THE LAST LAUGH
Be prepared in life
Having recently finished listing a few great advantages of the Girl Guides motto ‘Be Prepared,’ I realise that such preparedness can be mighty irritating to one’s
near and dear.
Take our preparations for a weekend stay at a hotel down south a few years ago. Neither our age nor weight allows my Dearly Beloved (DB) and me the pleasure of sea bathing or wearing swimming attire at this moment in time. I’m talking of the happy past.
We’d always take separate cases whenever we travelled together. We’re both prepared packers. This means that we anticipated all kinds of emergencies that necessitated surplus clothes, extra pairs of shoes, a repair kit, two pairs of scissors, two manicure sets etc.
The fact that such emergencies as envisaged while packing didn’t actually take place while travelling never deterred us from being the sort of packers that drove the rest of our family to distraction – or drink.
Having filled his suitcase with five pairs of shoes including sandals, DB runs short of space. He turns to me.
“Do you have a little room left in your case?”
“How much?’
“Haven’t packed my T-shirts and shorts.”
“Well... maybe a shirt or two.”
“Also my hair dryer, hair gel, shaver and …”
“You must be mad… dream on! I said one or two shirts.”
He casts a beady eye at my own yet to be packed pile of clothes.
“Why do you need six swimsuits?”
“They get wet, no?”
“Why can’t you wear a wet suit?”
(I didn’t bother to reply that one.)
“Are you planning to take part in a beauty pageant or something?” he asks, nastily.
“Don’t be ridiculous. In any case, how do you happen to have so many swimming trunks? You can’t even swim properly,” I retaliate, more than a little miffed.
I look at his swimming trunks. Most are stretched well beyond their original shape.
They are nonetheless packed along with two of everything else.
Two toothbrushes, two cakes of soap, two tins of baby powder (in case he itches), two bottles of sun lotion and so on.
But we feel secure because nothing is going to catch us unprepared except a huge wave… or perhaps a tsunami.
I mention this to him.
“Perhaps we should carry life belts?” he inquires, worriedly.
Our offspring scream.
Truly, my DB and I were born for each other.
Early in the day we had been preparing for all kinds of situations without even knowing we were going to wind up together.
“It’s fate,” I tell him smugly, having learnt that even our preparations at exam time were similar.
Four pens in case the ink ran out were de rigueur. Those were not days of the Biro. Two rulers in case one snapped, two pencils and a red pen. Examiners eyed our desks with disfavour.
“Why do you need all that paraphernalia?” asked my supervisor when I was doing my
SSC (the O-Levels of long ago).
“In case...”
“In case of what?”
“Just in case.”
“One of those,” I overheard him say to his fellow supervisor: “Keep an eye on her.”
And finally, one would imagine that in the case of having a family, DB and I would follow the sensible example of British royalty and produce ‘an heir and a spare.’ But here we didn’t seem to be prepared.
“I wish I had a sibling,” our Offspring would regularly complain: “What happened to your lifelong motto of being prepared?”
“Out of our hands,” we replied, briefly.
She snorted angrily, throwing open my medicine cabinet.
“You could help any pharmacy that is running short of necessities. This stupid stocking up will cause the expiry dates to overrun.”
That is quite possible, of course.
But in the meantime, I’m cheerfully living up to my motto of being thoroughly and comfortably prepared.
We feel secure because nothing is going to catch us unprepared