Apples and Upma

I wonder where everyone is rushing to? I haven't been invited and it's kind of making me feel left out.

I'm like that new child in school, who everyone scrutinizes and passes judgement on. The child who desperately wants to make friends and join in the raucous laughter but feels too shy and doesn't have the courage to step up and say, "Hi! My name is XYZ, can I join you?"

The reason I know they are rushing off somewhere is because all my messages to random people are met with strange responses. Some say 'k' when they meant to write Okay. They didn't even have time to write an 'O' before the 'K' which would have been an acceptable abridged version. Or they write back saying 's'. Sometimes, they write two or three s'. Maybe for double or triple emphasis that they assent. 

Maybe they have seen that forward about the importance of a tenth of a second or maybe they chatted with PT Usha. 

It is obvious to me that they are off to someplace, it must be a morcha or maybe it's to a new joint serving button idlis which are made in such small numbers that if you went a little late you would have to eat upma. I understand the horror of that completely. For years I have tried to drown out its taste by eating it with small ripe bananas.

They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the basket, or do they mean the tree?

I want to know who the 'they' are? Just because you spout stuff that sounds logical, it doesn't mean it's true. The apple could fall far from it. If you stood like William Tell's son with an apple on your head while your father shot it off your head. Then the apple would fall far away indeed from the tree and your head. 

The story goes that the bailiff Gessler, the agent of the Duke of Habsburg of Austria, carried the Habsburg hat at the end of a pole and announced that everyone should uncover their head as a mark of respect but William Tell who had a dread of catching a cold- and this is not to be scoffed at, this was a time before Cetirizine was available, refused to remove his hat. Gessler was enraged and ordered that he shoot an apple off his son's head with a single arrow, failing which both would be killed. I.e. Tell and his son, not Gessler and Tell. Only a suicidal or stupid person announces his own death. Tell managed to do it, and I'm pretty sure his son would have been quaking in his shoes. I'm betting you, he wouldn't have said 'k' dad when his dad asked him if he was Okay after the event. 

Tell apparently kept another arrow in his jacket and Gessler who had announced that his life was safe, asked him why he had placed the second arrow, Tell announced that if he missed with the first arrow, he would have used the second arrow on Gessler and he wouldn't have missed. Trust me Gessler didn't say 'sssss,' instead, he said "arrest him" or some such thing in Swedish and Tell was punished, but that's a tale for another day.

My point is apples can fall quite far away. My daughter loves upma and actually asks for a second helping whenever it is made. At such times when she says "mama, can I have some more?" I respond sadly "k."