Learn English with PODCASTS — When I Was Younger...

A fun story from my school years is that when I was about seven years old , um my dad was a high school principal and he always came home .

He brought home lots and lots of ream boxes with reams of paper .

So I just had a rem is the collective noun for paper .

So lots of paper .

So a rem I think consists of 500 pages .

If I'm not mistaken , 500 sheets of paper is the the collective noun would be a rem of paper .

So my dad brought home boxes , different types of paper , different textures .

I love the smell of paper , the feel of it .

Yeah , I just loved it .

Um He was obviously using it for printing documents and things like that , but I used to steal a little bit of a few pages here and there .

Um And I then would cut , you know , interesting fun shapes , maybe burn the edges .

I was only six .

Yes , I was burning the edges making it look really nice .

Um Yeah , it was maybe this was my gateway gateway drug into .

No , I'm kidding .

I was so interested in turning these blank sheets of paper into something beautiful .

So I would cut little shapes .

I would draw um images on the front of it .

And then I decided to sell these beautiful books that I had created .

So it would be like a 20 page book or maybe even like 10 only , but I stapled it or I would tie it with a string .

And then kids at my school really wanted my books .

And so I started selling them for like 10 cents each 10 cents these days .

I don't even think they exist .

I don't think anyone uses 10 cent anymore .

But back then with my 10 cents , I could buy sweets candy from the fences .

There was a guy at high school who used to sell all kinds of yummy treats that kids love .

Like sherbet chips sweets .

Uh , not good chocolate , none of it was great quality .

So we're not talking quality chips , quality chocolate quality sherbet .

It was just yummy kids , things that kids love .

There's so many , all , all those names are so different .

Really ?

Ice Lolly .

What is an Ice Lolly ?

Well , I said Ice Lolly because I thought that was what you would call it , but here we would call it a sucker .

Yeah , if I'm not mistaken , I think in the UK , Ice Lolly is a popsicle .

Pops like it's frozen like a Lo a Lolly is a sucker and , and a ice Lolly is a popsicle .

Yes .

So it's a combination .

So it looks like it could be a sucka , like a sweet , but it's ice .

So it's a ice lolly .

But in this case , Asaka , that's what we would call it .

Asaka .

Did you guys have snow cones ?

Snow cones ?

No .

Do you know what that is ?

Yeah .

It's like crushed ice with syrup .

Like , like different flavors of sweet syrup .

That also reminds me of my childhood that , like , you'd go to the pool and they sold , it wasn't a guy at the fence .

It was like a stand of someone official from the pool that was selling legitimate .

It was really funny because the guy at the fence , it sounds very much like uh I don't know , like now it is to be very like in the States like stranger danger like guy at the fence near a school .

Like who is this guy call the police ?

Like , what are you doing creeping around the school ?

I still don't know why the school did nothing about this man who was selling random things .

He had different things every day and most of it was sealed .

But a lot of it , like we had like gum balls and he would take it with his hand and hand it to you .

You get two gum was , that's the problem .

I'll never know .

We'll never have the answers .

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Now , let's get back to the lesson .

So you guys never had people selling things at the fence when you guys were kids , not at the fence but at the corner by the corner of the street or in front of the school gates , you know , so it's actually common .

Do you have a name for that person ?

Like a we do in Portuguese ?

I would call it .

Um Let me see if I can translate that in English to English .

Maybe a walking salesman or a walking salesperson like a hawk , a hawker .

Yeah .

Is that what you call that ?

They're hawking their heads ?

The Portuguese translation would be that a walking salesman ?

Something like that because you don't have a store or stand .

We're walking around , moving around and selling stuff .

You are walking or moving .

Do you want me to say in Portuguese vain ?

The door , unblanching vain , the door .

What is the sales sales person who moves around ?

Walks around here .

We have , I think it's not a great term .

There's like manos like like it comes from the blankets because they sell goods on blankets but it's not candy .

It's usually like very common , for example , by the beach there's a lot of them that sell sunglasses and they're called Monteros .

Um because they have the manus is a blanket because if the police come like one of them will signal and they'll grab wrap everything up in the blanket and you know , like run so that they don't get fined .

But I think it's , it's maybe not the most PC term , politically correct term for those uh walking salesmen , informal traders .

Like that's what they're called here .

I just realized so informal traders , you don't have an actual business .

It's just like I sell when I , if I want to , when I want to .

Unfortunately , this guy or the guys .

It wasn't just one school guys .

I always bought sweets from different guys at different schools .

They're just like the uncle .

We're just always , oh uncle , can I have two packets of chips , please ?

I mean , I know Chia , you and I both obviously in our school days we had people selling candy and other goods outside the school .

But these guys selling candy and other goods to kids have been accused of selling candy that is actually drugs or drugs that look like candy or I could even say candy laced with drugs .

What does it mean ?

Something is laced with something ?

Usually this refers to drugs , right ?

So if a drug is something is laced with drugs , what does that mean ?

It means that it is like hidden like , uh like it's covered with drugs in a way that it's not um obvious , like you wouldn't necessarily notice it immediately .

So in terms of the candies .

Yeah , this was , this was quite a common thing and the drug , I , I feel like you guys , um , you know , might have heard about this , I'm not sure , but the drug was called Luca .

It's been said to turn these kids into zombie zombies so they move like zombies .

They're , you know , zombies are known for having , you know , rage attacks and these kids within have these weird outbursts and yeah , it's quite a scary situation .

I still don't know if it's true , but it has been reported to be true in our local news .

So I don't know , I think ice tea actually found a video , a new story on this and maybe we can roll that take a look here at what police say they found during a drug bust in South Florida .

Two bags of Flocka .

But they're designed to look like sour patch kid candies .

Yeah , Miami Dade police tested this bogus candy discovered it was the dangerous synthetic drug known as Floca .

One dose can cost as little as $5 users can be up for days with intense often psychotic behavior .

Many people are sharing this warning on our WP TV , Facebook page tonight , Michael police are worried that this kind of packaging could lure younger users and that's definitely something parents need to know about .

So do , do you guys know what sour patch kids are ?

No , I've only ever seen it in movies and I really want to try them .

I love , I love gummy .

They're gummies , right ?

They're gummy candies is a gummy gummy candy is a soft chewy .

It's made of gelatin .

I would .

Yes .

But the the sour patch kids .

So they're sour patch kids because it it's like sweet , sweet gummy and it's covered with like some we were talking before about you called Sherbet , right ?

Like the the citric acid or something it's covered in something sour .

So it has that sweet and sour thing that like makes you like pucker , pucker your lips , right ?

But Yeah , I grew up with , with those things .

So patch kids .

So that's kind of scary .

Like having them being laced with drugs , you know , there was some interesting vocabulary that she used here .

So she mentioned , uh , that there was a drug bust where they found these laced sour patch kids .

Right .

What's a drug bust ?

Uh , so a drug bust would be , um , a planned , uh , or organized police raid .

Yeah .

So the police would , you know , organize , uh , strategize around like , um , catching criminals at a particular time in a particular place .

People are probably seeing this on different .

I think there's even like some examples of this in breaking bad .

It's been a long time .

I haven't seen it but there might , must be some drug bust scene , right ?

She said something about like the bogus candies , something like that .

But what does bogus mean if something is bogus like nonsense ?

But I just want to comment on bust because I think the bust is the important part .

So when you bust someone , you catch them .

Yeah , you're busted .

I caught you , you guys both have got young Children .

So that might be a party of vocabulary using more and more as they grow up .

Right ?

Listening to hard rock music , you know , you're listening to that , you're grounded .

What does that mean ?

If you tell your kid you're grounded when the kid is spun out without no TV ?

No phone for , I don't know , a few weeks or a month , right .

Maybe we need to do another podcast episode on our , our stories have been ground .

I don't know if that happened to you .

I was definitely a couple of times when I was a kid .

So coming back to the , to the story users can be up for days .

So what does it mean if you're up ?

Is it like to be awake to be awake ?

Yeah .

It's like a drug that I think like caster was saying they probably like zombies just because they're not , they're strung out .

They're not , they're not sleeping .

She was saying something about it being scary because it , it looks like candy .

It looks like sour patch kids , right ?

So it could lure younger users .

What does it mean if you lure someone ?

You know , I love this word because I always think of the witch alluring the kids to her house like hello , little one come here .

I have some delicious dreams for you , you know .

Oh , that voice is amazing .

So yeah , when something that lures you kind of it attracts you .

Yeah .

And like , you know , the kids , they are lured .

You are attracted by the candy like , oh , this looks so nice , colorful and delicious .

I want to have it .

I want to taste it .

Right ?

So you are lured to try the candy in this case or you are lured into the wet house and then finally the guy uh I think it was the man at the end says like something like be on the lookout .

Parents better be on the lookout for people selling these laced sour patch kids .

Yeah .

So when someone is on the lookout , when they need to be on the lookout , they need to be aware of what's happening .

So like pay attention be on the lookout .

Um If your kid comes home with some so that candy maybe just like check it , take it away from them , haven't tested and then no , I'm kidding .

Don't um do that .

I think in this case , uh he's just telling parents to be aware , be alert , pay attention to to this problem if your kid had , you know , the candy .

And you're wondering why is my kid acting like a zombie ?

It's probably because of a bad batch of sour patch kids .

So like your guys' stories about uh like you were talking about the walking salesman or the the uncle selling candies right outside the fence .

Like for me , these are kind of like shocking because like in the States , our parents always tell us like , don't talk to strangers , you know , hey , so this is the end of this lesson .

But if you enjoyed learning English vocabulary and pronunciation with it , you should know that this clip was just a part of an episode of the Real Life English podcast and we release a new episode every week .

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