....and what if it rains again?

Extreme apprehension.....

For 9-year olds, that's the feeling whenever it rained cats and dogs.

....and the feeling's worse if the sky gets completely dark, and the rain is accompanied by lightning flashes, and rumbling thunder; or a sharp, crackling and deafening sound of  ....KRRrrrrriiiiiiiiiAAAAaarrrrnnnG!!!!!..,

...Wah!!..missed. It missed!...almost hit us!

........and what do you do in times like this?

Definitely no kite-flying for me and Cheekiat, we ain't no Benjamin Franklin. But staying indoors with just the radio isn't fun, so we have always been quite prepared for such "events". We still have a number of pet fighting fishes in clean jam bottles lined up on the bathroom's window sill.

Yup, it's time to have fun with fighting fishes.....and yes, there's my pet fighting fish named Bobby! That's the one type that looked like him - a kinda chicken of a fighting fish with tiger stripes. In our fish-fighting fraternity, such chickened-out fish like Bobby don't deserve any worms for his meals.

I had always been peeved by those remarks from other chums like "Thiloo-koo" (botak, the bald-headed tortoise). Now it's time, show-time for Bobby to prove his mettle!

Cheekiat has some really good fighers, something like this one. They all look very ferocious and very colourful - always ready for a good clean fight in a good ol' clean jam bottle.

"Fighting fish again AAHHHH!", mum complained....

"Yesterday you flew kites, today you do fighting fish, what's next?", she was about to nag.

"Why don't you go do your homework, study or help clean the house?"......and applying a little trick from Roger the Dodger, we replied in consonance, "Finished already!!!!"     

Mum stopped to stare at us, she was a little annoyed. We looked at each other, giggled and decided that our next answer would be, "Yesterday!", should she ask when. But she didn't. She heaved a deep sigh and left to start a charcoal fire for her ironing chores.

          The show started......

Our fishes fought, ...and quite soon to my chagrin, Bobby lost. ....miserably.

The tiger stripes became much more pronounced and I soon became sick of Bobby and his incompetence in fighting. So I poured him from the bottle, and into the drain at "ji-luk" (the second hall) he went, -flushed away by the rain water that has begun to flood the air-well.

It's still raining, so the show must go on... More fights in the offing. Even the fighters from the Cheekiat's "stable" were lined up to "whup" each other. I have no more fighting fish and he still has 3 more. One ended up looking like this....

....and there is another fighter, this one........ 


....totally ravished after his fight, looking real glum, sad and sorry like this........

Soon, it's been a good 3 hours, the fights are over and the rain has stopped. It's 5:00pm. We cleared the mess, went out to the 5-foot way and looked into Carnavon Lane, then up to the sky. I lamented about useless Bobby, but Cheekiat quickly changed the subject.

He said, "Before it gets dark again, we still have a little more time to fly some kites!.......want to join?"

"WHAT?...again?..............go fly a kite AGAIN?"

Man, it was fun, real fun having a brother like Cheekiat.