There is no hope

I was sit­ting down at Wham­poa mar­ket wait­ing for my chye tow kuay to be ready, and next to me was this gan­gly, pim­ply teenage fella sit­ting across from who I assume to be his mother, who was stack­ing up hers and her son’s empty bowls and chop­sticks because they’d just fin­ished her lunch and it seemed the right thing for her to do, because it’d make it eas­ier for the hawker cen­tre cleaner dude/lady to clean up.

So it was really not very nice of her son, the gan­gly, pim­ply teenage fella with the annoy­ing gan­gly, pim­ply teenage fella voice — you know, when they’re 17 they still sound as if their voice just broke — to tell her off, say­ing, “you help them clean up for what? Leave it lah! Go restau­rant also like that, come here also like that!”

The mother must have been a lit­tle taken aback, because I think ordi­nar­ily, she, like all good moth­ers every­where, would have given the fella two tight slaps and a smack on the top of his head with the chop­sticks held together in her fist.

Shame!