This Happened To Me
An Unintentional Gift from the Boy Next Door
Every plastic wrapper bears a papaya seed
A kid lives in the next-door apartment to our accommodation, facing the apartment’s backyard to our accommodation backyard. That kid has never shown his face. We have only heard his voice.
One thing is for sure — this kid is tough, and he seems to be beyond his parents’ control. It was not based on the regular warnings issued to him by his mother but on an entirely different reason.
Every day, we left our accommodation early in the morning. We returned in the evening, leaving little time to spend during the day. One day, we noticed a plastic snack wrapper in our backyard, right under our neighbor’s window. It was apparent that our neighbors were responsible, as we didn’t have that type of snack, and we always disposed of non-biodegradable items into the bins at our office.
More importantly, this incident occurred when Dengue Fever cases were on the rise, and authorities had launched an island-wide inspection to identify potential locations for mosquito breeding. Property owners faced hefty fines if such breeding grounds were found on their premises. So finding a plastic wrapper in a backyard is problematic.
Unfortunately, we had no proof of who littered the wrapper, so we had no choice but to dispose of it ourselves. We found similar wrappers several times until I caught the mischievous person red-handed one day.
One morning, while I was walking around our backyard and having a call with my wife, I mostly listened and did not make much noise. Suddenly, I noticed a tiny hand moving and saw a plastic wrapper fall to the ground.
I raised my voice, saying, “Hey! What are you doing?”
But there was no response.
Since we had definitive proof, we complained to our landlord and asked him to inform the kid’s parents. We didn’t find any more plastic wrappers afterwards.
However, recently, we noticed a small cluster of papaya plants growing underneath our neighbor’s window. It appears that the kid threw plastic wrappers and discarded papaya seeds, also.
Now, all these trees have tiny fruits, and I’m unsure whether we should thank the kid for this unintentional gift or not. It’s like the saying goes, ‘Every dark cloud has a silver lining.’
For the time being, I decided to forgive him for throwing plastic wrappers to our backyard.
