when i was a kid i loved toys that looked nothing like the real thing. they can be the ugliest one-color plastic toy car with nothing but air inside - two pieces of thin molded plastic halves with untidy joint right in the middle, or a teeny weeny solid plastic gun no bigger than a coin, so small and unrecognizable in shape, never mind in details, that one couldn't really make out what it was until one saw on the candy wrapper it came in that indeed it was meant to be a toy gun. it made me feel special that adults had to create something especially for my kind, the child whose only source of spending money was the occasional spare change from my mother's pocket. i thought, how nice of these people to try to amuse me with these silly things. of course even at such a young age it occured to me that they were what they were not because of purposeful design but because they had to be the cheapest possible product that can be wrapped with a piece of candy, but why spoil romantic notions with practical ideas?
it's somewhat the same way with the tiny mangoes (pictured above, Mangifera altissima, or simply "pahutan" where i grew up) that i found in the market today. i loved these when i was a kid. i'd bite a small bit from the pointed end and start peeling the skin off like a tape going round all the way, then pop the whole thing in my mouth (about the size of a sushi). the pit is very thin and i used to bend them in my mouth because small as they were, they were still a considerable chunk in a child's mouth. my mom used to bring some home and make a big fuss of how special these are. i, of course, believed her. it made me feel special that there was a mini version even of this common fruit, something specifically for me. until of course i was older and she kept buying these, at which point i realized that she was buying these for herself. and of course at that age i was already well aware that not everything was about me and that adults enjoy their own special things, too.
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