In a class of thirty adolescent boys, Baloo was always one of the better well-groomed ones. While the rest of us were still going about sporting coconut haircuts and cultivating a habit of pushing thick plastic spectacles against our eyebrows, Baloo was already at the forefront of fashion with his sleek meticulously gelled hair and slim metal spectacles frame. Being the epitome of cool still wasn't enough to spare him from our ribbing though.
During one of our annual school camps, we were playing a relay game at night where everyone had to run to a big pail of water with apples positioned at the bottom, sink our head in and take out an apple without using our hands. The obvious thing to do was to take a half-bite to remove the apple from the pail, but judging from some of the lads' impersonation of a deep-sea diver with a leaking oxygen tank, not everyone employed the same strategy.
Baloo was one such person who had his head immersed in the pail for a disturbingly long time as he tried in vain to remove an apple. At the end of the game, one of the lads, in full earshot of our form teacher, exclaimed cheekily how he had seen a whole tubful’s volume of unappetizing gel at the bottom of the pail after Baloo's turn.
Somehow our rather gullible teacher bought the story and gave Baloo a gentle dressing down without the slightest trace of irony.
"Why, I know it's common for people to use gel to style their hair... but a whole tubful? That's just an absurd exaggeration!"
Incidentally, she taught us science.
