Scraps from the bin

Occasionally, I end up running through mental images that have been lodged in the recesses of my mind. These images have been lodged there for a while, and more often than not, for the simple reason that they were embarrassing moments. Interiorizing them then only let the flushed-face-inducing memories fester, waiting for that moment to surface as surreal re-enactments so that even in the most private of moments, I still cringe down to my marrow.

◙ While the events of an athletic day were in progress, I found myself setting the bar at a high jump pit to vault over it. Back in the day I had done reasonably well in pole vault. Eight years later then, I was trying to relive those glory days. Only this time, it was at a high jump pit—that too a sand pit! I remember there was some significant someone I wanted to impress and could think of nothing better than a lousy vault to do that. My run up was passable. My body arced surprisingly well as I cleared the bar. Then, my hands just froze on to pole, more like a pole dancer than a vaulter. I came crashing down with the horizontal bar sandwiched by the pole still firmly in my hands. A butt landing on sand could not be harder than when compacted by poles and bars collapsing on to a man’s jewels! And she was not even around to see it were I to have gracefully executed the vault. Dang it!

◙ Some younger folk had arranged an evening of music to raise funds. I had excused myself from any participation with the vaguest of excuses, “I’ll be too busy.” I eventually showed up at the event. Well intentioned though they were, their music was floundering with every other line. “Kids,” I thought to myself. I went backstage and told them in a pep-talk manner that we would try something cool. Very filmi indeed! My supposedly cool idea was to rap-out a very common song. I would be on drums and rapping. The others would follow my lead on whatever instrument they were playing. On stage, I got the experiment going and rapped through the first stanza. It was pathetic. And then I forgot the lines to the second verse and adlibbed my way by repeating the first stanza. Even as we ploughed through the motions, every next second being more painful than the previous, it already dawned on me that I had made quite an ass of myself!

◙ A friend felt compelled to introduce his sermon with a joke. Not the natural comic, he had to cook up a scene to fit his material: a boy had his eyes on a girl but was never sure she felt the same way for him. In class, he scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to the girl. She opened and saw a cryptic formula: 1+4+3= 3 or 2. Instinctively, the girl ticked the 3. As she was threw it back to the boy, the teacher caught eye of the ball of paper on its trajectory. Pulling up the boy, the teacher asked him to explain what was scribbled on the paper. The boy explained the formula as “I+love+you = yes or no.” The girl had, unawares, reciprocated. My friend then put his introductory piece in perspective. “You can never conceal love if your love is real.” He then went on to wax sermonic on love by excising material in 1 Corinthians 13. Come on!

The cringe in this last one is more vicarious. There are many more of such moments that occasionally re-emerge to remind me that life allows one to sidestep the lines of propriety and make occasional asses of ourselves. Personally, I will have become a little wiser while still nursing my humpty dumpties!

Thus spake the raven…