You guys are such a forgetful bunch of kids. I hear Ummi nagging about how you always forget this and that. I am pretty sure that at least on two occasions, I had to send your water bottles or your pencil cases to school because you forget them in the morning. Its quite funny when Ummi said, “if you could remove your ears, you might forget where you leave it and you’ll have troubles hearing”.
But I believe this is quite normal. I was forgetful too when I was small. Your grandmother nagged as well. Anyway, that gave me an idea to tell you a bedtime story. A silly story which I know you don’t believe it. At this moment I know you still remember the story. But I’m going to write it anyway, because who knows you might read this as an adult and this brings back memories of our family growing up as foreigners in Taiwan.
As I mentioned before, the story is fake, but as 10 year old kids, the look on your faces showed that you were all amused. And at the end of this silly story, I shall tell you another story, the original one. It also have something to do about not being forgetful.
BUCIQ THE ALIEN BOY
This silly bedtime story that I told you happened to me when I was in elementary school in 1993. I was a 9 year old boy at that time. I had a weird friend, whom we all called Buciq. Of course his real name wasn’t Buciq, but everything was weird about him. His voice sounded like an alien. His body was plump but his legs were long and thin. When he walked he always looked as if he would topple and fall to the ground because with that kind of body you just cannot have stability.
Oddly enough, Buciq proudly admitted that he is originally from another planet. Of course that just made everyone else laughed and teased him even more. But what happened when the person is not bothered by your teasing? Well, you get tired of teasing him. Because the idea of teasing is to hurt the person. For example, can you make fun of a person for being handsome, when the person is proud of being handsome? No you can’t. So remember kids, it doesn’t matter if someone teases you. Don’t be hurt by it. Just say thank you for praising me. It’s up to you to define if the action is either a praise, or a mean tease.
So anyway, at first, we teased Buciq for looking weird like an alien. But he proudly admit that he actually is not from Earth. In the end we stopped making fun of him for having an alien-liked figure and he too didn’t complain for not getting more glorification.
But none of us were prepared for a freak incident that occured one morning at school.
Our math teacher, Miss Lee was showing us how to solve the problem of making 9 boys happy with 27 candies between them. Buciq put up his hand as if to answer, but instead told the teacher that he needed to use the toilet. Okay, said Miss Lee, just be quick. And off he went, walking carefully so the wouldn’t topple to the ground.
10 minutes later, he still had not returned. Miss Lee stopped teaching and asked if anyone noticed what time it was when Buciq excused himself. Someone mentioned the time, and Miss Lee said okay lets give him 5 more minutes.
Another 5 minutes had passed and by then Miss Lee had has enough. Buciq was obviously trying to stay away from math class as long as possible. Miss Lee stormed out of the classroom and the moment we lost sight of her, everyone started talking excitedly. We were making fun of Buciq’s bravery and laughing thinking what might be the punishment he would receive from Miss Lee.
“Buciq is soooo gonna get it from Miss Lee”
“What was he thinking? Miss Lee isn’t afraid of aliens”
More laughter ensued. But after a while we started to wonder, why hasn’t both of them returned? We expect for Miss Lee to return in less than 5 minutes after she left. Is it possible that she couldn’t find Buciq? Is it possible something bad had happened? Maybe Buciq fell in the toilet and hurt himself?
Our class leader -a boy named Amir, was sensible enough to tell everyone to stay put while he go looking for answer. Out he went. This time everyone was quiet. We sensed that something was not right. And true enough, less than a couple of minutes after Amir had left, he returned to the classroom screaming on top of his lungs.
“OH MY GOD GUYS YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS, COME COME COME FOLLOW ME!!”
We all scrambled out of the class and followed Amir. The toilet was just at the end of the block and as we were running it only took us about 15 seconds from the classroom to arrive at the scene. There, Buciq was hopping up and down and crying at the same time. Miss Lee was trying her best to comfort her. There were a few other teachers as well that had arrived.
“Just call my mama, please, hurry, she will know what to do”, pleaded Buciq.
“I told you I already did, now tell me if I can do something for now”, said Miss Lee while holding Buciq’s shoulder to make him feel better.
But he was not feeling any better. There was no action that can be comforting for Buciq, who forgot to attach the part of his body he need to use to urinate. Buciq was not lying at all when he said he is an alien from another planet. As an alien, unlike human, it is normal for Buciq to detach any part of his body and re-attach them again. Happen to be, that morning, Buciq forgot to attach that important part and only realized he left it at home when he tried to pee.
The End.
After telling you this story as a reminder to not be forgetful, I remember the look you had on your faces. I enjoyed telling you that silly story. So now you might ask, where did I get the idea for such an absurd bedtime story? Of course there was no Buciq in my class when I was in elementary school. But there was an episode in my life that actually happened. It involved your great grandfather who you never had the chance to meet.
Back in 2005, I was a young co-pilot flying the Boeing 737-400. My late grandfather was in his seventies and sadly, his health was failing and he passed away the next year. He was such an amazing person and he was super proud of his pilot grandson. About once a month, I would fly to Kota Bharu, the city where I grew up. After flying the last flight of the day to the airport, I get to spend the night at the grandest hotel in that city.
My grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt and cousins would all drive from a small town where they lived, to come visit me at my hotel room. They would bring all sorts of food and fruits and deserts and we would have a sumptuous meal together.
My late grandfather, as an old man, wore dentures. Dentures are fake teeth that can be removed at night when you go to bed. He wore them because he lost all his teeth as he grew old. It is perfectly normal for old people to wear dentures, and it is advisable for them to remove the dentures before they fall asleep. This is to prevent choking on the dentures, if for some reason it slipped out of positition and falls down the throat.
So after my grandfather ate his meal, he felt sleepy and told us he wanted to take a nap. It was already late in the evening. But my family never stayed at my room, because there was only one king sized bed. After a few more chit chat we realized it was past midnight and my uncle had something to do the next day. So they woke the old man and told him its time to go home. We hugged, said our goodbyes, and they left.
I was about to doze off into slumberland when I noticed there was a peculiar object on the side table by my bed. I couldn’t make out what kind of object it was and I really didn’t care much because I was sleepy. I think by now you must have guessed what the object was. My uncle called me a moment later and asked if grandfather had indeed left his dentures in my room.
In the background I could hear everyone laughing hysterically in the car as they made a turn to head back to the hotel so grandfather can eat breakfast normally the next day.
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