..And the World laughs louder..

“Whoa! A whole 3 years in this flat and I still point out directions like I was still in our previous flat.”

“What difference does that make? Both flats are in the same building. The colony gate is at the same place whether you’re in the old flat or this one. Directions same.”

“Hey! Gate is at the same place, but the flat’s orientation changes. Both flats are at right angles to each other, so when I point out a particular place sitting home, I point at perpendicularly opposite directions, from that flat and this.”

“Rubbish!”

“I’m into Engineering Drawing since 3 years now, and you’re telling me?”

“Someone rightly said education never really helps a person earn common sense! “

At that, I quit eating the fruits she was slicing for me and leave the room.

This is one of the most common arguments my mom and I have often. She is by all means smarter than me, has seen life the ways I haven’t, has more years to her advantage and is definitely always darned right in judging people, and price-tags. Her stance in this case, I guess is similar to sitting on the North Pole and pointing out the South Pole, same from wherever you point. But this one argument really gets to me. Usually I shrug it off, angered but shrug it off, while mom has her last laugh as usual. She always does. But this time, I know I’m right and could take these accusations of lack of common sense and all-brains-and no-earthly-matter no longer. And so I walk out.

Not my first time, not my first challenger.

I was in the 3^rd grade when we, my friends and I, were playing a game called ‘Check’, a game of spelling out country names, one letter and one player at a time, where the last player finally guesses the name. The first player got the letter ‘S’. Second player said, “E”. My turn next and I said, ”Y”. There stalled the game. Everyone put up a fit saying there isn’t any country that starts with a ‘SEY’. I insisted there was. That round was cancelled and I was asked to name the country. “Seychelles”, I said, happy to be the one knowing more than the rest (most of them were older than me). The result however, was a cackle of laughter. They all agreed unanimously that there existed no such place. “It’s an island in South America!”, I said. Another round of laughter. I let them have their time of glee and kept silent for the rest of the evening.

Next evening, I promptly returned with an Atlas in hand. Pointed out Seychelles on the World Map, much to the amusement of my friends, who, were now laughing at my concern of proving myself over a silly game of Check. I was disappointed. It wasn’t all just about the game, was it?

There have been many more such instances, fellow students laughing at my right answers without knowing that fact themselves, friends calling my past reminiscences gibberish saying, ”What! Did you dream of all that? We don’t think all that ever happened for real!” I can forget things, but how can I make up incidences that never happened? And why would I anyway, when there was no need to make stuff up?

Altogether a silly concern, but it still hurts the egoist in me. And it gets worse when they shrug me off when I offer to prove myself right. No matter how tiny the cross ridicule, I cannot take one for something I know I’m right in, or know more about.

Explains why people close to me call me arrogant.