Grampo and Chumba buy candy ‘con watchas’

Una tarde after supper, Canutito said: “Grampo, ¿what were you like cuando era un muchachito?” “Oh m’hijo,” Grampo Caralampio began, “I suppose que yo era pretty much como los demás muchachitos of my own time. Mis amigos y yo corríamos; running through the fields riding on homemade stick horses. En esos caballitos we would gallop por las tiras and we had crossed the fields, parábamos de galopar en la acequia para darles agua a los caballitos. (Our stick horses were thirsty.) Sometimes we would find a penny y con ese centavo we would run to the store a comprar un bubble gum y luego mascábamos ese gogglegóm todo el día.”

Canutito smiled thinking de que en una vez su grampo had been un muchachito just like him. He asked him: “Grampo, did you ever shoplift algo de la tienda when the storekeeper wasn’t looking?”

“Oh, sometimes I was tempted de ir a hurtarme algo como un sucker o un licorice pero I never did porque I would have to go confesarlo before the priest y yo no quería hacer eso.

I could have stolen una chupeta o un regaliz muy fácil porque la tiendera was half-blind pero …” he hesitated, “I found a different way de pagar por los dulces without having to pay for all of that candy.”

Canutito sat un poco más cerca, intrigued por el secreto del grampo. “How did you pay for the candy sin pagar?” he asked.

“Actually, it happened de pura chiripada,” grampo replied.

“What does ‘de pura chiripada’ mean, grampo?” Canutito asked.

“It means that I learned how to cheat the storekeeper de puro accidente,” he went on. “My friend Chumba and I were messing around un día en el garage when we happened to find una caja llena de watchas.”

“What are ‘watchas’, grampo?” Canutito interrupted again.

“I think that in English these arandelas are called ‘washers’ and the ones we found eran como del tamaño de un daime. So we took these dime-sized washers pa’la tienda de Mana Lugarda. We chose 10 different candies de todos colores and we placed una de las watchas en su mano. La pobre viejita didn’t know la diferencia and so we left and sat en la sombra de un árbol and we ate dulces toda la tarde. We did that cada día del verano and she never caught on to the fact que la estábamos cheating.”

“That was an awful thing to do, grampo!” Canutito exclaimed. “Didn’t you and Chumba feel guilty por haberla jambado?”

“Toward the end of summer cuando we couldn’t eat any more candy y teníamos los dientes todos rotten, entonces we did start to feel un poco culpables.”