my mother, my neighbour

I live with family. We do not do farming but father says our house is farmhouse because our house is far from the city. There are farms. The farmers live in the village. We have no Neighbours.

Teacher had asked us to write an essay on “My Neighbour” in 5th grade. My essay was a lie in fact many classmates and my teacher knew where I lived. They also did look forward to my unrelenting excuses to avoid writing. None though ever acknowledged my profound imagination.

Each time my essays were read out loud by the teacher, then her predictable pause followed by a screaming howl, her one hand pointing at the door “Get out of my class. Stand in the sun.”

I hated subjects that needed extensive writing. During my exams, I cared to write enough to pass and walk out of the class. To avoid my mother’s wrath, I did well in math and chemistry, summing up a decent grade through my schooling years.

As a child I was confused which hand to use for writing. I noticed other kids in my kindergarten years mostly using right except a few maybe one or two were left-handed. I could use both my hands with ease but my mother thought it was a ridiculous thing to do.

“Use your right hand, not left”

“But what’s wrong if I can write with both my hands?”

One evening, she held my left hand and whacked my knuckles with a stick, repeatedly. She was probably waiting for me to cry, plead her to stop. I could not but stare at her in disbelief, perturbed what wrong had I done. Back of my hand had turned purple.

She did stop. I had peed in my shorts.

“Write A to Z ten times with your right hand. NOW”

The writing exercise went on for a week or maybe more till she was convinced I never will dare write with my left hand. She was right.

It was quite a few years later I was told I am ambidextrous. My parents had no clue of what that meant. For them everything that is not normal is a problem they got to rectify.

I write with my right, eat with my left hand, bat right, bowl left that means punch left and I can shoot a gun with any.