How something you did when you were young can have a huge effect on your lives right now, translated…
“What is, Taiwanese steak?”, as my younger son picked up his fork, he’d watched the sizzling iron plate before him, and asked about the ad that’s posted outside.
I’d asked him, “What is the difference between the steaks we’d had at the hotels restaurants and here?”
“Mmmmmmmmmmm, the steaks here are served on an iron plate, instead of china, there’s an egg, and noodles served here too.”, he couldn’t wait, started cutting up the meat that’s served to him, he’d answered, in an unconcentrated way.
I’d nodded, “did you not notice, that the beef on the iron grill was drizzled with the mushroom black pepper sauce, instead of having those smaller plates of sea salt, rose salt, and charcoal salt, and the sides were the frozen corns, peas, and the carrots?”
on one side of the “scale”…
My younger son stopped answering, and just, kept at his food now. Seeing how he was, gulfing down his food, my thought drifted to before, how I was served steak when I was a child, at the night markets, that same sizzling iron grill, with the owner, grabbing the noodles from the side, scrambling an egg in, with the thinly sliced beef pieces, then, drizzled that thick sauce on top, it’d become, the best tasting food I’d ever had as a child.
As I’d started working, in order to make those business calls, I’d gone to an assortment of steak restaurant which had gained international fame. After I’d gone around the blocks, I’m no longer, untrained, and can surely tell, if the steaks are, any good, but, what haunted me the most was that accident I had, in relation to steak.
It was the start of summer, the year I was about to take my college entrance, on a Saturday when there was only half a day of class, my classmate who sat next to me went to the field to get some sun for photosynthesis, right underneath the coconut tree outside of class, she’d found a thousand dollar bill.
And this was what everything costed back then: $20N.T.s for the wonton soups, an entrée at a cafeteria for $30N.T.s, beef noodle soup with an egg for $35N.T.s, and, the quarter leg meal set at a higher class restaurant cost $70N.T.s. This was the average cost of the shops close to our school. And, my classmate carried that crumpled up thousand-dollar bill, and wondered how she was to, do with this godsent gift.
and here’s, what’s on the OTHER side of the scale…
Recalling, if you stop a student in the elementary years and asked, “what would you do if you find money on the pavements?” you would receive the standard answers. It’s just, the group of an all-star high school student who’d set their minds to go to medical school, must’ve burned their brains studying too hard, everybody circled around, wrecked all our brains, and we just, can’t remember, what we should do with the money.
“Give it to the disciplinary official in school?”, someone finally suggested, conscientiously. Everybody looked at everybody else, felt, that this answer was, way too plain, way too, childish. The air froze for quite awhile, then, someone said, “How would the school official know who’d lost it?”, the rest of us nodded in agreement, and started chit chatting, and shortly enough, we’d reached consensus, and believed, that rather than giving it to the school official, while not we all get something out of it ourselves? Don’t know who’d suggested it, and the group of us headed out to the steakhouse at the intersection closest to school, and, we’d, shouldered the guilty pleasures of finding the money that’s not ours to begin with.
IT wouldn’t be precise, saying it was, “the group of us”. Because the classmate that said we should, turn the money into the school official, as we’d, walked out of the school happily, stopped, and, he’d scanned us all, with that sharpened gaze, shook his head with us, stated, “I don’t think this is right, so, count me out.” Reason why I’d recalled this so clearly was, because the sun was very high, and he’d looked, so very, persistent, like that kid that pointed out the emperor’s naked, something that the rest of us already knew, but wouldn’t admit.
And the steaks that day, tasted, bland to me.
Two years ago, we were about to host a thirty-year reunion for high school, all of us, former classmates started searching hard for each other who’s spread all over the places, and I’d, accidentally found the classmate who’d refused to go with us to the steakhouse, and, out popped a series of bad news on him: being established, he’d become the affair of a married woman, and, impregnated the man’s wife too, and so, the ex-husband of the woman sued him in civil court, and he’d, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To tell the truth, as I saw the news, I’d felt, I was free, let go of all the burdens I’d carried through the years, I’d felt, suddenly, loosened. Because after so many years, one thing was, confirmed: in the measurements of morality, we’re not, that far off. But, I’d found myself, stuck in a dilemma: how would I choose, between not turning in the money I’d found on the streets, or knocking up someone’s wife?
I shouldn’t have gone to have that god DAMN steak that day, maybe.
And so, this, is the after-the-fact, of the consequences of you and your classmates’ spending money that didn’t belong to you, and, it’s interesting to see, how the student who was morally responsible, suggested that the group turn the money in to the school official, ended up having an affair as he’d become an adult.