The coconut incident

One day when I was 9-10 years old, some boys found a coconut in our kampung. All the kids came out to see. We stood around the boys asking where they found it cos there wasn't any coconut tree nearby. Just durian trees, banana trees, palm trees, papaya trees and rambutan trees.

We were very excited about what juicy flesh and sweet juice we could find inside. We scattered and looked around to see if we can find anything to help us open up the coconut. Skinny boy found a rusty dented cleaver so he got to be the one to cut it up. We ran back to the where the coconut was.

Some of the boys dragged the coconut to an open clearing outside the tailor's house. Skinny boy stood in front of the coconut and raised the cleaver above his head with both hands. And he shouted, "Sy-am ah(move away)!". Everyone moved back. When we were a safe distance away, skinny boy took a deep breadth and brought down the cleaver. As the cleaver was about to hit the coconut, the tailor's young son suddenly dashed towards it. Everything happened so fast after that. He was holding the coconut and the cleaver hit his fingers. Bright red blood gushed out of his danggling half severed fingers. He was hopping around and screaming in pain while the rest of us were in shocked. I ran off to call for his mom and with a look at what what happened, she returned to wrap his fingers up with a towel and swept him up in her arms and dashed to the hospital.

Most of us were too stunned to say anything. Skinny boy was looking for moral support, getting anyone, who met his eyes, to agree that he did warn us to move away. He looked scared. We were all puzzled at why it happened.

Luckily the doctor managed to sew back the tailor's son's fingers and things went back to normal soon. Lessons learned here: disposed of dangerous objects properly and obey warnings!