Unlike my best friend who has can give you an almost complete, day by day, blow by blow account of her entire childhood, I remember precious few things of my first six years. One thing i do remember though, with painful clarity, is really seriously wondering why my teacher had marked the hind legs of the parakeet i had just drawn as ‘My Favourite Bird’ and written a huge ‘X’ next to it, and not the usual ‘V good’. When i argued that i had definitely seen parakeets on the tree in front of my window and they definitely had four legs because how else did they do the acrobatics they did, she just gave up after a while and told me to call my sister, who was in the same school during the small break. That’s some trauma all right. i can easily remember being thoroughly confused, didn’t birds have four legs, or maybe just the parakeets? didnt all parakeets look like crocodiles actually? how else did those buggers balance on swaying branches and walk around. walk and hang upside down.
today whenever i see the parakeets and oh boy i see them everyday, just heard one squawking while flying past me right now. so whenever i see them i grumble at them. you can’t blame a tiny, innocent, wonderstruck child for thinking they have extraordinary balancing powers. I mean, look at this fellow right now, wings tucked away neatly, beak holding on to the twig ahead of him casually, like so, just so he can walk past this little bump on the branch, and then he saunters along the length of a thick branch of this almond tree. Now, he surveys the junction of the next branch, turns around and walks all the way back, and climbs to the branch above and walks some more. What’s with the walking i ask them everyday, you can fly you know? they are mischievous buggers, I’m sure they hear me and know exactly what I’m saying, because they have that grin, but they walk away and walk some more.
now he is hanging upside down for no particular reason, casually biting at a small almond that has no chance of growing to its potential now. and there it goes, after some intense gnawing he has grown bored with the almond and lightly yanks it off the the tree and tosses it away, where it bounces sadly on the ground joining several others from the same branch.
such wasteful, pretty, squawking walking buggers.