A Lesson Learnt

_{Photo by Andrea De Santis}

Back in the day when I was a little kid, I was obsessed with portable radios that only got frequency when an earpiece is connected to it. The earpiece was some form of an antenna to it, a palito radio was what we called it and I remember that amongst my peer group if you had one of those, you were a big boy.

Getting mobile phones back then wasn't something any of us could afford or would even be allowed to use back then due to how young we all were, so it was either palito radios or nothing. One would wonder why we were obsessed with radios at such young age, if it was because of the news station and all that, but no it wasn't.

As a matter of fact, the only time we all did enjoy the palito radio was during the day when they had the Dj's playing cool songs on air. I would rushed to my friends house just to ask him to tune in to the same frequency I was listening to, just so that we could both be listening to the same song at the same time.

It was dumb but we were kids and dumb things made us happy. Well one day, I had been fortunate enough to be able to afford a brand new radio, one of those little ones that had loud speakers and it's own antenna. So now unlike my friends who had to connect the earpiece all the time just to make use of their radios, I no longer needed to do that.

It was a big upgrade and so I no longer needed a reason to hold on to my old palito radio. I remember randomly telling my dad about my plans to sell my old radio to a friend of mine, not really because I needed the money but because I felt I no longer needed the radio since I now had a better one.

Surprisingly, my dad had refused. It was a surprise because he usually doesn't get involve in things like this because he knows that it's just kids being kids and would always just let us have our fun, but on that day he had used himself as an example, he had asked me if there had ever been a day I saw him sell any of his property and my answer had been no.

That day, he basically was saying to me that just because I no longer had use for that thing at that moment doesn't mean I have to do away with it. So he had forced me not to sell but instead keep it at home. And I remember that at first I felt sad because I already had plans to get some sweets with the money but it didn't take long for me to appreciate what my dad had done for me that day because it didn't take long for my new precious radio to get bad, and when it did, I ran back to the old tiny palito radio that I had wanted to sell to my friend.

That whole experience thought me a very valuable lesson, one that has stayed with me ever since. And now, the last thing I would do is sell anything I own just because I no longer need it. But if I must sell it, then it has to be something I know I can easily purchase just in case I'm in need of it in the nearest future.