Rice

by Marlon

Once upon a time, a grain of rice is as big as a pillow. This in one of my grandmother's most favorite stories during dinner time. Up until I was five, my siblings and my first cousins would look forward to dinner time because my grandmother would supervise the meal. All of us kids would eat by the landing of the staircase. We all thought this made us special, but later we realized it was the adults' way of getting us away from the dinner table. Without us, they could talk about adult things. Back to the landing. My grandmother would put all the food in one tray and we would dig in with our spoons. She would feed the younger ones herself. More than a meal, it was a convention of little monsters. The older ones would fight over cuts of meats. The younger ones would bawl. Most of the fights early in the day would carry over into dinner time. But no matter how rowdy we get, no one ever spilled food, not even a grain of rice. Aside from her regular stories, Bible stories, Grimms stories, HCA stories; she would tell us the story of why a grain of rice is so small. According to my grandmother, rice grains used to be as big as pillows. There was plenty in the land, and no one was hungry. But people wasted food, they were careless and let grains (or should I say pillows) of rice fall on the table or on the ground. One day, all the grains of rice got sad and rolled away from people. They cried. They rolled all the way back to the milling house. They cursed humans for wasting food. While they rolled they became smaller and smaller and smaller. Until they are as small as we see them today.