Congratulations, It's the early 2000s! Academically and socially you're flying high!
You're an A+ student; You're Co-Captain of the school's championship winning basketball team; and (most importantly to you) reading your creative writing out loud leaves the whole class in hysterics, even the rich kids who wish they were as funny as you and vindictively call you an orphan when your back is turned. And not figuratively either, like, literally while your back is turned as they sit behind you in class. You’re technically not an orphan, but it’s close enough to the truth to hurt your feelings…
But then March Break rolls around and you’re invited up to your Auntie M’s house in Brampton. She lives by the forbidden sandpits, in a 5 floor house with few rules and all the fixings. Seriously, enter through the laundry at Auntie's M house and you'll suddenly find yourself in a world with:
- No bed times
- Constant internet access to look up what nerds of a similar age were doing across the world in Japan.
- and an illegal US cable hook-up with every channel, show, and character ever invented. Favorites include -- HBO and Cartoon Network; Adam West's 1960s Batman; and Catwoman from Adam West's 1960s Batman.
But for the purpose of this story, the main draw is the fact that your younger cousin T has every video game and video game console on the market and he's away at camp for the week. Auntie M also has two fancy, well trained, if eccentric dogs:
- A lovingly gluttonous bull-mastiff pit bull named Kane
- and a smart but lovingly Prima Donna Dalmatian named Elijah
They don’t figure into the story, really. You just like them and are looking forward to seeing them…
However, on arrival you soon learn that your newfound freedom comes with a mandate from your Guardian: she needs you to spend some time each day doing homework.
“What kind?” You may be asking. “It doesn’t matter! It must be done! Don’t be soft!” Your Auntie M relays the message verbatim.
You for your part are insulted, and think: “Why?! How dare she?! Do these people know who I am?!”
But still, terms are terms, so on the third day or so your Auntie M calls you into the kitchen while she is cooking rice and lays them out: For the next hour, you're going to go upstairs, find one of the few books laying around, and read for an hour. After that, you’ll be called back down to taste some rice after a brief q & a.
Right away, You begin courting disaster with a scoff. “Prepare to be amazed, hahahaha!” You think to yourself, but the message reads clear enough on your face too. And with the gears now turning, back upstairs, You decide it’s important to prove you don’t need someone to tell you to when read …ever!… for some reason… yeah… And somehow You also decide the best way to prove that in this situation is to… um... not read? I don't know, like, it makes no sense but.. I mean you read the title, right?
“But how to read without reading?” You think to yourself, pacing your nonexistent study. It takes a second, but you, being a genius, do eventually find the solution and it is elegant:
there’s no need to read… if you’ve already read!
And due to the slim offerings on deck at Auntie M's, there's only one real book for the job: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis.
And truthfully it's perfect: It’s Christian themes will win you extra points with your audience; and more importantly, like I said, you’ve already read it. Thus, having thoroughly gamed yet another oppressive, draconian educational system, you recline smug in your chair and commence not reading, maybe looking a few times longingly at the Xbox you'll soon be playing indefinitely until the cousins come home...
An Hour passes and you’re finally called back into kitchen. Auntie M's still cooking rice they way it's been done dating back to Xia Dynasty: stir, stir, stir, taste, stir, stir… Stir... Wait. Repeat.
In Hindsight, You can see now that your Auntie M loved you. She was always going to give you a soft ball because she wanted you to enjoy your break... She wanted you to enjoy your life... and I could list some things you did to deserve that affection, but in truth, despite all your virtues and achievements, sometimes people just love you for no good reason; and someone loving you for no good reason is to me the same as saying they love you because you’re funny... But, like, even if Auntie M wanted to be tough on you in this situation, again…
SHE HASN’T READ THE BOOK! Like, how in depth could her questions really be?! And more importantly, how on earth was she supposed to tell if you were full of shit?
“You do it?” Auntie M asks.
“Yeah.” You reply.
“What book did you read?”
“The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.” You are so overconfident, you actually brought the book, as if to make a show of her tearing you away from its engrossing story. An engrossing story you've 100% actually read, but for now are pretending to have read. Clear?
“Was it good?” She continues.
“I have my notes.. But yeah.” You reply. Again, feeling yourself...
She takes the book from You. “So you read it?”
“Yes,” You nod, a little more earnest. “Ask me Anything.”
Auntie M. gives the book a once over, then looks back at you. “Okay... spell wardrobe.”
The curve ball is so severe Your entire world shatters.
“Excuse me?”
“Spell wardrobe. I mean you said you read the book, and it’s called The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe so presumably you encountered the word a few times…”
Your mind starts racing... Rather than simply spell the word and be done with it, inside You’re like: If I get this wrong she’s going to think I didn’t read the book! When I did! This preemptively makes you so upset that your face gets warm. “But you’re not going to ask me about the story?” You finally say, trying to wake up from the nightmare...
But She's finding this weird now, and so gives you a look like: Like dude I’m not trying to trick you. Just spell wardrobe…
There's no way out, so you take a deep breath and start to spell. In doing so, your eyes begin to well as the cruel inevitability of it all sets in. “ W…” You say, starting out strong. “Um... H? Wait... Yeah, Wh...a--”
“H? What h?” She says to you, looking at the cover. “There’s no H in wardrobe…”
“Yes there is!” You reply, before you realize. “At least there can be in the American spelling!”
By this point a small crowd has gathered by the rice, not to stir or taste but to witness a cognitive Fukushima-scale meltdown…
And what makes it somehow worse is that, the situation is so confusingly stupid you don’t get in trouble either... Granted, you still get put on time out in the most rule-averse house in existence, — a house where your cousin T famously DID NOT SHOWER FOR A WHOLE SUMMER even though everyone complained — because you over-thought a simple task…
And it’ll happen again in future, sadly, in more regrettably intimate ways, but I guess it counts for something to see you've developed a sense of humor about it… because at the end of the day, we’re all floating on a rock in the middle of nowhere, and the over-thinkers of the world need love too…
Or maybe they don’t. Don’t ask me. I don’t know…
I enjoyed reading this
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