Friday, 26 October 2012

Cinderella

"When the going gets tough, " I grunted, "Unghhh, the tough get going. Aw, granny, c'mon ", I pleaded, pushing with all my might at the unrelenting backside. Gloomily, I surveyed the scene. One room, the one bed. The reluctant helper, myself, and the sulking old lady. Why oh, why, had i volunteered to help at the home for the aged. My friends, all the young people in the world, surely, were out partying, while i was labouring away at dirty bedsheets, with an uncooperating aged. An unappreciative, morose old lady at that, who thought she was the one doing me the favor.

It had all started with my conscience. Pangs of. What exactly was i doing with my life ? Partying, reading, then partying some more ! There had to be more to life then all of that. At that juncture, dear readers, i should have stamped on that conscience with hob nailed boots. I was all of seventeen, and i was me... Not some Buddha incarnate. I was also supposedly studying for my board exams. Did i even need to do anything else. I must have been out of mind, then, and someone should have hauled me off to the doctors, or better still the disc, instead of which i found myself sitting opposite a kindly matron, who, by means of lavishing praise on my poor unsuspecting head, enviegled me into a volunteer programme tending the aged at the Home, next to my college. So the upshot was, i found myself listening to the sound of my fellow teens, laughing raucously, or lounging around eyeing the newbies, while i toiled at ancient, smelly backsides. Bitterly, i beheld my best friend chatting up the girl i had staked for myself. Disbelievingly i saw them, fingers entwined gazing into each others eyes, while my old lady farted or burped benignly into my face. Life, was unfair. So unfair.

Then came the day of the prom. In spite of being otherwise occcupied, i managed to get me a date, a tux and courage to speak to the now that she had me snared, testy matron, who muttered under her breath about shirking teens, but gave me an off. But only after i had got my charge into diapers. So there i was, and there she was, a giant baby, with her privates entrusted to me. As i grappled with the mundane task of putting on a diaper on my old lady,  leaning across her in my desperation, the unthinkable happened. With a gentle sigh she did it. Right on my tux. As my date frantically pointed to her watch, from outside the window,then stomped off in a fury. The motion she hadn't passed for about a year, or so it seemed to my horrified eyes, as a stinking yellow stain spread across my snow white shirt.

Cinderella. That's how i felt at the prom. Gosh, yes! i did make it  after all, dear reader, so cheer up. My matron was not the gargoyle i had thought her to be when seeing my face she had burst into uncontrollable laughter, her ample girth not allowing her to roll on the floor. Within the hour she had procured another tux, her stunning niece and a private cab. I danced the night away, even as the other boys gaped at my girl, the most stunning one in the room. A day and a night, stuff that sticks in your memory and the grand children get regaled with.