Whenever Alycia and Sherilyn pass remarks like “are we bringing bread to school AGAIN tomorrow?”, I will reply “YES!”.
“Strawberry jam/ kaya/peanut butter again??” and I will reply “YES!!”
“I am SO SICK of strawberry jam / kaya/peanut butter mummy!”
And my standard long reply would go…
“when I was your age, my mummy, your granny would only buy apricot and marmalade jam, because these are her favorite jams. And she would only buy the same brand of jam – IXL. For 11 years of my life, from Standard 1 through Form 5, I would have to eat the same type of bread (Sunshine brown bread) with the same type of jam early in the morning before going to school. Whether I liked it or not, I would have to force myself to swallow the dry Sunshine brown bread with just a few dabs of jam without a single complaint. Roy and Raymond kau fu too. And your granny would fix us a mug of really thick powdered milk with only 1/4 spoon of Milo to mask the strong taste of powdered plain milk. That tasted awful. But granny wanted us to go to school with a full stomach, so she made us really thick milk. We did not know what ‘choice’ was. We had no choice but to eat what koong koong could afford to buy and what my por por was able to prepare. So don’t complain!”
This brainwashing statement would always shut their mouths up as well as to get them to accept bread with jam in their lunch boxes ha ha!
And what I always tell my kids is all truth and nothing but the truth. My brothers and I had to ‘endure’ 11 years of our lives ‘ngai min pau’ (suffer with bread) every single morning with Sunshine brown bread (which was as dry as stale bread and as tasteless as sponge, I kid you not) and just a few dollops of apricot jam on the bread. Till today, I still loathe apricot jam. But looking back, it is with this kind of training and discipline from my strict and thrifty parents that help mould my brothers and me into thrifty and sensible individuals 🙂
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