JANUARY 19 — As with most children growing up in small towns, my childhood was to a large extent associated with the great outdoors.

Typical of the “kampung boy” life, it involved cycling around with friends, wallowing in the mud just to piss off our mothers, stealing fruit from random orchards, and establishing little hidey-holes to sneak in a few smokes.

Sort of fits with the Huckleberry Finn trope, sans Injun Joe.

Seeing as how I spent half the time heading out on little “adventures” with my friends, my dad figured it wise to teach me some survival basics, just in case we unwisely got ourselves lost out in some backwoods.

A big part of that had to do with how to bring home the bacon — literally.

To engender an appreciation for where food comes from, regular parents would bring their kids to the wet market where they can make a quick comparison between still clucking and feathered chickens and the obviously dead and neatly dressed iterations of the same fowl.

My father figured it more effective to simply put a knife in my hand. Suffice to say, at 10 years of age I could tell you where exactly to cut out a chicken’s gizzard.

Anyway, during one school holiday, my friends and I worked out a plan to go on a little day expedition to a nearby beach.

Of course “nearby” is relative, since it was a good 15 kilometres away from town and we were all on bicycles. But I digress.

Being a bunch of “genius” teenage boys, we truly believed that all we needed was a bottle of water and a Swiss army knife each to take on the world.

Sure, we set off early in the morning when it wasn’t too hot, but when you factor in the distance, humidity and the downright scorcher of an afternoon sun, we just set ourselves up to fail.

A few hours into the excursion, after the initial rush died down and we had burnt off thousands of calories, the inevitable happened — we got hungry.

Really hungry.

The boys and I called a pow-wow. Between the 15 of us, we mustered a grand total of RM5.26. We despatched two emissaries to the nearby food stalls, all of whom said they could only give us enough food for one person for that money.

Struggling with the onset of hypoglycemia, hunger and desperation started taking hold of the crew.

Smiles turned to snarls, friendly banter morphed into angry exchanges.

We were a hair’s breadth from going all Lord of the Flies on each other as we sought to pin the blame on someone for the grand idea that was our little outing.

Amid the clamour for gastronomic deliverance, a cluck punctuated the din.

Everyone paused.

Cluck cluck.

There it goes again!

We turned to look in the direction of the sound, and there stood three chickens, oblivious to our presence.

I guess dad was right on the money.

My point, however, is not the fact that we blatantly stole a few birds to avert a brewing crisis among friends.

The owner of the fowl had (unknowingly) helped a group of young boys learn an important lesson about planning ahead, without having to suffer the full consequences of their failure to plan.

This is a lesson that I have since held close to my heart and try as best possible to put into practice, because who knows when someone is in dire need of some help, or money.

Or chicken.

Man, that was some damn good chicken.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.