Ahsen Jillani
By Ahsen Jillani
Okay, I know what you are thinking. “This dude will blast technology in the next sentence.”
If I’ve learned anything in the course of my long, illustrious, and industrious career, it is this transformational concept that many a sage has taught me sitting by campfires with dust settling in your mystery stew: you see, you always say the sunset is beautiful; and also, you always have the right to change your mind.
I always fancied myself an expert outdoorsman, swinging from trees and climbing vast amounts of rocks. The problem is that the trees and the rocks were only two feet from the ground, but the ladies gushed at the photos of the desi hero who could conquer the world – and the tofu biryani.
Now, I’ve met people along the way that seemed like they were either deranged or delusional. I stared in awe at these specimens of raw cluelessness. As an astute student of human and animal behavior, I would be drying my damp socks and watching these folks fall down in the damp leaves, cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.
And while I was tucked into a sub-zero sleeping bag zipped up in every direction and then glued with superglue, I would hear gems come of their mouths at 2am. “Dang, lizard trying to crawl into my nose. I hate lizards.” People would laugh curled around the fire and remind each other about the mystery animal they hunted and roasted. “It was yeti.” “It wasn’t no yeti; it was a possum.”
I met this kind of crowd in several countries, the ones who could say, ”Watch this,“ jump off an actually tall tree and break their leg. Every day they would laugh about that too, and how they got lost in the woods heading to the hospital 30 miles away.
I’m no psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon, or even a coroner but I had the mental capacity to realize that these folks were dancing to a different banjo while rowing upriver using only a broken leg as a paddle.
I was essentially a city person, and the most adventure I experienced was usually a street fight while heading home late at night. At my present age, and level of heavy thinking, I finally reached the final frontier: When you can’t do something, pretend.
The Hubble Telescope’s latest iteration, The BubbaX, has now looked in the past many billions of light years to find a clue as to why mosquitoes were invented. Earlier in the year, I stuck an eye out the door to check the temperature, and a mosquito landed on my cornea, or at least on my spleen.
While I’m no wimpy toddler, I immediately resolved to never leave the house until the first snowfall—and we know when that is going to happen (it’s 115 degrees in Las Vegas right now). But machismo is like a locomotive with a blown engine. When I saw Mary, the old neighbor cleaning gutters next door, I sprung into action.
My rubber boots go up to my thighs like the Chaps cowboy’s wear. It was 91 degrees out, but I opted to put on my Brawny paper towel guy checkered shirt, sprayed everything top to bottom with citronella spitzer, dipped my head in a bucket of pine sol and opened the front door with a step stool and a cat litter scoop in hand as if I was entering a salon.
True, there can be only one sheriff in town, and seems Mary thought she was it. As the mosquitoes entered my nose and exited through my ears, I felt the first relief from persistent tinnitus in 20 years.
But that didn’t stop me from running around the yard like a little girl chasing a butterfly.
Mary’s grandkids came out to see what was happening, but I distinctly remembered from my vast CPR and firefighter and ironing my socks training that I must drop and roll.
I think that’s when nature really called, as I was flat on my back with the step stool on my face trying to pest control my sinuses. That’s when I thought I saw a lizard in the grass and thought, “Hmm, they eat mosquitoes,” The resident hawk was up the front yard oak staring at me, and as I turned my head slowly, there was William the Coyote. I knew a mommy deer was grazing in the back yard with her fawns.
It was time to be a man’s man and take control. I got up and kicked the water sprinkler as if it had tripped me. Mary was halfway up her ladder with her hands crossed and smiling, a real leaf scoop in her hand. This incident did convince her grandkids that it was just a fall due to the sprinkler. They went in.
When life hands you lemons, well, you limp. Waving my hands above my head to keep the swarm from totally eating my brain, I headed indoors. I lay down on the couch but all I saw were spiders all over the couch trying to devour me.
“Winning is overrated,” as the famous basketball coach Al McGuire once said. It was time to put the six frozen samosas I had in the freezer in the oven and get in the shower to wash off all the chemicals. Hey, I said to myself, you made it out. The gutters can wait. I was feeling pretty good while I sprayed vintage 1980s cologne Menon Millionaire all over myself and made it down. No need to prove anything to anyone. I’m the real deal and need to be proud. All was good, until the phone rang.
“Hey Baby Boy. Just making sure all is okay.” It was Mary. She could ruin a perfectly good act of self deception in a Mint Hill minute.
Ahsen Jillani a former editor and publisher, is originally from Islamabad, Pakistan, and now lives in a forest called Mint Hill. He owns Must Media, a PR firm focused on political and corporate clients. Contact: [email protected].
