherland, Asia.
It usually would just be us two – talking about, well mostly it was a silent Buddhistic ritual. His mom was a good cook – I would ask him what he was having. It usually looked and smelled better than mine. That and he had the triple layer thermos that neatly separated his rice, meat, and vegetable dishes. My own dented thermos carried a mystery mix or yesterday’s leftovers and some hidden surprises my pops whipped up at 7am. He was up early every day to make our lunches.
It wasn’t that I hated Timmy. If this was PE (Phys Ed) class we’d still share occasional laughs but half the time he may have been laughing at me. See I wasn’t the fittest boy in class. While rap fashion was in and I was of above average weight, the extra large hoodies and pants didn’t help. They were off the discount rank and I didn’t know better. The colours usually a mix of vibrant yellow, orange, and white accentuating how out of shape I was. The gym was a foreign place of growth stinting potential – one of the many places and spaces, the rules dictated I was forbidden to visit.
Timmy went into his brown paper bag and pulled out his sandwich. It looked like Black Forest Ham. I never much liked sandwiches but I was jealous of the neat tinfoil wrapping. His lunch was a series of hidden surprises. Sometimes he would gift a piece to his favourite admirer, who would woo and give him a peck on the check or one of those deep hugs that I desired – the hugs the members of the hockey team would give to each other after a nice goal, or when greeted by their fans after the game. All I had were the handshakes of a good game after a tennis match – usually one I would also be excluded from, riding the pine (or the place behind the chained fence, as it usually was in our tennis games).
Exclusion was a natural concept for me in these years. Excluded from my culture, from Timmy’s culture, from the school culture. I took refuge in my own little world of written words and verses, of Tupac and Em, much to the chagrin of my deeply conservative-music classical music listening family.
Today Timmy took out a cylindrical round thing out of his bag. I could tell by it’s colour – green that it was gold to me. The bane of my existence. Everything I wanted. I had tried asking for it before. Mom’s would tell me – ‘why the heck would you eat that when you eat the actual thing itself?’ and ‘do you think we’re a white family? – it’s too expensive’
I craved the sweetness, the granular, smooth texture. To me it was finer than the fanciest cake (not that we had any options but the over dry, fake peach fruit cake of every birthday ever). Timmy opened it up, licking the lid, blissfully unaware that the three girls surrounding were watching the tip of his tongue with eyes wide of excitement as they were already engaged in second base. Whatever, second base was – for me it was just Roberto Alomar.
A white plastic spoon came out of his brown paper bag. I stared down at my own chopsticks, which in my lack of attention paid had turned into one chopstick and one game of pick-up sticks waiting on the floor.
Timmy was smiling, he blue at his bleached blonde hair – spoon caressing carefully the corners of the plastic cup.
This is a memory I always carry with me. I carried it years later when I was in a foreign land (where what Timmy was having was entirely foreign). One of my classmates at the time had her family from Mid-West USA deliver some packages of the stuff. It was so damn good, I went for thirds and skipped dessert.
But, more than that, it represented a jar of memories, a cup of perfection of a culture that I never could fit in but damn right wanted to. An object of affection to a soul that at material times both crave it and lacked it.
I want what Timmy has. To be honest I still want it today.
I want that damn Apple Sauce.
