27 May 2009, 2:02 am
Yesterday my wife Phongsri, Bo Johnson, one of our current foreign volunteers from Brisbane, Australia and I were food and supply shopping in Big C Supercenter. We often shop there because of all the stores in Buriram city, the chance of finding what we are looking for is much greater there than in most other stores in the community.
Having selected all our necessary items for the day I went to the check out to pay for them. There sitting on a display table in front of the check-out stand number 11 were boxed cartons of the latest flavors in fruit and vegetable drinks. I immediately noticed the one marked "Mighty Spinach." Okay, for 69 baht I would take a chance to please Fil, one of our seventeen children at the Center.
Fil, at aged 10, thinks that he is the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailorman. Anything special Fil ever dreams to ask me for includes something to do either with Popeye or any product affiliated with this, the greatest cartoon hero ever known children around the globe. That means anything such as CDs, comic books, artpads, notebooks, jackets, t-shirts, socks, trousers, shorts, shoes, underwear, back packs, stickers or anything else that contains his logo or picture on it. Fil is small for a boy of his age. When I asked him if there was anything special he would like me to bring back for him from my month-long visit to Texas he cleared asked me for a can of spinach. In all the hubbub of my whirlwind fund raising efforts I failed miserably to purchase one. Such are the mental limitations imposed on us by nature for those who are over 60. I forgot. Plain and simple. That’s my only excuse.
Since we often have foreign visitors residing with us at the Center, I thought I would post a request on my facebook page, as well as in the orphanage website newsletter "Uptakes from TOLO." I even considered sending out a general appeal letter to our growing number of correspondents. Where there is a will there must be a way. I promised Fil I would make amends and so I have.
You have to understand where Fil is coming from on this matter. First off, he's a boy. Need I say more? Fil wants to be as strong as Popeye and do all the wonderful things Popeye does or did, like rescuing damsels in distress, helping cats down from the trees, locating missing items for Momma, keeping the bullies away and bringing a modicum of justice into the world. You know what I mean, the superhero kind of stuff. We have all been there at one time or another.
So without hesitating, even for a single moment, I bought the carton of juice and brought it home. As I picked up six of the younger children at Anubol school I told Fil I had a special surprise awaiting him at the house. His curiosity was at it highest level but I remained mum until we were inside the house.
When he got home I called him and the other children into the dining room-playroom area where I presented him with the carton of juice. He looked at it carefully and as soon as he recognized the word “spinach,” he opened it. He found a small glass and filled it with the elixir, raised his cup to his lips and drank some. The smile on his face was unbelievable. You just had to be there to see it for yourself.
Fil then called his younger, but much larger brother Sam to his side and offered him some of the magic potion. Sam drank a little, paused to savor its taste, then turned and informed everyone else in the room that tomorrow he would take some of this juice to school with him in his back pack. When I inquired as to why he had wanted to do so, Sam replied, "there is this sixth grader who beat me up last year. I am going to drink some and then I will hit him back!" "Oh," I said.
But then Fil said he wanted to bring some of the spinach juice with him to school as well. When I asked him who he had wanted to punch out, Fil answered, "nobody." He said that he only wanted to drink it to make him cleverer in school. Such is life on just about any day of the week at TOLO Buriram. I sure am glad to be back with the gang.
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