"Wake up, Michael," Mama Stone said, switching off the ceiling fan.
"I don't wanna go kindergartennnnn..." Little Mikey moaned crankily, still half asleep.
Mama Stone never knew what to think. She had a four-year-old who thought he was Superboy. (Although that hasn't changed, now that he's 25)
But then again, she was not the kind of mother who sat at her child's bedside and gently patted the kid until he woke up, either. She knew that no kid - not even Superboy - could remain sleepy for very long when the room temperature starts going up.
And because Little Mikey was too short to reach the freakin' fan switch, he had no choice but to drag himself out of bed.
"Hey, don't make a fuss," Mama Stone said "Today is Friday already,"
"Jumaat?" his eyes widened. Little Mikey was just learning the days of the week, but he knew Friday was the most awesome one. Just ask Rebecca Black.
But unlike Ms Black, Little Mikey didn't have to make his mind up about which seat to take on the ride to school. There was only one seat for him - the motorcycle basket.
Papa Stone lifted him out of the basket and set him down on the pavement in front of the corner lot house/kindergarten/torture chamber.
He then licked his thumb and proceeded to smoothen the thick layer of Cuticura on Little Mikey's face as the kid squirmed to get away. For some reason, Mama Stone thought that sending an Indian boy to school looking like a Chinese ghost would make him more attractive.
Little Mikey stood at the front gate of Pets Kindergarten, looking up the brick walkway. It seemed like a mile long. And at the doorstep where it ended stood Mrs Chong, looking over her glasses with her arms crossed.
If there's one thing Little Mikey hated more than the name of his kindergarten, it was the principal. Papa Stone joked that all the kids who went to Pets Kindergarten were Mrs Chong's pets. I wouldn't be surprised - she sure treated them like little animals.
In all fairness though, kids back then weren't very bright, either. We were wildly amused by singing chipmunks and crime fighting turtles. Our little minds would have imploded at the idea of a boy turning into ten different alien superheroes. A sponge living in a pineapple under the sea would have given us epileptic fits.
Little Mikey's favourite part of kindergarten was recess. It not only meant half the school day was done with, it also meant time out of the classroom.
"Come, Mike," Palminder Kaur said, "We play masak-masak. Today I cook special curry."
Little Palminder was anything but little. She was a foot taller than Little Mikey and weighed twice as much as he did. Her idea of masak-masak was pounding a lump of flower petals and grass on the cement lawn until it turned into paste. The game usually ended with Little Mikey having to eat said paste.
Not that bread and Planta was much of an improvement, either. Little Mikey envied his friends who brought KoKo Crunch to school in their little plastic tupperwears. The little bastards would offer you one miserable flake to give you a taste of what you're missing.
Sometimes Mike and I wonder what happened to the old KoKo Crunch mascot. Back then it was not a yellow koala, it was a creepy looking windmill. It must have gone to a hell for dead brands, together with KLIM milk and Granny's fast food outlets.
Anyway, the school day was far from over. There was still the activity session. Little Mikey hated the Activity Book with every fiber of his being. The book was full of tiny pictures which you had to colour, cut and glue (in that order - because Little Mikey learned the hard way time and time again, if you try the sequence any other way you're fucked).
What sucked was the Acme glue. The made-in-China stuff came in a little plastic jar with a white cover and a white plastic paddle the size of a mouse's penis. The paddle was so small, it either went missing or got lost inside the jar. Eventually Little Mikey ended up with his fingers inside the jar and glue all over his Activity book and his shorts.
Acme glue on your shorts wasn't so bad. Acme glue between the pages, however, made them stick together and made Mrs Chong one menopausal monster. The glue eventually got phased out. It was toxic and making the kids stupid or something, I can't remember.
At the end of each day, Mama and Papa Stone would pick Little Mikey up from his grandparent's house and take him home.
"How come the moon in the sky following us?" Little Mikey asked from behind drowsy eyes.
Kindergarten had been a bitch and Little Mikey was glad he didn't have to endure it anymore tomorrow. Cars on the KL streets zoomed in every direction, but the celestial bodies up above appeared to be moving along with Papa Stone's Honda Kapchai.
Before Papa Stone can think up an explaination to give the four-year-old sitting in his motorcycle basket, the boy was fast asleep.
The next morning, Little Mikey awoke as he felt beads of sweat forming on his back. Someone had turned off the fan.
"Wake up, Michael," Mama Stone said. "Don't make a fuss. Today is Friday already,"
