Dear Chuupa Loaf,
We may have a problem with some slices of bread that were served to my four-year-old son.
One morning recently, after a successful night of making horrendously bad life decisions, I bought a loaf of bread for my four-year-old child.
He had repeatedly asked for bread, and like every other great parent, I had ignored him, telling him that man shall not live on bread alone and other things Jesus said, but the boy was as persistent as the hawkers who hawk water and biscuits at bus stations.
Bread served
After tearing open the bread wrapper of your popular range of toast, I quickly took out a bunch of slices, put them on a plate, and presented the bread-laden plate to my four-year-old son.
Just as I was about to shift my attention back to the dating website where I was trying to salvage my online relationship with Gift, I heard my son wail.
Side note: If you have no idea what a dating website is because you are happy, a dating website is a place where unhappy people go to get scammed.
Gift is a rich Senegalese national who lives in Switzerland. He is heir to a fortune his father left him and even though he has all the virtual properties of a con, I gave him my heart. It was love at first profile photo.
“U ARE BEUTIFUL PHOTO,” he had typed.
“Thanks, though I cannot take all the credit. I use photo filters.”
“I LV U FOREVA.”
He types in all-caps, and his excruciating spelling inspires me to suicide-bomb myself, or consume copious amounts of fermented grapes, but our love is stronger than my pet peeves.
However, our relationship - which is now an incredible one and a half days long - has become complicated because he assumes I am after his money.
He wants me to send him my bank account details so that he can transfer the fortune his father left him to my account.
In spite of my pre-existing condition called poverty, I keep assuring him that I do not want his money, followed by the lyrics to ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’ by Jennifer Lopez, or the lyrics to ‘Independent Women’ by Destiny’s Child.
My unwavering position on monetary independence is causing us to drift apart, and a break-up is looming.
Anyway, after presenting the plate of bread to my child, he wailed.
I am currently not in talking terms with my son because we have very different political opinions, which have been kindling a rift and festering animosity between us.
So, lately, I have been ignoring him as if he’s a Jehovah’s Witness.
I’ve been avoiding him as if he’s an STD. Even when he wails. Because as a typical toddler, he has wailed because his doughnut had a hole in it.
He wailed because his pilau had rice. And he wailed because his fried egg was fried.
Different wail
But this particular wail was different.
It was not the usual rebuttal to my views on the importance of peeing in a potty as opposed to peeing on a wall outside the house like a monster.
So I decided to check what was causing such distress to my foe.
Upon inquiry, the boy pointed to the slices of bread in the plate.
I looked.
The standard structure of a sliced loaf of bread is simple; both ends of the loaf should have one fat slice of bread, sandwiching a good number of identical, normal-sized slices.
The soft, doughy, spongy, white part seemed ordinary and the thin, crusty edges were adequately and deliciously brown.
Indeed, I was looking at slices of bread, and not slices of other things.
But something was wrong. Because the boy had flung himself down and bawled like a professional mourner, arms flailing, fists trembling, body rolling, screaming that he did not want the bread, shaking his head in disapproval. He did not want to see those slices of bread any more.
Chuupa Loaf, were those slices of bread home to the malicious spirit of anger and disturbance, meant to create such hysteria and malaise at 6am when the day had barely begun?
Unbiased probe
What is it that my son saw in those slices of bread that compelled him to fly into a fit of rage and confusion, and suddenly change his mind about the very bread he had persistently asked for, just a few seconds before it was laid before him?
Before concluding that he was just throwing a tantrum as usual, I would like a thorough, extensive and unbiased investigation done on those slices of bread, to determine whether they were the problem, or my son just needs a beating.
We settled for biscuits, with which he seemed okay, although not entirely satisfied.
I look forward to seeing the findings of your investigations.
Thank you.
[wankavengi@gmail.com]