When I was young, I saw Cookie Monster eat a black telephone on TV. I envied him because the phone seemed so yummy and crunchy. And that envy led to emulation. Of course, I wasn't able to eat our phone in the living room. I hardly even made a dent on the receiver.
One of the basic learnngs I had before I was enroled in preschool was to memorize our home phone number and to use the telephone.
It was a must so that in case of emergency, I'd be able to call home from a lost location or answer the phone when everyone else was doing their adult thing.
One morning, just when my folks left for work (I don't remember seeing my older brothers around because maybe they left for school) and my nanny was in the kitchen, I opened the telephone director. I started reading from the back cover.
Alright. It wasn't really reading. I was looking at pictures because that's the only thing I appreciated. But I wasn't that ignorant because I could read numbers and recognized these on the telephone dial.
And then I saw this picture of a white horse. It was beautiful.
Without thinking much, I picked up the phone and started to dial.
I heard a lady at the other end.
LADY: Hello.
ME: Hello.
LADY: (Realizes she's talking to a kid; becomes cheerful) Oh. Hello. Anong kelangan mo?
ME: I want to order the kabayo.
LADY: O-order ka ng kabayo? Anong kulay gusto mo?
ME: Ahm... White.
LADY: White. Ilan?
ME: Ahm... isa.
LADY: Isang kabayo. Puti. Tama?
ME: Oo. Yung maganda ha? Parang sa picture.
LADY: A, oo! Maganda mga kabayo namin. O sige. Paki-intay na lang, ha?
ME: Okay.
LADY: Ba-bye.
ME: Bye.
I put down the phone and immediately kneeled on our couch and faced the window. I was excited. I was going to have my own real live horse.
And then the excitement faded and turned into nervousness when I realized that I didn't have any money. My folks would surely get angry because I just got myself into trouble.
I was silent the whole time and kept thoughts to myself. It was hard to think of a get-away plan when you're that young. When I saw that my nanny was still in the kitchen, I went outside and stood by the gate. I thought that maybe I could wait for the delivery to arrive and inform them that it was all a huge mistake. That being said, they would leave without placing myself in an undesirable situation both with my nanny and my folks.
But my nanny saw me outside the house and so she called out to me and told me to get back into the house. She ordered me to keep still on the couch, where she can see me while she defrosted the ref in the kitchen.
So I sat on the couch quietly and waited...waited...
An hour later, I told my nanny about it because I couldn't stand the stress.
I expected her to berate me but instead she laughed and said in her Visayan accent, "Hala! San natin ilalagay yung kabayo dito? Dun na lang sa kama mo. Tapos, ikaw sa sahig ka na matutulog."
Her tease sounded serious to me. I began seeing pictures of myself sleeping on the floor because I bought a silly white horse. And I wasn't happy anymore.
I waited for the horse to arrive the next day. When it didn't come, I was relieved. I knew it was over.
When I got older, I realized that the number I dialed belonged to a liquor store. The picture of the horse was an ad of White Horse Castle Whisky.
Lesson learned here is that, back then, they already disallowed selling alcohol to minors. But buying of horses is permissible.
Right.
* * *
kids should know that...
The idea of Cookie Monster setting a good example for children with respect to their eating habits is not new; it has been used since the 1970s with public service announcements and individual sketches. In fact, Sesame Workshop released a home video in 2000 called Happy Healthy Monsters, cookie monster was recently in rehab for his severe cookie addiction. he is often tranquilized for smuggling cookies into the rehab clinic. He tries to blame the whole thing on derrick because he was on the john. since his release he has been spotted in a stall in the ladies room trying to make his own cookies. (wikipedia)
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