There's nothing that teaches you to reign in your temper better than a raging bull, an actual raging bull.
So friends, I may have mentioned previously that I grew up in a rural community. Ours was a cane farming community to be exact. Our house stood alone atop a hill at the end of a dirt track. Behind our house there was a tiny strip of land that we maintained as our property and then beyond that was virgin land, we practically considered it to be like a forest.
In front of our house, in the valley, there stood two houses close together, a guava tree between them, and then on the other side of the dirt track there was a cane field.
I'm going to this length to describe the lay of the land for you because I think it might be easier for you to visualize when I explain to you that the cane field opposite our homes was the domain of bulls, and unless you were a stork, the bulls weren't friendly.
The bulls were used to transport cane in makeshift carts like this one.
And, of course, one might guess, they weren't exactly pleased to have to cart around tons of cane all day while their owners simply sat perched atop the piles of cane, switching whips and yelling, "Hi! Hi!" all the time. They were pretty unfriendly even though we didn't do anything to them. I guess to them all humans looked alike, right?
Anyways, so we always knew to avoid the cattle, and we generally stayed away from their domain, but felt relatively comfortable walking along the dirt track because we were assured that the owners kept the bulls tied.
On the day in question, my mom and I were walking home, hands full with grocery bags, when we heard an angry grunt. And at first we didn't think anything about it because we knew the bulls were angry but they never really bothered us and so we kept on walking.
In fact, I was bitching and moaning about how heavy my bags were- I held eggs- and I was working myself into quite a temper about it. My mom on the other hand, always quite the lady, was quiet and reserved, mincing along on little high heels and hardly responding to my mini-tirade.
"I feel like a bison," I complained angrily, stamping my feet. "Carting around luggage here and there while my brothers just lay around and eat and get fat and go hi, hi!"
When I said that, the earth sort of shook and my mom looked over her shoulder, yelped, dropped her bags and shot off- I kid you not- faster than a speeding bullet.
"There we go," I rolled my eyes, bending over to pick up her bags. "Hi! Hi-"
I heard the grunt again, closer, and I didn't need to look over my shoulder to figure out what had happened. The bull was out on the dirt track and charging at us and my mother had gotten a pretty good head start.
My friends, let me tell you. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that in my 17th year I would be a matador, but matador I was and the only thing I had for a muleta was a bag of eggs.
I had to think fast. Screaming louder than Kevin Hart in Jumanji, I flung the bag at the charging bull and ran in the opposite direction, leaping over a drain and into my neighbors' yard, climbing their steps two at a time, and vaulting over their gate, hoping for sanctuary in their gallery.
It was only then, gasping for breath, that I stopped to look back.
The bull was not behind me. Instead, with a white plastic bag wrapped around one of its horns like a flag, it had returned to the field, and was lying in the mud staring balefully at the bags scattered across the track. Meanwhile, high up in the branches of the guava tree that stood between the two houses, bellowing louder than ten cows, was my dainty mom.
And that was the last time I ever used the word hi in conversation. In fact, to this very day, if I am to greet a friend I haven't seen for a very long time, I yell, "Hello!"
And so, my friends, this is my contribution for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't, maybe you had to be there. 馃槀
Have a great evening, everyone, and remember, one should never take oneself too seriously. After all, where's the fun in that?
