Story: Hero and the Fiery Dragon

One day I excitedly told my university friends that this girl is my best friend since primary School. ‘This Girl’ gave me the unforgettable disgusted ‘I-don’t-know-her’ look and walked away.

She used to be in the team I was the leader of. The team which recorded all the geography project measurements standing next to a huge plant in the ground when instructed to stand in open ground. I still wonder why they all blindly followed such a dumb leader. Well if you know how to lead they will follow no matter how absurd, pointless messed up your ideas maybe. Thumbs Up to that!

Whoever tells the story always gets to be the hero in it, or you can just be yourself. After pondering hard for a few days I finally found my heroic story. Sadly lies is for people with good memories. Not for people like me who are interrupted in the middle of a funny story with, “You already told me that”. Then a very long and disturbing awkward silence falls for I'd be so caught up in the story. With that zigzag subject change, I become unsure about everything and blackout.

So it starts like this, me and my two younger cousins were latecomers at school. Unexpectedly our school decided to set punishment for late arrivals. As usual we pass through the gate, threw our bags under the tree and ran to join the assembly when someone called us from behind. We turned and froze. My cousins looked at me with worry in their eyes.

Our Principal eyed us and said in the most annoying voice ever, “Where do you come from? LAHORE?” (stressing on Lahore). Watch on the urge to address her as fiery dragon even if it helps to picture better, for we are grownups.  I stepped forward. The valid excuse I could think of was flat tire. There was a small pause but then she let us go. Phew that was close I thought.

Back at school we took rules very seriously for we knew there neither was any compromise from the teachers nor any guard from our parents.  The next day we were LATE again cause the car tire actually flattened. This is where we started to believe lies always invite bad luck. It kept us from the regular excuses like death of some family member out of the fear it might come as a curse. Choice between the Curse and the fiery dragon was easy.

Today we already stopped by the tree near the school gate to hear, “Where do you come from? LAHORE?”

This time I started with a sad story that was so long that by the end we thought what in the world are we doing here. I remember exactly what she said with a broad smile before she let us go, “You are a good story teller”.

No matter how many achievements or jack of all traits you are. We always will be a loser to someone. Problem is we worry about being a loser to one and forget being a Hero to so many others.

I always thought I’d grow up to be smart like Blossom from the PowerPuff Girls, but ended up becoming that extremely annoying NARRATOR from the ‘Sheep in the Big City’. Oh well I’ll take that if you let me know, the ‘Chemical X’ used to create these PowerPuff Writings, is not wasted.