Sticks and Stones

When I was in my early teens, there was this guy (let us call him Jamal) in our neighbourhood that liked me. He was in a boarding school while I was in day school. There was a time he came home from school for holiday and bought me packed rice, perfume and a card. I appreciated it and he went back to school.

A month later, my siblings and I were having home lesson after the daily school session. My brother came and said that Jamal came home and asked a neighbour of mine to give me something. I asked how Jamal could come home and not make an effort to see me but my brother responded saying it was impromptu and he had to go back immediately. I accepted the package, in it contained what looked like another packed food and a wrapped gift. I decided to open the package after my lesson, but my brother kept insisting that I should open it right then in front of everyone because he was hungry, he even asked my lesson teacher to support his plea. He, my lesson teacher and my sister kept asking me to open it so I finally succumbed to their pleas. I opened the aluminium foil packed food first, what did I see? Sticks, stones and broken pieces of glass. The neatly wrapped pack was just a dirty, empty bottle. I took a glance at my brother, who was laughing loud and hard by now and just shook my head. I looked at my lesson teacher, his laughter was enough evidence that he had been in on the plans.

I was just thinking about my days as a child and remembered this funny incident so I thought to share it.