I Saved Two Baskets of Chicks

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

Kiddo woke up today and started singing on the bed, lying there with her legs up, singing away right under the sunlight coming in. Luckily, there is sun today. Around this time of year, I only like sunny days.

Just a pretty normal Sunday. The sun is out today, pretty nice actually. I woke up around 5 and saw the air quality was bright red, but at least on a sunny day, the weather feels a little less unpleasant. I think it feels like the sun is drying through all that grey, humid air. Everything being dry also feels better.

I wore shorts and this helmet with the face shield missing. This is the helmet I use only for going to the wet market on Sunday, because riding with it... just feels cooler.

I rode up onto a sidewalk. This was already the third time I had to move because the market was too crowded. Last spot, there was a truck trying to turn around inside a tiny road, bringing sand and concrete to a house under construction.

This place looked okay. So I took out my phone and played with it. I was just standing there waiting for my wife buying things for the next week.

Then this woman suddenly rode her scooter right up next to me. I was like, what the hell?

“I’ll leave it here for a bit, later I don’t have to turn around, hehe.”

Then she saw me moving my bike.

“No, no, you don’t need to move. Just stay there.”

Ohh. The poulterer, and there were two big baskets of chicks stacked on the seat of her Honda Lead. Nothing really happened. Then I went back to my bike and took out my phone again, then the two baskets of chicks kept leaning toward me.

I thought if I left, it would not be okay. So I held them for a while, then I decided to put one basket on the ground and still leave one basket on the seat. Then I went back to my bike and took out my phone again.

The bike was leaning to one side on its stand, and the chicks inside kept jumping around, screaming “Chip chip chip chip”. They were going crazy in there, and the basket started moving again. So I had to put the second basket down too. After I put both baskets down and the chicks stopped screaming, I thought it was okay now. Then I moved to another place because that spot was too sunny.

Later my wife carried all the groceries. I opened the seat and put everything inside. The Honda Lead is really a family scooter, it can carry almost the whole world inside. I told her:

“I just saved two baskets of chicks.”

She listened to the story and said:

“You are the Rooster. Of course you had to help them.”

After hearing that, I felt it was a little weird. Yeah I was born in the year of Rooster and sounds like I had been reincarnated through several chickens before eventually arriving here in the human form.

When I was standing there, the chicks kept stretching out toward me, chip chip chip, rushing toward my side. The two baskets were stacked together, so all that moving slowly made them tip toward me. Maybe they looked at me like one big chicken standing there, so they kept coming toward me, asking for something.

But then I thought it was probably just the sun. The sunlight was hitting them directly, maybe they got too uncomfortable, so they were running crazy inside. Even when I put one basket on the ground, they were still not okay. I had to put both baskets behind the scooter, away from the sun, then they got quieter.

I think I will still call this story “I Saved Two Baskets of Chicks.” Actually, I didn’t think I saved anything. But if I had moved away when I noticed those two baskets shaking and leaning toward me, maybe two minutes later they would have fallen down and broken apart. The baskets looked flimsy, just like that thin plastic string she used to tie them. Then it would be a mess. Maybe fifty little chicks running everywhere on the ground, some getting run over and crushed flat by cars, some being grabbed by people, all over the place. Maybe I only helped them get past the thing that was about to happen right in front of them. After that, well, chickens will still be eaten eventually, right?

But then I thought maybe nobody eats chicks that small. The woman left two whole baskets there, so chicks like this are probably for raising, right? Maybe because of me they could stay okay inside those two baskets and wait to grow bigger. Maybe, for now, it just wasn’t time for those chicks to become food yet.

“Trông kia đàn gà con lông vàng

Rồi cùng nhau ta đi chơi”

There’s another Vietnamese song my kiddo likes to sing a lot. And now I'm still not really sure what to teach her about what yet.