not because i can't resist but..u see..

I remembered that day when i stood still in the middle alley of a food junction in a supermart one day. I was eight or younger, innocently vivacious, indulgent yet an avid self-repressionist. I was simply looking around, again in my dazzle-me-world, replaying spice girls song over 10 times in my head and rendering that i was in a movie-clip or something.

It seemed like the song was suddenly 'hijacked' and a loud drum roll took over that instant when i saw this woman standing before me. She was a young lady draped in a long loose blue dress that reached down to both of her knees and fell smoothly along the contour of her balloon-shaped tummy. But obviously that wasn't the reason of my looking at her for a few long minutes. She was indeed the most normal-looking pregnant lady i assured you. My observing her came out as a by-product of what firstly caught my attention. Her hands was slackenly holding unto the metal handle pushing a trolley fully-loaded with snacks of different flavours and brands. I repeat..snacks....snacks..a trolley full of snacks.

I was convinved that i had long known this emotion called envy when i was younger. Played with it several times, gotten hurt and sometimes i regretted for letting it consumed me. But that instant, a full manifestation of it caught me off-guard. For the first time, i sensed the definition of envy was revealed at a whole-new level to my dear soul and i realized how jealous i was for...her snacks. I understood that envy wasn't necessary when one was in the right place at the right time. Exactly. I was in a supermart where snacks were abundant in supply and all i needed to do was to scoop some of these supplies from the long-stretched snack-shelves into my precious 'trolley' . As simple as that. But, it seemed that 'right place and right time' fell short in my scenario. I didn't have the right amount of money to buy neither the right size of pocket to hide them even if i could afford them. My parents forbid junks!!!

So i went home and thought of a plan and named it the 'snack-amassing program'. The goal was to collect as many snacks as i could (like savings) and consumed them later. The deal was, i couldn't buy them with my own money. Next, I needed to find a space where i could place my collection. To my luck,I found a pink bag that i used to carry to school. It was clean and smelled nice which i have no clue why. The last time i gave up bringing it to school was because it was no longer appealing to me and it had turned blackish.(somebody must have washed them...). Anyway, I thought it was perfect as my snack-bank. I placed it inside the drawer of my study table and called it my pink-snack-bank. (pink-sb)

Then, plenty of birthday invitations came and i knew they would give snacks as souveniers. I never missed a single party that season and my collection grew rapidly. Sometimes when grandma was nice, she would buy each of us a packet. My sisters and cousins would gulped them down within minutes. While i, well, i would keep them straight into my pink-sb.

My pink-sb soon bulged and it was getting harder to zip. It contained variety of brands and flavours now. But one day, grandma found my pink-sb…and its snacks account. She was shocked at the amount of snacks i had collected. She looked and inspected them for a while before saying, “ girl, the expiry date is next week..and some..today.”

Instantly i opened five packets, munched the contents from different packets simultaneously; mixing the already saturated flavour altogether. To be honest, they tasted un-freshed and weird even as my facial expression was putting its best facade of how scrumptious those snacks still were as i handed some of them to my snickering sisters. I was remotely embarassed. Felt pretty ridiculous at how fragile and un-clever the whole program was about.

That night i made a point to never repeat this naive act in my entire life. and since then, my snacks only last one day in its shelf.