Thursday, June 09, 2011

The Four-Story Jigsaw Puzzle



This is my entry for Indie Ink Writing Challenge - Week 5
---------------------------------------


As a kid I was really a riot. Right now, I am one millionth of a rebel I used to be. Sigh.


I loved playing in mud and making mud structures, mud buildings (castles?), mud pies, mud toys(!!), mud bears (sort of like gummy bears), mud trucks (I had a thing for automobiles then), mud bricks (seriously?), mud cones, mud version of Jack Frost. Mud everything. In short, I was obsessed with mud. My mom worried so much about this mud of an obsession. Haha. I played in the mud till all sorts of gross boils started springing up all over my hands. Till date I have a small, tiny circle-ish  patch near the knuckles of my left hand. As a sign of my epic muddy days.


I think those wounds got my mom sick with worry. My dad wasn't really bothered. He always said so long as I did not beat up some kid and get into trouble I was ok. He said, "You can beat. But if you get into trouble, don't expect me to come to any of those dreadfully boring Parent Teacher things with ugly teachers." Till date, he's never been to one so I am not sure how he assumed that 1) They were boring and 2) They had ugly teachers in my school.


I remember vividly when I built this absurd structure in mud, with great finesse. I prided in the right proportions of water I used, the best tools I used to give it a shape (apparently my lunch box and spoons to scoop up mud) and that I did it after class while all other "stupid" kids (how obnoxious could I get? haha) would play "chor police" in the ground. I don't remember what exactly happened then. I have no dramatic story attached to it - except that oddly I remember my dad had come to school to pick me up after that and the first thing he asked me was "Where the heck is the Diary Milk I gave you this morning?". I remember this maybe because in my mud obsessive life, a chocolate or candy had no place. I apparently forgot the chocolate in the deep realms of my backpack, melted by the scorching sun. My dad's reaction was a bit ballistic to my taste. He swore he was never buying me a Dairy Milk again. Through the entire ride home on his moped he kept swearing and swearing while I took delight in how many new swear words I was learning at the time. Once we reached home, he shoved it in the freezer and told me "Now you eat it like you would have ate it normally. Not now. Once that thing gets solid. Don't you ever leave a chocolate lying around like that". I think he had something nagging him about the Diary Milk. But I never asked. And he never got me a chocolate again. I didn't particularly care, since I never really loved chocolates/candies.


Ah, well, so much for the mud story.



---------------------------------------
My challenge came from WideLawns this week and the prompt was:

"Find the title of a news article from anywhere, any time. Use that as the title (metaphorically) of a personal essay about an event or events in your own life. Link back to the original article with the same title for fun."


Sorry, this post was very last minute and just about 15 mins ago I was reading this news article on New York Times and instantly remembered a part of my childhood :-) There is no jigsaw puzzle piece to my story, I think the "four-story" triggered my only childhood memory of building something. 

5 comments:

Arun said...

Haha! Well.. your dad was not completely wrong about teachers in school being boring and ugly. I can only think of Sophie ma'am who was good looking:)

>>>Through the entire ride home on his moped he kept swearing and swearing while I took delight in how many new swear words I was learning at the time.

Haha! I'm sure you did ;)

Unknown said...

I'm really intrigued by this story - who doesn't like chocolate? *lol* okay, the reason I'm intrigued is because of this fascination as a child I can see you ending up being an amazing sculptor or something similar!

Thanks for sharing - I would have eagerly digested the curse words too :) My Dad's favourite one (although you could see others bursting to come out) at times like this was "Twit!!" and then banging on the steering wheel a few times.

We make fun of him constantly now for that *lol*

Amanda said...

I love this. I love seeing your dad through your eyes as a kid. Good job.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ramana KV said...

Haha.. Nice.. :)