The Family That Almost Got Me Killed

Most of my memories of childhood are marred with one trauma or the other, but this one sticks out the most.

I was only 6 years old, and my dad had made a new friend at work. His friend had a daughter who was my age, and as overly enthusiastic parents tend to do, both the dads forced us to meet and become acquainted. For the sake of this story, I'll call the daughter... 'Evil Kid'.

Now, my memories of us first meeting are pretty fuzzy - but I know that my parents planned a playdate at our house. My mom took painstaking measures to ensure we had a fun time, which involved a 'pool party' in our tub - complete with swimming costumes, bubble bath, and toys. And parental supervision, of course.

Out of the societal pressures of reciprocation, I was invited to spend the day at the daughter's house. 

Now, going to Evil Kid's house would have been fine, had that kid and her mom not been... BATSHIT INSANE.

I knew something was wrong the second I entered the house. The smiley demeanor of Evil Kid's mother, which was present whenever I encountered her previously, had suddenly disappeared. With an abruptness, she handed me a towel and said (almost in a scolding manner) "go take a shower if you want". 

A shower? I was so confused.

It dawned on me many years later that a 'shower' was Evil Kid's Mom's answer to the 'Pool Party' me and her daughter had at my place. As if those two were remotely similar??? And the fact that she expected me to 'shower' on my own for entertainment - with no swimsuit or toys, or even her own daughter involved - was super sketchy.

I politely refused, and I was ushered into playing some random games with Evil Kid. All seemed to be going well, until Evil Kid's Mom proposed that we go to the balcony to look at the birds. 

Birds? That sounded fun! As I entered the balcony, Evil Kid's Mom pushed me ahead and slammed the door shut behind me. My stomach turned as I heard the click of the lock. Why did she lock me out in her balcony? A part of me thought it might be a game - my 6-year-old brain was scrambling to find a reason for this woman's actions. Perhaps they were planning a surprise for me inside, and this was a method to keep me out of the way for a few minutes? 

I looked around the balcony to find the birds. Perhaps they would be cute and colorful, and kept in cages? But there was nothing. 

Nothing, until I looked up.

Horror dawned upon me as I saw crows circling the balcony. Crows that seemed to be coming closer and closer, swooping lower and lower each time. And all of a sudden, before I could even blink, one of  them made a beeline for me and pecked me hard on my head.

I shrieked and immediately tried to open the door. It was locked. I screamed as a second crow swooped down to peck me. (Writing this down sends shivers through my body, as I can clearly recall the pain of the hard pecks on my head.) This situation was something I couldn't have even had nightmares about - it was beyond my comprehension. After what seemed like an eternity with the attacking crows, the door swung open and Evil Kid and her mother stood cackling. The sinister gleam in the mother's eyes was something I will never forget.

"Did you have fun?" She asked.

I think my brain did me a favor by blocking out what happened within those moments after I ran inside the house for shelter. All I remember is, after that entire ordeal, Evil Kid's Dad was on the scene and excitedly offered to take us kids to the park. Getting out of that house was a relief, to say the least.

But little did I know, my day of terror was not over.

Now, you must be wondering - why on earth is the kid in this story being referred to as Evil, when so far, the mother has been the primary villain of my story?

It's because of what happened next.

As a child, I had never been left in a park to play - even with friends or cousins - without there being a responsible adult involved. However, Evil Kid's parents wasted no time in dropping us to a remote park after sunset and scrambling away for some "alone time". Being only 6 years old, I wasn't as skeeved out as I should have been, especially since I immediately got distracted by the rides in front of me.

If my memory serves me well, there was a merry-go-round, a sandbox, a see-saw, and those weird animals on springs that you need to hold on to for dear life so that you don't get catapulted into the stratosphere. But the one that caught my eye (and unfortunately, Evil Kid's eye too)... was The Slide.

The Slide was a magnanimous structure smack dab in the middle of the park. To me, it looked as tall as a small building (in reality, it was probably only 7 feet tall, max). Instead of having a ladder or stairs to get to the top however, this slide had a weird grill-and-monkey-bar structure which one had to navigate it order to reach the top.

Evil Kid suggested we have a race. I naively agreed.

I climbed, and climbed, and climbed with all my might. Being somewhat of a pudgy child, I never really saw being an American Ninja Warrior in my destiny - but that is exactly what I became in order to reach the top. And despite Evil Kid's claims of being the fastest one around, I beat her. I was about to turn around and gloat, when I felt a small hand on my back....

And a push.

When the push happened, I instinctively closed my eyes. The drop simultaneously felt years long and milliseconds short. 

I hit the ground. There was a CCRRRAAACKKKKK. Then silence. 

Then... pain shot up my entire right side.

I screamed.

It felt like I was screaming, sobbing, and whimpering in pain forever before help (if you can call it that) arrived in the form of Evil Kid's dad. I remember him crouching over me and asking me what was wrong, and all I could say in between sobs was that it hurt.

He picked me up in this arms and rushed me to the car, where Evil Kid's mom was sitting in suspicion. Most of my memory of this part is pretty fuzzy, but one thing stands out clearly - the mom asked me if I wanted... a Happy Meal.

Uh, NO THANKS?>>>???

I told her I wanted to go home. The ride home felt years long - but finally we arrived at my place, and I remember sitting in the back seat of the car in the dark while Evil Kid's parents rushed out to try and get their side of the story out to my parents before I could. 

It didn't make a difference though, because my parents didn't want to hear any of their nonsense - they came rushing straight to me, precariously removed me from the back seat - every single movement causing excruciating pain to jolt up my entire arm and torso - and asked me what happened.

I wasted no time in exposing Evil Kid for pushing me off the slide (yes, off the side of the slide, not down it, much to Evil Kid's parents' dismay) and my parents were LIVID.

Everything after that happened in a blur - I was rushed to the hospital, where the doctor informed my parents that I had broken my collarbone in three places.

The recovery took 3 months.

While writing this post, I corroborated a lot of information from my mom. She shared many other details that I wasn't previously aware of, which really showcased how warped that Evil Family was, such as: 

• Evil Kid's mother was distraught that her husband would 'lose his job' over this (because my dad and him were colleagues) - that's all she cried to my mom about when I was in hospital
• Evil Kid denied pushing me, and said I 'fell by myself'
• Evil Kid's mother kept bringing up how she offered me a Happy Meal, as if that were to make up for her horrendous babysitting skills
• The reason why I had felt like the ride home from the park took ages was because Evil Kid's parents were purposely stalling while trying to figure out what to say to my parents before facing them

It's safe to say that I never saw Evil Kid or her parents ever again.

The First Crime I Ever Committed

Guys. I know clickbait is dated, so I'm not even going to try it. The following event is 100% true to the title of this post... and also illegal.

Please, don't try this at (your) home(town).

this image is 100 percent authentic. pls don't h8.

As mentioned in countless previous posts, I was a very unproblematic child. I followed the rules and never gave my parents any issues. In fact, my impeccable behavior from my birth till my early teens is still spoken of highly as legendary family lore: I was that one girl who displayed model behavior at all times.

Which is why my ONE unlawful activity haunts me to this day.

What makes it worse is.... I was 9 years old.

Now, to understand the reasoning behind my actions, you need to be aware of my backstory first. My parents were smokers all throughout my childhood - my mum did it occasionally, but my dad was an addict. Growing up around this act, I never thought anything of it. In fact, I thought smoking was just something everyone did when they grew up (this thought was enabled due to literally every uncle, aunt, family-friend, house-help etc present in my childhood being a smoker as well).

It wasn't until third or fourth grade when I actually began learning about the harmful impact smoking had on one's body and health. Let me tell you... from a child's perspective, seeing a fresh pink lung compared to a rotten black one in a textbook is simultaneously the most fascinating and horrifying thing on the planet.

This is when I became acutely aware of the danger that my family members surrounded themselves with. Me and my little brother (who got a sneak peek of the blackened textbook lung in my homework) became my parents' worst nightmare - constantly talking to them about cancer, heart disease and strokes. We would cough in an exaggerated fashion whenever one of them lit up a cigarette, and always throw unpleasant (but very real) smoking-related death statistics at them at any opportunity.

Soon, it became too much for my mum to deal with. My brother had a breakthrough with her - after a tearful plea begging her to not kill herself through her actions, my mum was consumed with guilt and burnt out her final cigarette.

It was a success for my brother and I - but only fifty percent. My dad still smoked. Nothing went through to him. Every new year, he would make a resolution to not smoke... only to break it within the first 12 hours. He went through a pack or more a day, and seemed to turn a deaf ear to anything my brother and I had to say about the harm he was inflicting upon himself.

During this time, my brother, parents and I used to live with our grandparents. (Desi joint family systems, amirite?) This meant that I would accompany my grandma on her many grocery shopping excursions while my mum and dad worked or just existed fabulously and worry-free at home.

It was one of these grocery shopping trips that led to my very first criminal activity.

I was casually chilling in the checkout line when I saw something on the shelves on the side. In any normal supermarket, these shelves are reserved for gum. Or maybe your odd tabloid magazine. Or a hand sanitizer.

But nooo. This random supermarket in the heart of my hometown had...

Nicotine pills.

First of all, what???

Second of all... this was a huge breakthrough. 9 year old me had no idea that there was such advanced medical technology out there that could aid a person in their journey to stop smoking. According to the packaging, these nicotine pills were a substitute for cigarettes, and could help people quit smoking. I was enthralled, and a hundred percent convinced that this was the miracle cure my dad needed.

But there was a hitch. I was just a child, and a broke one at that. Since my grandma was the only adult in this situation who had any actual ability to purchase these nicotine pills, I obviously thought to ask her to buy them. There was no way she would say no, right? After all, it was her son-in-law we were talking about. The father of her grandchildren. These pills could help him stop smoking. They could save him from the legendary textbook black lung!!!! It was practically life-and-death.

So imagine my horror when my grandma said no.

''These things are just a gimmick,'' she said. ''Plus, they're too expensive.''

I was gobsmacked. Here's an accurate representation of my thought process:

I was torn. While 9 year old me couldn't understand the concept of a gimmick (perhaps due to the fact that I was raised on homeopathic medicine as a child ... um... how am I still alive? It cured my asthma btw) but I definitely did get that the nicotine pills might have been too expensive for my grandma to frivolously spend money on. If I recall correctly, it was a total of 150 rupees... which is close to nothing now, but back then it must have had some value.

I had only a few seconds to think. It was our turn at the checkout counter. My grandma was loading the groceries on the conveyor belt. The thought of being so close to what seemed like a miracle cure for my dad's smoking habit and not being able to attain it was killing me.

It was here that I made my decision... to commit a crime.

I edged as close to the pills as I could without looking suspicious. The checkout man was old and seemed too busy scanning my grandma's groceries to notice me. A quick glance around the supermarket showed that literally no one gave a single fuck about what I was about to do.

In one swift motion, I grabbed a bottle of pills and pocketed it.

That was it. It was in my pocket, hence I was in too deep to back out now. If I took the pills out, someone might have seen me and question why it was in my pocket in the first place. So there was nothing else I could do but pretend that absolutely nothing happened and pray that no one noticed the slight bulge in the side of my dress.

The few minutes that took place while the groceries were being bagged and paid for were the most agonizing of my life. Just knowing that I had unlawfully swiped something from the grocery store and that the item in question was literally in my pocket while my grandma was making a completely lawful transaction like the law-abiding citizen she is.... Um. Let's just say it was a lot.

In those days, supermarkets at my hometown didn't have those fancy gates that beeped if you passed them with something you hadn't paid for. Since I had managed to evade the eyes of my grandma, the checkout guy, any form of security and all the other shoppers alike, I had successfully completed my first ever crime.

Theft.

Was I proud? Definitely not. But there certainly was a feeling of joy creeping over me once I realized that I had gotten away with stealing the nicotine pills. Only because, in my head, it was rationalized with the notion of helping my dad break his addiction to cigarettes. Which obviously meant that I was saving his life (... right?).

It took me a couple of days to actually present the pills to my dad. Once I did, he questioned me about where I got them from. Did I break down and confess my crime, return the bottle and clear my conscience? Nope. 9 year old me was slick. I told him that I had saved up money for week in order to buy these for him, and I bought them on a trip to the grocery store with my grandma. (Yes, apart from my full-time job as a grocery store burglar, I also dabbled in lying.)

The look on my dad's face was one to remember. At the time I thought he wore an expression of overwhelming pride and joy for the lengths his little girl would go to protect her dad from harm. Looking back though, it definitely seemed like a look of exasperation mingled with pity.

 My dad thanked me and took the bottle from my hand.

SUCCESS! I thought to myself. I had done it. My dad would take a pill, realize that he didn't need cigarettes anymore, chuck them out, and start a new life as a healthy man.

I had done it.

...

Or so I thought.

It literally took my dad two days to pull out a cigarette and smoke it in front of me with no shame. When I questioned him about the pills, he said they had helped reduce the number of cigarettes he had in a day, and they were certainly working.

I'm pretty sure he was bullshitting, because this man did not stop smoking for the next 14 years. He continued making his new years resolutions, and also continued to break them. He swore he would stop when my little sister was born, but he literally stepped out for a smoke break at the hospital after she arrived into this world. He smoked after every meal, and during every drive. He smoked when he was stressed, and when he was happy.

His final cigarette was just before he doubled up in the middle of our living room with a heart attack.

Don't worry, he survived.

AND QUIT SMOKING.

No thanks to the theft I committed at age 9. My first crime.

Looking back at all these events, I wonder if stealing was worth it. (Definitely not). I also wonder if the grocery store ever realised that they had one bottle of nicotine pills missing from their inventory. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and think about doing the right thing and sending them 150 rupees just to atone for my sins. (In this day and age, that might not even cover the cost of a stick of gum, but whatever.) I also can't help but wonder if all the shitty events in my life are due to karma for stealing those very pills from an honest business (regardless of my very pure intentions). Who knows.

ANYWAY. I feel like I need to let everyone know that this was the first and last time I ever stole anything from anyone or anywhere. Contrary to what you might think, I do not have an illustrious history of criminal activity. I'm serious. Have I committed other... not-so-serious crimes though? Yes. This post wasn't titled 'The FIRST Crime I Ever Committed' by mistake. There have been other minor illegalities that have taken place in my life. And not all of them took place in my childhood.

Maybe I'll write about them when the shame wears off.

See you really soon,

Furree

The first time I ever said a swear word out loud

I'd like to think I had a liberal upbringing.

I really do.

I was born in the 90s, my parents were in their 20s, life was pretty chill. Never did anyone in my immediate family ever force me to do anything or behave a certain way. Growing up, I had open discussions about a lot of things with my parents - including words and their meanings, especially the stuff I'd heard in school or on TV. Whenever I was confused about anything, I was explained in a PG fashion and sent on my way.

This is why I think all the conservatism of my childhood was literally my own fault. I don't know where I got the ideas that dating boys was wrong, kissing was disgusting, and saying swear words was THE ABSOLUTE SIN, because my parents never told me any of these things. Neither did my grandparents, come to think of it (the only thing I absolutely HAD to do in front of my family was display impeccable table manners). I suppose the process of growing up in Pakistan just twists your moral compass in a way that your childhood is screwed up with half-baked truths and the fear of doing anything wrong.

This means, throughout my childhood, I NEVER swore. Never. Not when I was enraged about losing a very intense game of Name Place Animal Thing, not when I broke my collarbone in three places after falling off a slide... not even when I stubbed my poor defenseless pinky toe on the edge of a wooden table (the worst kind of pain one can ever imagine). I just always had this belief that I would be sinning if I swore.

So, as you can imagine, it must have taken something HUGE to have me swear aloud for the very first time.

It all started in Grade 6. After suffering bullying from the same group of girls from Grade 2 till 5 (now that's a whole other blog post altogether), I was FINALLY put in a new classroom entirely. My new classmates were different from the rest. They spoke kindly to me, they included me in everything, they came over to my house, they appreciated my hobbies. Having been deprived of that kind of camaraderie for years, I was desperate to do anything for their validation and friendship (they never made me feel this way, it was just my own insecurities playing up). So when one of the girls invited me to join their Secret Book Club, I was enthralled.

Now, if you think the Secret Book Club was about reading books, you're wrong.

It was literally a club about ONE book which was TOP SECRET.

Why?

Because all of us had to write our secrets in it.

If you think think is weird and cultish.... I agree. But back then it just seemed like the norm for 10-12 year olds to partake in such activities.

The secret book was a green notebook with white polka dots on it. Pakistanis, please don't hate on my non-patriotic approach - but that's a garish color combination, especially for a piece of stationary. Anyway. Every week, one of us in the 'club' had to write something that was either a juicy piece of gossip or a personal secret, and then pass it on to the other member of the club when the week was up. This happened smoothly for a few months, so there was a fair amount of content in that book.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure the material devolved from our own secrets to just petty gossip about everyone else quick enough. I do feel guilty for engaging in that, but it wasn't anything harmful or vicious. Most of the pages had stuff like 'I think this girl likes that boy' or 'so-and-so only gets good grades because he's the teacher's son' (WHICH WAS TRUE!!!). Despite the shallow nature of the content itself, a lot of us put in loads of effort to make the actual notebook look pretty. Glitter glue, multi-colored pens, pockets made out of fabric - there was some pretty artsy stuff happening in there.

I had possessed the book a few times, and was pretty careful with it every time I had it. I only wrote in it during break/lunch time or a free lesson - I never let any of the students outside of our secret book club know of its existence. I prided myself on being vigilant - but alas, even the best of us make mistakes.

It all happened so fast. It was break time - I had written something in the book, and absentmindedly left it on my desk instead of putting it in my bag. Break ended and the lesson began. We were around 15 minutes into the lesson when I realized that the book was sitting right there on my desk, in all its green-and-white glory.

Accurate representation of what I thought it looked like on my desk.

It was miraculous that no one had spotted it already. In hindsight, what I should have done was brushed it off and waited for the end of the lesson to casually slip it into my bag. But of course, as an eleven year old with no common sense, I did what made the most sense to me at the time.

Within seconds, I:

• let out an audible gasp which reverberated across the silent classroom
• yanked the book from the desk in full view of everyone who had turned to look at me after the aforementioned gasp
• hurriedly attempted to stuff the book in my bag, spilling out all the other contents

All this commotion was enough to attract the teacher's attention. She marched over and snatched the book out of my bag, where it still wasn't quite stuffed in properly.

I imagine it looked pretty much like this to her.

I was horrified. This book was one of the key elements of my friendship with some of the other girls in my class. This book was labored on with so much effort and glue by everyone. This book had eluded everyone's eyes for such a long time. This book..... had EVERYONE'S SECRETS.

And now, a teacher had it in her hand.

To her credit, she didn't mortify me further by opening it up and reading out the contents like other teachers would have done. After she had taken it from my bag, all she did was walk back to her desk and keep it there. It was then I realized that the other girls who were a part of the Secret Book Club were staring at me. For a bunch of eleven year old girls, having a teacher read all their secrets was pretty much the worst thing that could happen. And I was the facilitator of their doom ;(.

An entire week passed, and nothing had happened. I kept expecting a telling-off, a thorough interrogation, or at the very least SOME sort of acknowledgement about the contents of the book. But the teacher seemed to have either forgotten about it or was saving some sort of punishment for me (and the others) for later.

While she didn't say anything, I did receive an earful from my friends. They blamed me for being careless - and rightfully so. I deserved that. They didn't do anything drastic like end the friendship over it, but they were understandably mad. It was the reaction from the other students in the classroom that was both annoying and unprecedented.

Out of the other students was a girl who was the entire package: smart, good-looking and super popular. It's like everyone in school was given a triangle diagram where they could only pick two sides, but she cheated the system and had all three.

CHOOSE 2 LOSE OUT ON THE THIRD

I was always on civil terms with her. But after the incident of the teacher finding out about The Secret Book, that girl completely flipped. Since she wasn't part of the club, she didn't actually know about what was in it - but that didn't stop her from making far-fetched assumptions that everything in the book was somehow about her.

To be specific, this girl thought that:

• the pages were filled with details about her and a guy she liked, and how they were seeing each other
• we obsessed over her high grades in every subject
• we made fun of her straight hair (????)

Not only was she wrong about what we wrote, she was wrong with her entire assumption that we wrote anything about her at all. You see, people who get all three sides of the triangle are automatically immune from any sort of talk about them. It's the law. This is why I got so annoyed. She literally made a huger deal out of the teacher finding out about the book than any of my friends did, because she somehow thought she would be the most impacted by its discovery as opposed to the ACTUAL producers of the damned book.

This girl made my life hell for the entire week. I was already under a lot of pressure from losing the book, having the looming thought of a punishment awaiting, trying to mend the precarious friendship between all the other members of the Secret Book Club... having that girl somehow make all of this about HER was just too much.

I felt like.... I was about to swear.

Now, this thought didn't occur to me at once. It definitely cooked in my brain for the entire week. As I mentioned earlier on in this post, I was highly opposed to swearing. I just thought it was wrong. Before this incident, I couldn't have even fathomed tainting my pristine eleven-year-old tongue by uttering any bad word. But here I stood, so IRRITATED by this one person, I was willing to risk it all.

I carefully planned my move. The next time she would barge up to me with her complaints, I would silence her with a sharp, quick-witted statement and ONE swear word. I spent time deliberating over which word to use for maximum impact. I crafted that sentence with care. I was ready.

Towards the end of the week, my chance finally arrived. The girl was ready to approach me and chide me for all my wrongdoings. She was about to spew her narcissistic rant about how her entire future  was ruined due to some non-existent childish notes about her in some ugly, green book. But I was prepared.

Her: Fareeha, I think-
Me: JUST STOP WITH YOUR BULLSHIT.

Now, that echoed. It literally went ((Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.)) . 

She was stunned into silence. Heck, I was stunned into silence. Even though I hadn't shouted it out, it seemed like everyone had heard it. But the looks I received weren't those of disappointment or disgust. They were of awe. I did it. I SWORE AT THE SMART, POPULAR, GOOD-LOOKING GIRL THAT WOULDN'T SHUT UP! It was my first swear word, and I felt pretty good about it. And it did the job - she never brought up the book again.

A few days later, after the entire incident was almost completely forgotten by all the students, the teacher walked up to me and dropped the book off at my desk without a word. That's it. Everything my friends and I (and that girl) were stressing about was a plain old confiscation. The book didn't even look like it had been rifled through. And that was that. No punishment, no consequence. 

The rest of Grade 6 went pretty smoothly. I didn't ever feel the need to swear again that year, because that one 'bullshit' made a phenomenal impact which left me in an afterglow for months. I don't know if it was because no one got in trouble for the book, or if swearing was a badass move that no one expected from me... OR if it was because everyone was thankful that I shut up the girl's annoying nagging - but yeah, I definitely came out a winner.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story but there definitely is a takeaway of some sort:

The Most Terrifying Moment Of My Life

Like almost every person in this entire world, I have had my fair share of frightening experiences throughout life. Things that have been alarming, such as that one time the fire alarm rang in school (I can't believe I thought I could get away with such a pathetic joke), and that one scary book I just couldn't get over (I had to sleep with the lights on for a year week).

There have only been a few moments in my life when I have almost wet myself in utter terror, and I am about to share one (that's right, only ONE) of those moments with you.

Rather than tell you what exactly happened right in the beginning of this post, I'll just let you discover it for yourself as you read along.

This terrifying moment took place when I was around 9 years old. I had to attend a wedding of lord knows who - I probably can't remember because all that is overshadowed by the vivid recollection of horror I experienced that day - and the venue was outdoors.

Outdoor weddings are a pain in the summertime - everyone's got large and unsightly sweat patches on their fanciest clothes, all the women have their makeup melting off, there are insects buzzing around and the sickening heat of the artificial lights set up everywhere to make it easy for (pseudo)photographers to shoot pictures just puts everyone in a rotten mood.

I know you probably couldn't figure out what this image was the first (and second, third, fourth) time you looked at it, so here's the explanation: it's a bunch of guests under the wedding marquee outdoors, at night.

As you all must know, attending weddings is such a tedious and boring thing to do for practically all 9 year old children. The fact that kids aren't allowed to do anything without their parents and other older relatives snapping at them to "stop running!" "keep quiet!" and "GET YOUR HANDS OFF THE ICE CREAM YOU HAVEN'T HAD YOUR DINNER YET YOU LITTLE SHIT" makes it all the more unappealing.

I was the typical 9 year old at that wedding, bored out of my mind, wanting to get a fancy picture snapped of myself sitting between the bride and groom but not being allowed to, and missing the comfort of my bed and Nickelodeon on TV. I had absolutely nothing to do. The other kids there were strange and weird and ugly so I didn't want to interact with them. The food wasn't served yet, so I couldn't occupy myself with that. All the adults were busy doing boring adult things like pretending to listen to each other and displaying their fake laughter skills.

I decided to find a nice and safe way to entertain myself. I have no idea how my 9-year-old mind worked back then, but I'm pretty sure it was slightly mental, because I made up a ridiculous game of challenging myself to sit on each and every chair in the venue.

Now, there must have been three hundred chairs there. This made the entire situation Fear-Factor-ish. Or Guinness World Record-ish.Would I be able to sit on EVERY chair? How would I sit on the chairs that were already occupied? I had to be stealthy and quick, and wait for everyone to head to the buffet table, or to the bride and groom to congratulate them, so that their seats would be momentarily free in order for me to rest my butt on them for a couple of seconds.

I decided to start right at the end of the venue, and make my way to the front. I imagine I must have looked like a total imbecile changing my seat every second, but my 9-year-old self wasn't conscious of that at all.

What I thought I looked like:

What I actually looked like:

and yes the sky was actually darker in real than in my imagination OKAY

Anyway, I didn't get too far in the game, because something happened.

Something so terrible, so horrendous, so utterly disgusting, that a decade later, I still shudder whenever I think of it.

I was innocently playing my game, still nowhere near the front of the wedding venue, when I felt something land on my shoulder.

It was heavy. It was moving. Without turning my head, I tried to look at it from the corner of my eyes. And that's when I saw the most horrific thing in the entire universe.

A COCKROACH.

It was the largest cockroach I had ever seen in my life. It was a loathsome, hideous, HUGE creature. Black and brown, the size of my palm, waving its foul antennas and legs in the most ghastly way. It was squirming repulsively, like some evil mutant from a sick low budget horror movie. And, a friendly reminder: it was on my goddamn shoulder.

I would have freaked out and ululated my lungs right up by hysterically screaming, but the fear of that... THING... had paralyzed me. I was petrified, sort of like all those poor people who indirectly looked in the eyes of a Basilisk in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. My mind was going wild with images of how the abnormally huge cockroach would kill me by slashing my jugular vein with its poisonous leg-claws, or maybe somehow swallow my head up. I wanted to cry for help as loud as possible. But all I could express externally was a tiny, terrified whimper.

I could feel myself getting dizzy and about to faint. Mr. Frickin Huge Cockroach was still relaxing on my shoulder like it was the bloody beach. Not a care in the world for the amount of trauma it was giving to the poor, defenseless girl it had chosen to land on. I thought the horror would never end. But all of a sudden, something unimaginably terrible happened.

That cockroach, emitting a loud buzz (that will forever haunt me in my dreams), jerked around, and WINGS SPROUTED FROM ITS BACK.

YES. WINGS.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was not just once of the largest cockroaches I had ever encountered in my life, but it was also A FRICKIN MUTATED FLYING COCKROACH.

I can't be too sure, but I think I wet myself in terror. That's probably the first and last time I wet myself unintentionally after outgrowing my diaper stage. You can imagine how I was feeling. Or wait, scratch that - NOBODY can empathize with the level of fright I experienced in that moment. I'm calling it a 'moment' because I'm pretty sure all this took place in less than ten seconds, even though it felt like a lifetime to me.

So. Yes. The bloody cockroach had WINGS. It unfurled them and took off right in front of my face. And that's when I got a good look at the fella.

That was not a cockroach, folks. It was something nightmares are made of. I will never forget the (possible) split-second eye contact we made before it spazzed out into the night. That thing was the spawn of the devil. IT WAS THE ANTICHRIST.

original illustration credit

The sense of relief didn't wash over me like I had expected it to. It sort of trickled in, slowly relaxing my tightened muscles and allowing me to breathe little by little, till I felt fairly normal again (but still slightly queasy).

It then occurred to me to get the hell away from the back of the wedding venue, and go straight to the front where the rest of my family was seated. All thoughts about the (lame) game I was playing were wiped from my mind. I'll admit this... I was happy to get out of that situation with my life shoulder intact.

And that, girls and boys, was the most terrifying moment of my life.

Don't you dare laugh at me.

x

Has there ever been a moment in your life that was a culmination of sheer terror, fear, horror and mortification? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS AND WE'LL SHARE OUR MISERY!

Till next time, see you later, alligator.

Embarrassing Stuff That's Happened To Me In School

Tripping and falling on the staircase in front of everyone

Being called up to the board to solve a question in the subject I was weakest at (in front of everyone who seemingly knew the answer)

Saliva flying out of my mouth and landing on the person in front of me when I was talking too fast

Letting out an extremely stinky (and noisy) fart in the middle of a silent classroom

 

Guys, I've got some good news. I'm in University now! It's been a tough journey to get here, but I'm grateful for all the craziness I've had to experience these past few years because it's made me who I am today. Since I've begun a new journey on the educational front, I decided to give a tribute to my pre-home-school days, (when I actually went to a real school) through this blog post. I would love to know your embarrassing moments (maybe just so I can feel a little better about mine), so please do share! Here's to new beginnings and a future of (hopefully) less embarrassing events.

p.s. I've changed my drawing style a little, do you like it?

My First Rejection

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Today, I have decided to share one of my deepest, darkest secrets that I had been planning to take to the grave with me. But since I now find humour in this situation, I'm so totally writing a blog post about it!

This is the story of how I got rejected by one of the strongest crushes I have ever had.

I was only 13 when this incident happened. To this day, I'm still unsure about his age, though I'd probably say he was 15 when I first saw him.

To me, he looked like:

But in reality, he looked like:

I think puppy love does that to a person. It totally muddles up the brain and makes everything look wonderful when it's actually quite... average. I was a victim of this brain-mess-up! My friends had no idea what I saw in him (five years later, neither do I).

This epic crush-story began in the...

SCHOOL BUS.

Unlike the conventional bright yellow school buses the entire universe is accustomed to, my school bus was a strange shade of GREEN. (I think the colour contributed a whole lot to the 'strange' feelings felt in its confines.) 

Here's an incredibly detailed drawing I made to give all of you a crystal clear idea of the bus:

my drawings are just too vivid! :')

It all started during the middle of the first week of school. I got on the bus in the morning, made my way to the back where most of the girls usually sat. In the hour-long bus ride, we picked many students from their respective homes. Every time the bus stopped, a casual glance was directed towards the bus door in mild interest to see who was coming in.

AND THEN.

I SAW.

HIM.

It was exactly like this, minus the yellow background and floating hearts.

So began the stupidest and longest crush I ever had.

It went on for around nearly the entire school year, of which I spent 75% of the time staring at the back of his head with all my concentration, waiting for him to feel the telepathic waves I was sending him across the school bus. Since I was 13 at that time, I was way less gutsy and confident than I am now, hence "making the first move" was so totally not what I was ready to do.

During the first few months of this crush, he never even noticed my existence! Every time in the afternoon when I had to walk from the back of the bus to the front to exit it once my stop came, I passed him with my breath held and my heart jammed in my throat. AND HE NEVER NOTICED. Granted, I was going through my awkward stage that time and was, to put it kindly, not much of a looker, but it was pretty disappointing that I was a completely invisible person to him. I could have been one of the many pieces of used gum stuck under the bus seats for all he cared.

Anyway, doing what any unnoticed socially awkward teen does best, I stalked him on Facebook. I found his profile, and since his privacy settings weren't so strict, I could see one of his photo albums.

Ladies and gentlemen, that album was called:

"BODYBUILDER."

Now, if back then I were the way I am right now, I would have laughed my butt off and given up instantly. After all, what scrawny teen with no muscles posing in his tiled bathroom (with his t-shirt sleeves rolled up to show what were clearly not biceps but STICKS) would call himself a 'BODYBUILDER"? And what intelligent girl would fall for someone who thought the epitome of high-school success was to look like a complete douchebag?

Alas, I was a dumb fool, because at that time, my 13 year old mind processed this:

I added the duckface purely because i think he was quite capable of making it.

as this:

Image credit: http://favim.com/image/524055/

Yeah. I was an idiot.

Moving on, even though I stalked his Facebook profile a zillion times, I didn't have the courage to add him up for atleast a few months. One day, I mustered up all my courage and sent him a friend request. To my dismay, the next day he declined it and then BLOCKED ME. After being emo about it for a while, I trusted a good friend of mine to add him through her account, become friendly with him and then find out what he thought about me (because at that time, I was a persistent girl). After much convincing, my friend agreed to do my dirty work (and she was so lazy it took her like a couple of weeks just to add him). She became his Facebook friend and began Operation: Become My Friend's Crush's Friend.

FINALLY, after an agonizing month and a half, she came to me with news. But to my utmost horror, instead of just asking my crush what he thought about me, she TOLD HIM THAT I HAD A MASSIVE CRUSH ON HIM!!! That was so not my plan. I didn't want him to think that I liked him, let alone the fact that I obsessed over him every moment of everyday. I was so mad at my friend, but the feeling of anxiety and anticipation for his reply trumped that. 

AND DO YOU GUYS WANT TO KNOW WHAT HE REPLIED?????

me:

My dismay was also partially due to realizing that both my arms were sticking out from the left side of my body.

TOTALLY NOT HIS TYPE?! That was something I had never heard before regarding myself. I mean, what made me "totally not his type"? He didn't even know me!

The rage and sadness that ensued for the rest of the school year was pretty awful. I had to share the school bus with that evil cow, the guy who judged me before even knowing me. Here I was, holding the largest crush I had ever had in my heart, being all "omg-he's-so-cute" whenever the topic of him arose, and there he was being all "omg-she's-not-my-type-lolz"!

Obviously, the crush faded away very quickly after the rejection of my feelings. What I felt, though not being a 'heartbreak' (I was too young for that, seriously), was enough for me to realize that the idiot was not worth it. That, and the fact that another guy started taking interest in me so my attention was diverted to him (trust me, my middle and high school life involved a lot of better looking guys).

Today, around 5+ years later, this incident may not have played a role in changing the way I am as a person, but it has made me thankful about how I left middle and high school puppy love behind. And of course, when that idiot friend-requested me a couple of days ago (I guess he unblocked me somewhere along the line), I declined his request and blocked him with a smile on my face.

Twisted Antics of My Childhood

all of us have done something strange during our childhood years. we've had our share of quirks and faults and moments where we've been caught doing something (innocently) weird and awkward when we were little.

some of my childhood weirdness has still stuck with me during my teenage years (proof above). but that's not what i'm going to talk about in this post. i'm going to enlighten you guys on the stuff that i've thankfully stopped doing, and the strange kiddish habits that i am glad to have grown out of.

i used to indulge in a lot of activities that might never be considered 'normal' for a child. some of these include:

chewing on the limbs of my dolls

it started when i was 3 years old, when i first got a taste of sleeping away from my mum whenever she used to go out at night with my dad. on those particular nights i used to sleep in a tiny, comfortable bed in my grandparents' room, and have my grandmum tuck me in each night. i used to enjoy the quality time i spent with my grandparents, but on one night, i was super cranky and decided that i really missed my mum and wanted to sleep between my parents on their bed, no matter what. since my mum and dad were out, and my grandparents were not in their room at that particular moment, i got extremely irritated and wanted to take out my frustration in the most attention-grabbing way possible. 

due to the fact that i was too young to think of all the absurd things that i was capable of doing to achieve the reaction i wanted, i did the first thing that came to my mind: grab a Waitress Barbie doll directly in my line of sight and take out my anger on her in doll-talk. when that didn't prove satisfactory, i got even more annoyed and did the most unladylike thing i could have ever done at that moment: viciously gnawed on the Waitress Barbie doll's arm.

it was fifteen minutes into that barbaric act when my sense snapped back into me and i realized what i was doing. i slowly unclenched my jaw and freed the Waitress Barbie doll's arm from my mouth, and when i looked at it, i let out a huge shriek. the doll's arm was a hideously mangled mess. it then dawned on me that i had destroyed something dear to me just because of a mood swing, and that made me really, really upset. i started wailing and crying at the top of my voice. it took me a couple of days to get over it.

once the OMG-i-killed-Waitress-Barbie phase was over, i realized that maybe the idea of putting a doll's limb in my mouth wasn't such a bad idea, and i had just taken it a little too far on the first try. the soft plastic of my other Barbies' legs and arms became a temptation. whilst playing with them i nibbled here and there, and began to gently chew on them when i was out of other stuff to do. this carried on for a couple of years, till i had perfected the act of chewing and left no marks at all. 

i can't remember how i stopped.

eating the biscuit part of an Oreo and leaving the cream

this practically made me an outcast among my first and second grade peeps. all the children used to do the 'in' thing in school: lick the white cream of the Oreo cookie and discard the black biscuit part. i on the other hand, used to scrape the white cream off the nearest surface and devour the biscuit with pleasure that was not understandable to anyone my age or below.

me

them (with cream in their mouths)

NO ONE GOT THAT I DIDN'T LIKE THE CREAM. i just didn't. i was ridiculed for this act of not-cream-liking for at least two years. and then Chips Ahoy became the new thing to eat.

imagining every person under a motorcycle helmet to be a total hero

this was something i had decided to take with me to the grave, but i feel like talking about it all of a sudden. so yeah, i might regret it later because it is one of the most embarrassing parts of my little-girl-ness. 

from ages 4 to 7, whenever i saw a motorcyclist wearing a helmet that covered his entire face, i always imagined the face underneath to me something like this:

hence making all motorcyclists with helmets+visors look like this to me:

even though it was apparent to the rest of the world that those guys must have been 30-year-old uncles or pimply teenagers or just extremely plain-looking human beings. I HAD A CRUSH ON EVERY MOTORCYCLIST WITH A NON-VISIBLE FACE. you can laugh now.

favouring the colour black in every drawing

when i was in preschool, all my teachers were worried. they thought i was a disturbed child, solely on the basis that while all my fellow classmates were making pretty pictures out of bright colours, i was scribbling away with a single black colour pencil on whatever drawing assignment i had been given to do. my mum was not at all perturbed. she said i was a happy child and encouraged me to draw as i pleased. the teachers all showed their concern, but little-me proved them wrong by starting to use bright colours after a while.

teacher and i.

i never stopped with the bright-colour-usage after that. just look at my blog. :P and my favourite colour is orange since as long as i can remember.

x

speaking of remembering, this is all i can remember for now :O which is enough to give you an idea of how strangely i used to behave when i was a child. oh well. 

i am glad to have changed. i stopped playing with dolls when i was 11. i can't remember the last time i ate an Oreo. i barely spare a glance at motorcyclists. i love colours.

please make me feel better about little-girl-me and share your weird childhood behavior, too! i would love to know how weird we've all been as little kids.

x

this is a repost.  i added the drawings.