Loosen up

You have been sitting on the rock hard seat of the minibus that has left your bum numb and now you are having fears it would never be able to feel anything ever again, you are sandwiched between a rather fleshy girl and the tin-like, only harder, inside of the bus. You have been trying very hard to eavesdrop on the hushed up and obviously juicy yakkety-yak of the girls seated behind you, on your way back from your evening classes in university. With the blaring noise of the traffic creating hurdles for your ambitions to overhear the gossip, you put off eavesdropping for sometime later and instead crane your neck putting on the glasses to aid your vision to find out the magnitude of the traffic ahead, your eyes witness several endless lanes of stationary cars, jerking your head back dejected bumping it onto the shoulder of the girl on the right, whom you had started to refer to as jumbo secretly in your head, she churns in her seat letting out a groan, you quickly readjust your head so as to shun any physical contact you could have with jumbo. As you return your concentration back to the prattle, the girls seem to have lowered their voices even further probably detecting your hidden agendas, taking a deep breath accompanied by toxic gases you take your phone out of the bag only to discover its dying battery signals ,a couple of missed calls from home and an unread message, you opt to read the message, it's from dad, saying '' your mother is really worried , call her right away!''.

You give a sympathetic look to your perishing phone flirting with the idea of calling your mom risking the death of your phone listening to her hysterical concerns, taking the safer route you settle for sending a text message to your dad (mum was still not used to texting you see).

The thought of the consequences of not informing your mom of being stuck in the most dreadful traffic jam in the history of traffic jams was sending chills down your spine. You are transported to a scene where your father is delivering a sermon over your head declaring you utterly irresponsible, for that one second when you had missed out on informing mum about the details of your activities while you were out, discussing the cons of your attitude along with the dangers of the world and explaining how hard it is for your mom to let her delicate little daughter(yes they refer to you as such in a case like this) out of her sight, you open your mouth to argue and the words coming out are instantly drowned by the wails erupting from mum who immediately steals the show leaving you shamefaced with your brother laughing in the background. Brushing-off these ridiculous images you make a mental note of churning up an article or maybe a book "The Ultimate Parental Guide on Gender Bias" a much needed supervision for conventional parents who let their boys bask in the liberty of being able to go anywhere anytime while withholding such luxuries from girls which meant you couldn’t even dream of slumber parties, movie nights with girls or anything rash for that matter.

You toss your phone back into the pit of your enormous bag and try reading a book just borrowed from the library. As you proceed with the first chapter you discover to your horror that the story revolves around a woman caught up in a midlife crisis (you used to think only men had to deal with such phenomena but maybe this concept should be chucked into your head and made the subject of your next book called "The ultimate guide to midlife crisis for both genders").You begin to have doubts about your decision of selecting this particular book for a lighthearted and fulfilling weekend read, OK so you don’t want to dedicate your valuable time to reading a book that leaves you down in the dumps by the end of it. Settling for the only option that would save you from troubling yourself with the worries of a fictitious woman you decide to jump off to the concluding part of the book, skipping all the pages in between you arrive at the last chapter named "the final agreement". Indulging yourself in the tragic end of the story you come across several terms that you suspect were put their to challenge the vocabulary of the reader along with his/her patience, you reckon by the end of the book that it was a rather clever decision on your part to have opted to skip all the chapters that lay between the first and the last as the end clearly proved how unworthy the book was of your precious weekend time. Such seemingly deep books were not meant for you surely, the author's name however succeeded to find a place in your mind for future references regarding 'what-not-to-read'. You unfix your eyes from the book in your hands and sense ‘Jumbo’, the one squashing you from the right trying to sneak a peek into your book, you play with the idea of lending the book to her for the weekend as an act of revenge for almost suffocating you in the bus, but drop the idea at once now that you feel more mature after your read. To make good use of the time, you make attempts of devising a plan of dealing with mum dad's tantrums when home, you even consider divulging information to them about your brother's online associations with the "Equal Rights for Gays" group, afraid this might call for a ban on the use of internet altogether at home, you are forced to drop the idea, but make a note of the topic

"Dealing with Enraged Parents, the Ultimate Teen Guide" for yet another book. The journey back home you admit has been very fruitful so far with you discovering three brand new titles for your upcoming master pieces that would soon earn you a place in the hearts of many.

Looking out of the window on your left you see the familiar locations signaling your house being not far away now injecting you with some much needed dose of hope. You sense the hushed up conversations at the back have now seized, being unable to turn your head to look back given your disconcerting position you are forced to reason that the girls might have gotten off while you were still struggling with your book. The bus stops to let Jumbo out, you say a quick prayer to thank the Lord of the heavens for relieving you from the painful situation you were in, although you are aware you would have to perform quite a few stretching exercises once home to ensure the vitality of your strained muscles. For the time being you allow yourself to spread out in the seat and make little movements to test your bum for signs of paralysis, (an image flashes through your mind where you are found crawling out of the bus on your bare hands with a semi paralyzed lower body) , after a few minutes you are almost washed over with a wave of joy at the most awaited sight of your home. As the bus comes to a halt at your gate, you find yourself scrambling off to your feet which to your relief were able to hold you up, stepping out into the open air, and being welcomed by your father found standing in the courtyard ready to reunite you with dear mum.