Mom was happy with her son's PR skills at that age and praised him and asked me to learn something from him. I glared at my Bro and he smiled happily. After a few minutes Mom called him into the kitchen and asked him about the eight cut-lemon slices in the sink.
A very proud brother replied, "You know Mom, I offered uncle a plate of biscuits and some lime juice. But I had just one problem, I kept squeezing the lemons one by one but the glass wouldn't fill. So I stopped at eight lemons...since the glass was three-fourths full, I added salt and offered it to uncle."
Mom looked shocked, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Then she asked him incredulously, "Did uncle have the lime juice?" "Yes" replied Bro "but I think he had a cold. His voice sounded different.He quickly left saying he had an appointment with the family doctor."
My Bro had served the juice of eight straight lemons neat....to an uncle and the uncle had politely downed it. The uncle is over 80 now and my Bro is a Canadian citizen now with a son of his own.
And then there was the time Mom found the pressure cooker in the sink when she came home from a visit to a neighbours house. On enquiring with my Bro, who was home alone then too, she found that he had made tea for yet another uncle. He was at a loss at to, what to make the tea in. He caught sight of the pressure cooker and made the tea and that too quite successfully.
The last I saw was, Mom polishing up Bro's tea-making skills.
And then there was a time when my four-year-old son took ordinary 'everyday' words at total face value. Those were tough times.
I started noticing that each time my four-year-old son and his younger sister wanted to go from one room to the other in the house, they would stand cautiously at the door for a few minutes, hold hands, glance nervously at the grandfather clock in the hallway and dart at full speed to the next room and vice versa. When it happened a bit too frequently, I wondered why. When I asked him about it, he said, " Mummy, remember you told me that, that big clock strikes !". It was a ding dong clock which struck every half an hour. How would I know that my son had a different logic. I had a tough time explaining the difference between a clock striking and 'Beating-Striking'.
Another time, I was gathering the dried clothes from the clothesline, which was outside my bedroom window. Since there were three, under the age of ten in the house, there were tons of clothes to be washed everyday. Since my bedroom window was near, I started bundling the children's 'outside' good clothes....which they wore when they went shopping or visiting or to the park, through the window so that it fell on my bed to deal with later. After some time I found the clothes coming out of the window one by one and falling near the drain nearby. I gave a yell and rushed to the window where my three year old son was sitting on the bed and slowly but surely pushing the good clothes out of the window. When questioned he said, " Mummy you only said that these were the outside clothes na, so I am putting them outside". I had no answer, but couldn't help smiling.
And the time I was chauffeuring my teen to her competition venue, she was adept at playing he quizmaster at the most unlikeliest of times, she started asking me some tough questions. I rued the day when I had proudly announced to my kids that I loved quizzing, in a bid to get them interested in quiz competitions. She asked me a really tough one...like something to do with the Incas or some such thing....It evades my memory now.
Winding in and out of the rush-hour traffic on an almost-never-in-the-near past serviced two-wheeler. with almost nil brakes, a bare back tyre and a rear-view mirrors which hated being in position, was something I was quite used to by now. Still, the prospect of excavating my long-term memory about the Incas, along with that, seemed a little too much. Yet. I spent about two minutes concentrating on them and all I got was the proverbial picture of the Red Indian dancing in perfect tune to drum bears around a huge fire, replete with feathers. I shook myself out if the reverie and disappointed my teen, telling her that I didn't know the answer. I hated it, but.....
Without wasting a minute she gave me the answer complete with statistics. Her tone, I could sense was one of extreme satisfaction.
I was definitely amazed at her knowledge and made he mistake of asking her how she knew all this.
Without batting an eyelid, I am sure, she said 'Mom, it's common knowledge'.
It took me the effort of a century not to unload her then and there, by the roadside and ride back home!
Once I was late for work and so in a hurry. My other teen wanted me to drop her off on the way. I started the vehicle. She lifted her leg to get on, but absent-minded me just drove off leaving her in the lurch, with one leg raised and mouth open I shock. I haven't heard the end of it yet. Picturesquely speaking, she compared it to a dog lifting a leg to relieve itself. I apologised profusely but the picture even now brings a smile on. Reaching my workplace my senior, a very serious lady who never even smiles, laughed her head off for quite a while and for a few months after that, she used to repeat the incident to me and have fun.
But I am sure my beloved teen has still not forgiven me for that even today.
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