Friday, November 16, 2012

She Can't Live Without Her Hair Straightener


People say, albeit I refuse to believe, that they can’t even stand the thought of living without a specific someONE. But what amazes me is to see those people who fail to think about moving on with their lives without a specific someTHING. Of course I refuse to believe that too. How can people just get so sentimentally attached to their belongings that they don’t even want to consider their lives without those things. Man is a selfish piece of flesh, isn’t he?  When he says that he can’t live without something, even that includes his personal interest, his selfishness and wanting to have his belongings remain with him, forever.

Lying down comfortably, I was flipping through the TV channels when I heard someone coming down the stairs. Someone plunged inside the room, taking in long teary gasps. Before I could manage to disturb my comfy position (not that I was planning to do that) and see who it was, the figure stood before me like a pillar with a cracking yet loud voice. “Have you *gasp* seen my hair straightener’s *gasp* adapter?”

Alright now, mind if I demonstrate what I saw before me?

My sister, of course my elder sister since I’m the youngest duck of my family, was standing before me. Her damp hair, since she had washed it just a few minutes before, was covered in a towel and she was looking down at me with her eyes that were glistening with tears and had gone all red with severe crying (I bet a blurry image of me was what her vision could make out) and her face was all – ALL as in ALL! – soaked in tears. In one hand, she was holding her hair straightener with its plug’s pins aiming toward me, and the other hand kept cleaning her tears from the soaking face of hers which, quite frankly, was of no use since as soon as she would clean a dribble of tear from her cheek two more would pour down giving the effect of a small lake finding its way down through the path of her cheeks.

Ok yeah so I looked at her and I did this great effort to stifle my laugh after seeing that ‘situation’ in front of me. So I held back this deep desire to laugh like a mentally impaired and retorted to her in as normal way as I could help out. My response was simple and clear. “No!” I said with a shrug and no sooner had I spoken that one rusty word than another fresh stream of tears came down and washed her face. She cried. I laughed. This time my reaction was spontaneous and I couldn't help it. I stifled my laugh into a smile grin though and asked her what was with all that crying. She sat down before me and broke down into yet another sea of tears and gasps and sniffles and started whimpering her worry to me which sounded nothing more than gibberish to me. After a while I finally figured out what her impossible-to-decipher teary voice told me. Apparently her straightener's adapter - and well this straightener’s  plug has those alien pins that go in none of the sockets in our house so the plug was capped with an adapter because the adapter’s plug can go easily inside the sockets - had gone missing and she couldn’t search for it ANYWHERE (according to her) and that of course meant that the piece of electronic equipment she was holding in her hand was totally useless without it so when her search for that adapter failed completely, she started to cry.

“Why are you crying this way?” I had to ask. “Stop crying alright? It must be here somewhere. It’s somewhere inside the house. Chill.” But that didn’t help a speck in controlling her tears and she just looked around the room in such helpless way that I couldn’t help but start working my mind to help her in any possible way that could just rub that look off her face. Apparently, the help didn’t involve just the usage of my brains. I had to disturb my comfort-ness and get to my feet. I told her to check out this other adapter and see if the straightener’s plug goes in it. But, like a stubborn brat, she refused to get up. It seemed to me like the end of the world for her. I reckoned as if she had accepted the defeat and was waiting for the misery to befall totally and completely and absolutely on her. She just did not get up. For a moment, I felt like ok it’s not my problem that you just cannot seem to find that freaking adapter and now totally surrendering to make yourself look miserable more than a starving 2 year old gypsy kid. But something about that wet, teary wrecked face and the inevitable reason of me being a human being with emotions and a sense of nobility that couldn’t bear to see her miserable face and listen her shaky long gasps without budging myself to do anything, just anything to stop making her feel this way, made me stand up and search for an adapter, that could fit in that straightener’s alien plug. Frankly it just took me less than a minute to find it and give it to her and ask her to see if that would work. For a moment, her gasps stopped. THANKFULLY. And to my utter satisfaction and her ultimate survival, it WORKED. She stopped crying. I threw upon her that condescending look. For a minute, it occurred to me that she felt a little stupid for that little performance of misery she gave not very long ago. Out of the guilt, she even refused to show that feeling of ecstasy that she was surly having, to appear on her visage. But I didn’t mind that. I was contented to see that her wrecked looks had actually vanished. Getting back to going through the ever boring session of flipping through the channels, I picked up the remote control once again. She silently went back upstairs with the new adapter and her straightener, and left me wondering about my firm belief on defying the overrated statement that says “I cannot live without *insert whatever that could be*.”

I am now starting to have second thoughts.