15 Years ago

A recent conversation that I had with my beloved boyfriend about Buddha (no idea how we even got into that) brought me back to when I was a little 10 year-old girl.

The three of us had nothing better to do than spending time, hanging out on top of the water tank that my dad built in our backyard (which was most definitely suggested and permitted all by me).

We climbed up the tank and sat down in circle, facing each other.

“So, what do we wanna talk about today?” My best friend initiated.
“Let’s vote” I demanded.
“Sport!” My little bro cousin keenly declared.
“Yeh… sport” My dear friend followed without thinking.

Two out of three already
They both looked at me innocently, waiting for my vote
I already had a topic I wanted to talk about. I came up with it last night!
But I was thinking…
What’s the freakin point of me telling them at all?!?!
So much for the logical part of my brain, I decided I’m gonna use my right anyway.

“I wanna talk about how they punish people in hell”

Only if I could paint a picture of the two tiny faces who were sitting across me, reacting after I gave my vote on my blog here, it would explain much better why this stays so vividly in my memory.

I remember I surrendered and let them talked about sport.
But they ran out of their sporty talk so quickly that they had to engage with my topic finally.

About a month later, there was a book festival at my cousin’s school.
He knew that I’m a book freak, so he decided to surprise me.

One evening after school, there it was, placed elegantly on the couch (that I rather slept on than my actual bed)… The Ten lives of Buddha.

How nice of him…

For a ten year-old, I was strangely embarrassed for the fact that I like to read this kind of stuff. I was afraid that someone was going to find out, not only that I had no freakin clue about Barbie dolls but I knew all about biography of each of Buddha’s life.

I was really excited and thankful that he was right on.
But I decided not to react accordingly.

“Yeh… thanks. Cool” I said to him, wrapped the book around my arms, sneaked back up stairs to my room, and finished it in less than ten days.

This whole thing made me laugh on the bus today.
Brought me back to reality
I was thinking about my boyfriend…
“Who did he think he is?!?! Telling me I know about Buddha less than he does!”

(Sweetie, if you’re reading this, I’m just joking :)