One Saturday morning, the Tan Family went to school. It was the children's school, which had organised a fundraising event and Mr and Mrs Tan had been roped in to sell fried meehoon.
They divided the work so that Mr Tan would handle the money and Mrs Tan would pack the meehoon. In the meantime, Ah Boy would hand out packets of chilli sauce while Ah Girl would curtsey and smile and thank the customers.
All went smoothly at first, and "The Tans’ Fried Meehoon, with real meehoon!" (at least, that's how it was advertised) sold well. Mrs Tan made delicious meehoon and word went round. Besides, the customers were impressed with her idea of using food preparation gloves.
Mrs Tan, however, said that business was good because she had worn a red shirt with a large silver flower on the front, with the purpose of attracting "insects". She meant customers, of course. This was also why she was wasn't very pleased when Mr Tan wore a Ridsect T-shirt that came free with ten cans of insect spray, which he had bought just because they were on a buy-one-get-one-free offer.
Towards
"One… two… three… five," said Mrs Tan, counting as she packed. She beamed at the customer and handed him four packets in a plastic bag. The man knitted his eyebrows together and stared at the bag. Mrs Tan began to get worried.
"Five packets ya? One, two, three, five," she said, pointing at each packet as she counted. Fortunately the man realised what the problem was and held up five fingers instead. It worked.
"Stop?" said Mrs Tan, looking at his raised hand. Then,
"Oh, six! Okay okay, I pack one more for you, no problem."
The second thing happened when there were so many customers that some gave Mrs Tan exact change rather than wait at the counter. By a stroke of luck, nobody noticed that Mrs Tan had collected all the grubby money with her gloved hands. When Mrs Tan noticed herself, she was a little horrified, but as she only had one pair of gloves, she just kept quiet and stopped collecting money.
It is believed that this event only served to improve the taste of the meehoon, for it increased in popularity until all the meehoon was sold out. Mr Tan was counting the proceeds when Ah Boy came up to him.
"What shall we do with all the leftover chilli sauce?" he asked.
"Mm. You can give it away. But if it's gone bad, throw it away," said Mr Tan, trying to concentrate on what he was doing.
"Okay," said Ah Boy. But he didn't really understand. There were too many 'away's in the sentence. It confused him. So he decided to sell the sauce.
He walked among the crowds and tried to sell the whole lot for "three ringgit, okay two seventy, okay
However, there was something his father had said to him that he couldn't quite remember. He scratched his head and the lady stepped back quickly in case he had lice. Just as she turned to go, Ah Boy remembered.
"Aunty!" he called. "But if it's bad, throw it away!" He grinned, pleased that he had managed to remember something. The lady's jaw dropped, but Ah Boy had already disappeared.
All in all, it was a success. The Tans had earned quite a bit of money for the school. Now they could look forward to a new school library being built soon.
