Tag: Humor

“What’s your favorite color?”

This is probably one of the most commonly-asked questions on the planet. Thanks to its simplicity and sophistication, it finds a way to get into the lives of toddlers, teens, and adults alike.

I distinctly remember being asked this question in my school admission test for Grade 1. So the examiner picks up a piece of paper with small squares painted in different colors and keeps it in front of me.

How many colors can you name, sweetie?

Weeks of rote memorization came in handy (my tireless Mom had a huge role to play in that).

Impressed, probably more by my enthusiasm than my answer, she gave me a sweet smile and asked me the following question:

Can you point to your favorite?

I didn’t know what favorite meant, but I knew what ‘point’ did. I picked the very first color square. It was black.

The teacher probably had not seen many children picking black as their favorite color, going by the expression on her face. 

On the walk home, I asked my mum what ‘favorite’ meant. 

Something that you like the most, she said.

I now knew the word’s meaning, but I realized I still didn’t know the answer. I liked red, yellow, green, pink and blue. I did not have any favorites. Black, I guess, was a better answer than an utter and complete freeze.

As I grew up, I noticed that it became easier to pick favorites, and I liked probably every color in the spectrum at some point in my life.

However, the best entertainment I have gotten out of a choice of favorite color has only come in adulthood, especially when I mention, “Favorite? Oh yeah, gray’s my favorite color”.

The best part about that answer is that the follow-ups don’t last long.

Gray has been a certified conversation killer, at least in the experiences that I have had. I only assume that’s because it’s difficult for people to fathom how it can be anyone’s favorite color when it is usually (mis)understood to stand for everything dull.

My reasons are more utility than choice. 

Sure, I would choose white if it weren’t for my being a massive klutz. I think wearing a white shirt to work is one sure-shot way to make my day stressful. My shirt or dress would stay white for precisely 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Wine glasses, orange juices, and plates of freshly baked quiches have a special affinity to anything white. No matter how elegant the color is, it can not be mine—too high maintenance for poor ol’ me.

I tried going with black for a while, with its magical powers to make me look thin. But I realized soon enough although it saved me from orange juice and the Californian red wine (to an extent), it also signaled to the mosquitoes of the world that I was available as their feeding ground. Also, black and a head full of dandruff don’t go together. 

You know from all the anti-dandruff shampoo ads out there, even if you are lucky enough not to have any.

Gray conveniently came to the rescue- with its capability to combine the best( and worst) of both- to a dulling degree. Guess you can call it boring. 

I kid you not; there are color tests for personality profiling. 

Which color are you? They ask.

I was watching The Graham Norton Show the other day. It seemed one of the older ones. That little episode featured Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy. One clip from that episode became somewhat famous, where Mr. Whitehall had a funny anecdote about poop. 

Jennifer Lawrence burst out laughing when he was done. So did I, all the while being disgusted by my imaginings of the scene.

That episode reminded me of something rather than someone -a friend from the past. Although his story was much less disgusting, it was fun, nevertheless. I could hardly even call it a story. It was a fact of his life.

A little context before I jump in: many a time, an icebreaker question that people ask is, “If you get X million in a windfall gain, what would you do with the money?”

The response could be many things, but ‘travel the world’ usually features in the top 10 of almost every list I have ever come across, including my own.

Same with this gentleman. Travel was # 3 on his list.

I later found out that traveling was a passion for the guy. He had already been to around 20 different countries. I was intrigued. 

He recounted his adventures from being in a variety of different places in Europe, Australia, and Africa. Beautiful places, all. 

As he entertained requests to point out peculiarities from each of his visits, I imagined myself in all those places, experiencing the culture, the food, and the natural beauty. My imagination had been doing a terrific job of replacing him from all the pictures by me. It was fun visiting all these twenty countries in my head.

Threatened by my wild imagination, my brain kicked in. He was the hero of these stories. Not me. And I started paying attention.

Spain was beautiful, the language, the romance, the culture. It was amazing. The hotel that we stayed at had great washrooms.

Italy has the best food I have ever had in my life. Those people really know how to live. We lived in budget hotels there, but they were spotless. The bathrooms were spick and span!

.. and so forth

A curious thing dawned on me. Every time he described a place, by the third or fourth sentence of every description, he would come to the washroom, water closet, powder room, the dunny, or some other version of it. It was becoming evident that clean washrooms were a significant part of his successful travel playbook. 

Don’t get me wrong; I like clean rooms, washrooms, and everything. My childhood was especially marinated in the ‘Cleanliness is Godliness’ philosophy. Thanks to working parents, who could use more hands cleaning up the mess than making it.

But it mattered more to the gentleman going by his mention of washrooms at least 30 times in a conversation about 20 countries he visited. 

It made me question my priorities. 

Maybe I am not as clean as I am supposed to be. But the lazy being that I am, I was quick to settle on the following: 

He is way too clean; maybe a freak! He must have some early onset of germophobia or something.

I let my imagination run wild again. Wilder this time. 

I imagined getting my hands on his photo albums from all his travels and one photograph after the other – they were all pictures of the loos he had visited. 

From the most basic to the most exquisite. But all undeniably sparkling clean. 

No mountains, no beaches, no sunrise, no sunset. Just the loo.

And then I forgot all about him. 

Time can do that to you until one day, far from my apartment, loaded on two liters of water with an urgent need to go. 

I never realized I had a photographic memory until that day as the images from that guy’s photo album played in my head.

You walk into a restaurant you like, not having eaten for the last 18 hours. The girl at the counter looks pretty, but you have no time to stop n’ chat. You are on a mission—a mission to get a table. 

Immediately. 

Right this second. 

The restaurant seems like a stock market, with loud people yelling at each other from across the room. The lamps at the table are blinding. Your memory of this place was lovely. 

“This doesn’t look like the same one. Maybe it is. Too difficult to tell.”

Brain fog. 

You see a live hog sitting at the table. Now that can’t be true!

You close your eyes, and open them again. The hog is gone, and so is the receptionist. 

You close your eyes again to resume the previous scene. A Live hog sitting on my table is better than no table.

A lady walks right up; she is looking for a receptionist too. She looks pregnant. You need to be polite and let her go first. But hey, there is no proof she is pregnant. She might be obese. Or may not even be there. She might be a hog, for all you know. 

The receptionist is taking forever. Maybe she has jumped behind the food counter and is working on the fries. Perhaps the fries are complimentary. Maybe the loaves of bread are. Perhaps even the tomato ketchup.

Are the tissues on her desk edible? Ooooh, Candy cane! Candy canes with caps! 

Weird, but what the hell, if she takes one more minute, you are chewing that cane. Lollipops are hanging from the ceiling, candy canes on her desk, a Nanaimo bar for a paperweight, and incensed thin mints. 

Oh, here she comes; she has chocolates in her hand.

You can’t take it anymore and snatch that bar right out of her hand. 

She lets out a scream, and so do you. She disappears, and you are sitting in your bed, wide awake, having chewed up half your comforter.

Must be a dream.

“Ice-breaker”

I don’t know why, but when I think of this term, the first image that comes to my mind is a completely flushed face, extremely cold hands, and a racing heart—all mine.

For those of you who aren’t aware of what these are, I envy you and then offer you a little bit of Wikipedia wisdom:

“An ice-breaker is a facilitation exercise intended to help members of a group begin the process of forming themselves into a team. Ice-breakers are commonly presented as a game to “warm up” the group by helping the members to get to know each other. They often focus on sharing personal information such as names, hobbies, etc. Ice-breakers are also used at social gatherings such as parties to introduce guests to one another in situations where they may not know one another.”

Sounds pretty harmless, doesn’t it? 

A bunch of strangers, going around and telling everyone a little tidbit about themselves. This doesn’t even have to be personal information, which is just the icing on the cake I need. 

Yeah, okay. I am good. Bring it on.

And out comes the ball exercise variation of the ice breaker, which is just the same as above, but with participants passing a ball around to catch, after sharing their tidbit. You would probably say, what’s the big deal?

And here is the explanation:

This object is the stuff of my nightmares. Nightmare exacerbated by plenty of childhood memories with laughing kids surrounding me (or at least that’s how I imagined it). 

All because of my stellar hand-to-eye coordination playing catch. Always. 

The curious thing about this particular deficit is that I never improved. My skills playing catch are at the same level as when I was four, maybe. If anything, they have worsened, thanks to my questionable physical agility and lack of attachment to any outdoor sports. The scores from the most recent frisbee game I played are a testament to that. 

Unsurprisingly, I had the rock bottom scores – even when the co-players were aiming for the frisbee to land right into my hands. For my self-esteem, I suppose.

So back to the ice breakers.

Here’s how a typical one goes:

A: Hi, My name’s A. I love playing soccer.

Me (thinking): Oh God, he’s gonna throw the ball to me.

A throws to B

Me (thinking): Thank goodness! Please throw to someone else now, Not me , not me , Please!

B: B here, I love philately

Me (thinking): What a show-off, Philately! Not me, Not me, Please not me!

B throws to me.

Me (thinking): I am not gonna catch it, I am not gonna catch it, I am gonna make a fool of myself, everyone is gonna laugh, why the hell do they have to use balls in ice breakers? I will quit this today. No one will talk to me after today’s debacle anyway.

Sure enough, the ball grazes my nails and heads for the sky. I am no Usain Bolt. I run for the first two minutes and then walk to get it back (all the while telepathically begging it to stop and help me out).

After a walk of shame, I return to my spot in the circle.

Me: I am me. I do not fetch right.

I was rewatching the standup bit by John Pinette the other day – the one in which he expresses resentment against people that can’t decide what to get from the menu. He just wants them to get out of the line and let the others get served. 

I love the bit, mostly because I love John Pinette and his comic timing. He is hilarious, and in my book, he is one of the most likable standup comics of all time. 

After my usual dose of serotonin watching him in all his glory, I go back to wondering – why? Because I am one of those people. 

Wondering why I am so pathetic at ordering stuff at restaurants. 

Why do the simplest of menus confuse me?

Why, even after so many years of eating out, I haven’t developed on-the-spot ordering skills?

Why do I gravitate to buffets?

Well, scratch the last question. I know the answer to that—best bang for the buck.

That’s a couple of very close friends and me.

And then there are people out there that know exactly what they want and feel pride in their capability to do so.

And then there are people out there that know exactly what they want and feel pride in their capability to do so.

Quoting Joe F-O-X from “You’ve got mail” (another movie I have been guilty of rewatching more times than I can count):

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat. So people who don’t know what they’re doing, or who on earth they are, can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self.”

Again, I think of myself.

I have been placing the same order of coffee for years now, but I still forget to mention milk and sugar on more occasions than I would like. I do pay the price of that with angered taste buds and a decent blow to my Ordering self-esteem. 

I gape in awe of people that place an order that is so clear that the barista doesn’t have any follow-up questions. I doubt that even my “can you please get me a glass of water” order can be that clear, no pun intended.

In my mind, I had crowned myself the most order-challenged individual until I discovered a friend’s struggle, quite worse than mine. 

So we are at a bagel place that also serves coffee. As a gracious host, I let him place his order first. I mentally pat myself on the back for averting the disaster of me going first. 

Now I can simply copy whatever he does. After all, how difficult can saying “same for me” be, no matter how intimidating the server looks?  

After a quick exchange of pleasantries comes the dreaded question.  

“What would you like to have today?”

He takes a good (uncomfortably) long look at the menu, and goes:

“Can I have a plain bagel and a latte please?”

“Sorry, we don’t have plain bagels, but we have sesame, everything and cheese. Would you like any of those instead?”

The guy looks in my direction, askance.

What the hell is happening here? He is asking me?.. ME???

Oh good god! What were the options again?

And I wing it. “I don’t think anything can go wrong with cheese, why don’t you try them?”

Sheep had become the shepherd that day. Wow, what a self esteem boost!

But then it struck me, maybe there are other reasons for my irrational fear.

It could be social anxiety disorder . For those that struggle with fear of eating in public, it often presents as “avoiding the situation, fearfulness of being criticized, embarrassment, racing heart, sweating, nausea, and feeling trapped 

Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to realize, thanks to the Three Men in a Boat rant by J, that if I am going to look to map diseases with my sufferings (eccentricities, really), I will probably find that I have every existing ailment in the world.

I am optimistic, yes, but not that much.

What I do know though, is that misery loves company. And I feel so much better knowing that, same as Mr Neville in I am Legend, I am not alone.