Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Lemon.

I remember when I was about eight, I used to live with my family in this really poor condominium community in El Monte, California. I had the best times of my life there. The good thing about living in a real poor community is the community sticks together like a family. Well, at least there we did.
I remember this one day, it must have been a holiday. Not many of the usual kids that hung around together were around. It was myself, this six-year old kid named Brian, and two other kids unimportant to this story.
Brian was a goofy kid who never cared about much but always went along with whatever the rest of us were doing. It was probably because he was younger. Anyway, Brian had this two-year old little brother named Raymond. Brian's parents and grandparents lived there too, and whenever they would call for his little brother they would call him "Leh-mond" because they were some deep-rooted hardcore old school Koreans with deep-rooted hardcore old school Korean accents. For a number of years we thought his little brother's name was "Lemon."
On this particular day, we were all bored. Much of the condominium community had gone elsewhere and the four of us were stuck doing much of nothing in a place close to nowhere. We hung around one of the condomimium stoops next to the gargabe bin. Things were going very boringly until someone spotted Lemon walking towards us.
Lemon was in a diaper and nothing else. He was waddling towards us the way a two-year old would, and he had shit falling out of his diaper. He also had shit all over his hands. He must've been playing with his newfound bodily discovery. I remember seeing the look on Brian's face as he screamed. It was half-horror, half-glee. That was the cool thing about Brian-- he was always laughing.
Lemon started laughing the way unwitting babies do and we ran like hell. We bolted away through a back walkway and took off, laughing and screaming. We reconvened at the front of the condo's, near the gated front entrance. Once there, we relaxed, taking joy in the unpredictable event that had broken up our day of monotany. I remember thinking, yeah this is funny for the rest of us, but why is Brian running away from his brother and laughing? Oh well, kid shit, I suppose. Anyway, we enjoyed it and it definitely changed our moods for the better. I remember sitting, laughing and talking in a different mood from that point on.
It got even better when Lemon appeared again around the corner. Same shit-dripping diaper, same shit-stained hands, same unwitting baby laugh.
We yelled and laughed again, running away. At this point we realized our escapade wasn't over. No one wanted to go help Lemon and risk getting his dook on us and it was clear he was going to tail us wherever we went. This went on for a great portion of the day. It definitely broke up the monotany. The day ended when Brian's grandmother came outside looking for Lemon and saw what was going on. She verbally castigated Brian for doing this to his brother and quickly scooped up Lemon, shit and all, to take him inside for a cleaning. I don't remember why I remember this day so vividly. Perhaps I have an affinity for dook-related things.