A Can of a Tale

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Over the weekend Nazzim asked me to do something for him.

“Papa, next time when you have a canned drink, could you save the can and bring it home?”

“Sure, why not? But why?”, I said, thinking that he might need some soda cans for a school project or homework.

The answer was not what I expected. It seemed that last week, while walking home from school with his one of his good friends, they come upon an empty soft drink can which his friend then picked up.

Not knowing what his friend intended to do with it, he told his friend to throw it at something, because that was what he’d probably do with an empty soft drink can. You know how kids are, they’d throw stones, anything, at a target, let it be a tree, a lamp post or the unlucky neighbourhood cat…… The cat part is a joke, I have never thrown anything that could hurt a cat, nothing other than water balloons or balled-up piece of paper that might scare the remaining lives out of a cat but nothing that would hurt the animal. And I am pretty sure that Nazzim would not do that either.

“Balinglah tin tu…”, Nazzim said.

“Tak, saya nak jual tin ni. Dapat duit”, his friend said. This was his friend who comes from a family of ten or eleven children and we’d hear once in a while how he’d be short of money for normal expenses.

Nazzim wants to give all soft drink cans that he could get his hands on to his friend so that his friend could sell them and get some money. I must have done something right with that son of mine.

Anyone’s got any empty soft drink can to give away?

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