CHAPTER 86

Original: 2008-11-27

Rewritten: 2026-08-19

Although Lun is now an adult, his favourite toys are still musical toys designed for babies as young as three months old and children up to six years of age.

One time, I took Lun to a supermarket to buy some snacks. He picked out cookies, cheese-flavoured crunchy sticks, and a large cake. He seemed to have quite an appetite.

After we got home, he picked up the large cake and turned it upside down on the table. He then picked up the round, transparent plastic cake container and headed toward the kitchen sink. He turned on the tap and began his favourite water-pouring game. He never looked back at the cake even once. The whole process took only a few seconds.

I asked Lun to hand me the cake container so that I could wash off the pieces of cake stuck to the plastic. I then gave it back to him to play with. He cooperated very well.

It turned out that what had caught Lun’s eye was the cake container, not the cake itself. To avoid wasting food, I put the very sweet Western-style cake in the refrigerator and ate a little of it each day.

After Lun returned to his residence, I put the cake container in his toy box and reminded my wife to remember to stop Lun from buying the same kind of cake again next time.

Lun is 22 years old this year, but because he is a person with special needs, both his intellectual and emotional development are like that of a child. Since moving into his residence, he has made progress in many areas and has grown compared with the past. Because of this, I often wonder just how much he has matured.

Watching the way he handled the cake container, however, I realized that he is still growing up very slowly. Perhaps I have simply expected too much.

Taking him to browse around a large toy store is a good way to make him happy. His favourite section is not the electronic games, but the musical toys for babies from three months old to children up to six years old. Pressing a button makes them play music or songs; those that light up are even better. His favourite is an aquarium-themed musical toy, which requires six large batteries.

He also likes the inexpensive but bulky sand-digging toys. Since there is limited space at home, we cannot buy too many. Once, at a large supermarket, he pointed to a plastic inflatable wading pool priced at C$599, which could be set up in the backyard after being inflated. He was clearly interested. Of course, I said, “No, no.” At that moment, my rational side prevailed.

Actually, if circumstances had allowed us to live in a detached house, that wading pool would have become an essential item long ago. If my financial circumstances had been a little more comfortable, Lun might have been thoroughly spoiled by me by now.