Dear brothers and sisters,

One afternoon, I went to a children’s yard. I saw two children sitting next to puddles of water. These puddles were water from people’s watering plants. Each child sat next to a different puddle of water.

The older sister, about 4, was using a leaf as a boat to row on her puddle water, and the younger brother, about 2, was looking down at his puddle. I thought the boy was looking at his face in the water. Then slowly, the boy bent down, his face closer to the water. I still thought the boy bent deeper to see himself better. Then suddenly, the boy used his tongue to lap the puddle water. I was startled, “Oh my god, where are his parents?”

I looked around and didn’t see any adults who seemed to be his parents. After drinking the water, the boy seemed happy, stood up, smiled, and walked to his sister. He looked at his sister, waited for her to lift the leaf, then the two siblings went home.

I patiently waited to see where the two siblings went. Then, when I saw them enter a coffee shop and the owner was their mother, I approached her. I told her story of her boy drinking the puddle water. The mom listened and barely reacted.

Perhaps because the boy, being the son of a coffee shop owner, had drunk many kinds of drink in the shop already, but he hadn’t got a chance to drink this interesting-looking water on the yard yet – the puddle water – so he had to try it.

Funny.

Share with you.

Phạm Thu Hương