Brainless miseries.
By: Sree Jaya
Tags: Kids, Children, Childhood, Storytelling, Stories

Growing up I was pretty dumb ( I think we’ve already established that from some of my previous blogs). As I enjoy embarrassing myself, I thought I’d write down a few incidents from when I was a kid.

I grew up in a small village full of wheat and rice fields, Banana harvesting farms, Tapioca farms. And I love eating vegetables uncooked (only if it is from our fields). I’d pick up the fallen gooseberries and eat them raw, sometimes even without washing them. But one thing I was terrified of was the nuts. Be it gooseberries, mangoes, or jackfruit, I was scared to death that I’ll die from chocking the fruit nuts.

So one day I was having my gooseberries and I accidentally swallowed the nut. I was totally freaked out that I was gonna die, but luckily it didn’t get stuck in my throat. I was so relieved that I went to my brother to share the news that I didn’t die even after I ate the gooseberry nut. My brother for one knew how dumb I was, and enjoyed every bit of torturing me and my insecurities (ugh stupid older siblings). And he was like "Aww poor girl. You don’t know, do you? When we swallow a fruit nut, it starts to grow into a tree within our stomach. When the tree is bigger than what your body’s weight can hold, it will grow out of your mouth and you’ll become a tree and you’ll die". And you know what I freaking believed him 🤦. I started crying out loud with fear. Our granny came running to see if I was okay and I told her what happened. And both my granny and brother started laughing at me and they told this story at every stupid family function and made fun of me🤦.

You see, all my important insecurities came from me being sick and dying from it😂. Another such incident was when I drank chlorinated water for the first time. So, in my household the drinking water is simply boiled without adding anything to it for smell or taste. When I was in second grade one of my friends brought a bottle of water which had some kind of white powder at the bottom of the bottle. Obviously I was curious to know what it was and I asked him. He said it was chlorinated water (now that I think of it I realise he fooled me because it was simply glucose water).

Later that day, my water bottle got empty somehow and I took his bottle and drank like 3 sips from it. When he was back he was like "Who drank the water from my bottle?" and i told him that was me. I don’t know if he was mad at me for drinking his water without asking his permission or that he liked to torture me like my brother, he told me that chlorinated water was poisonous. He also told me that when we empty the well, we add chlorine before it gets itself refilled with water to kill the germs. And obviously I believed it because I’ve seen people put something in our well at the time it was emptied.

By the end of the day I was terrified that it was gonna be my last day on earth and I came to my mom before I was about to go to bed and I was like "Mom, I don’t wanna die😭" and she was like "Huh? What happened?" and I told her that it was gonna be my last day with them for I’d be dead tomorrow because I drank chlorinated water. You can imagine how it ended up being the next story to embarrass me during family gatherings -_-

When I was like seven I had this best friend, her name was Amy. So if my brother wanted to get my share of the cookies or chocolates he'd pick up a pillow and come to me like "You see this pillow? This is Amy. If you don't give me your biscuits I'd beat her up to death" and he'd make these crying noises in a female voice like "Sree, please rescue me". And I'd be heartbroken because I didn't want my best friend to die because I wasn't ready to give up a cookie. I'd genuinely believe that the pillow was Amy and that she actually needed my help, and I'd give him all my cookies and chocolates 💔. It became like a habit that I tried resisting it and make myself believe that it was just a pillow and not my real Amy, but then my brother would be like "Oh so you don't even care if Amy dies. You just want your biscuits" and I'd feel so guilty that I'd give him all my cookies and chocolates out of shame and regret 🤦😂.

As I grew up, the "Hitting Amy to death" trick stopped working on me. So he invented a new method. Before I even get to see the packet of chocolates or cookies or whatever he’d eat a few of them already. Like for example let’s say there were 10 cookies in a packet. He’d unwrap it, eat 4 of them, and then come to me and say "Look, there are 6 biscuits in total. 3 for you and 3 for me" and I would still believe him🤦.

When I was in 5th grade and my brother in 8th grade, he got permission to go to the school trip and I didn’t. I was so sad, when all my friends were making plans on what snacks to bring for the trip and which rides to get on in the amusement park, I would sit beside them silent and heartbroken. The night before our school tour, I went to my brother, gave him a plastic bottle and said “Bring me some water from the wave pool” as a souvenir 😆🤦. He was trying so hard not to laugh, but because he felt sorry for me he didn’t make fun of me at the time (but he did long time after, obviously). Even today he’ll be like “I’ll bring you a cup of water from Wonder La’s Toilet as a souvenir” 😂🤦.

When we were kids me and my brother used to have food in the same plate for evening meal. So one day when we came back from school my granny fried some Bengal grams for us and gave it to us. And my brother whispered to me "Di kadalayekal taste um gunavum kadalede tholik ah. Athond Ni tholi thinno njn kadala thinnam". Translation : The exocarp of the Bengal gram has more taste and nutrition than the actual seeds. And poor me believed that my brother loved me so much that he was kind enough to leave me all the tasty and healthy part of the meal. So I ate all the Kadala tholi and he had all the Kadala 🤦.

Because everyone enjoyed taking advantage of my dumbness I often used to get angry. And when I say angry, I mean serious business. And the one who tortured me that most was obviously my elder brother 🤦. One day he kicked me out of the bedroom because he wanted to do some stupid moves from WWE with the pillows. If there's one thing that can easily break my patience is waking me up from sleep. Not only did he wake me up but also he kicked me out from my own bed. I was so mad that I planned to get revenge. So by evening when he went to take his shower I caught a big spider (when I say big I mean it was bigger than my arms at the time) from the back of our almirah and ,murdered it, picked it up along with its blood and everything 🤢 and I put it in his underwear that I expected he'd wear after his shower. And I kept eagerly waiting for him to scream coz he had a dead spider in his crotch. Unfortunately I was left with disappointment for he wore some other underwear. But then I decided I'd forgive him and I took the dead spider and threw it away😌.