I haven’t been a bad blogistani, really I haven’t, it’s just that we haven’t had a working phone line for days. I dutifully typed it, I just couldn’t post it. Here it is.

Funny that He-Man should come up in the comments on my last post, because I actually saw an episode the other day and I almost died laughing. Lemme just say it was more impressive when I was a child.

Sensei Presents: Mortally wound yourself while attempting two complex tasks, such as walking and talking, at the same time.

Remember kids, don’t try this at home.

In this instance, park your car under a shady tree on a hot day and step out. Upon exiting, discover that a man is asking you whether or not you want your car washed. Politely say no thank you and close the car door. Start walking (here’s where it gets complicated) away from the car, and turn your head to tell the insistent man that you really don’t want your car washed. (filth is a deterrent to finicky thieves) By turning your head, you have taken your eyes off of the space in front of you, which actually contains a stout and very pokey tree branch. So bang the side of your turned head on the tree branch and hear a loud –gong- noise go off inside of the rapidly deflating ball that was once your skull.

You know, when you’re a kid, you get all excited at the prospect of hitting your head on something and actually drawing blood, just like on TV or in every Desi film. It’s especially easy to draw blood from a head wound in Desi films, the heroine trips and falls and hits her head on the dirt and the director yells ‘CUT!’ and they break out the gauze and the ketchup. As a kid, every time I hit my head (which was often, which explains a lot) after I got over the initial shock, I always had to check if it was bleeding. To find out that the pain I had inflicted on myself wasn’t bloody-wound-worthy was a big disappointment, all that pain and nothing to show for it. A head-wound was a battle scar, a badge of honor, something to take to show and tell and gross your classmates out with the next day. But Alas, (Alhamdulillah!) I never got one as a kid.

I spent lunch that day with one hand working my lunch and the other rubbing my head. Aniraz kept asking, what, it hurts that much? What’s wrong with you?

I dunno, I answered, it just feels like I punctured my head. And I DID, now when I’m a boring old adult with a black stain-resistant head scarf, NOW I get a bloody head wound and I don’t even KNOW about it till I get home. And now I have no one to show it to, except Aniraz, who thinks I’m a doofus for attacking a poor defenseless tree with my hard old head. (that tree had it coming I sez!) All that pain for nothing. Hmmph.

All the things I thought I wanted as a kid aren’t turning out the way I thought they would. I wanted a big scar, just like a pirate, and now I have one from having my appendix out and I can’t show that to anyone either. I wanted a parrot (I liked pirates, ok?) and when I finally got one a few years ago it was the most vile, malicious, hateful creature on God’s green earth that I ever had the displeasure of meeting. Officially she was named Sweetpea. Actually, she was called The Green Menace, Spit’n’Vinegar, Craven Raven, and She Who Bites The Hand Who Feeds Her. She was such an unholy terror that when she escaped her cage and flew the coop one day, we actually rejoiced.

Oh well. The kids at the school where I’m subbing had a class pet today. I say today because it is unlikely that they will have it tomorrow. Sitting prominently on the teacher’s desk, in a small water-bottle lined lovingly with pink tissue and pencil shavings lives Hanori (sp?) the class’s beloved…drum roll please…bottle fly. Get it? The bottle fly lives in a bottle. He. He. He.

In a tribute to the mental inadequacy of flies, Hanori the fly is trapped in an open bottle. He crawled in through the top and can’t seem to remember where the exit is. He spends his time walking around in circles and staring at me with the trillions of facets on his beady little eyes. His hobbies include climbing, licking the ground upon which he stands, and rubbing his hind legs together pensively.

Methinks that Hanori will not be with us for very long. Class pets live short, harried lives as it is, but I think this one may die sooner rather than later. Especially since his diet consists solely of pencil shavings.

Labels: Mortal Wounds

posted by Abez @ 7/15/2003 03:33:00 PM