Tux Watch

This is Chapter.I of some true short stories from my past that encourage humane revival. Though these posts may seem bit off-topic from this blog, but if you read closely, you will see the hidden message, the true Spirit of FOSS lies everywhere in what ever we do for humanity. Read on…

Chapter-I

It has been days since I have looked down into my past, reconciled with my consciousness that in turn is very fuzzy indeed, blurred in an atmosphere of personal desires opposed to the purpose for which I am in this world. Retrospective in movement, shallow in the heart, as I ponder through my thoughts, am lost to my conviction. Is this really because of a sublime conviction that has given me the strength to pursue the unachievable? Or is it simply confusion in parallel to a worldly existence? Maybe, it is something that every human being has within them but is only sparked within a few so special chosen to guide fellow humanity and civilization giving a whole new meaning to life?

When nights of unease and sleeplessness take hold of me, I reload my imagination, opening the doors to the past, with a key I have kept hidden from the world, my little secret, something that lives within my faith, only and only available to me. It’s the year 1981, a vast sandy school baseball field; no ball games at play, just school children having fun playing around during recess, innocence in retrospective, unaware of the problems and fears the world beholds for them in their futures. There is someone there sitting on the bench, a child, a bit different, a perspective of innocence in retrospective, with presence so little in a world so big. This child is me; I can still feel a bit of pain on my elbow that had gotten hurt while skating during P.E class, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking, it only adds a bit of tinge of pain to my thoughts.

Before recess, our first grade class teacher, Mrs. Walker had announced earlier that we were going to have fun recycling the lids of soda cans and bottles. She had placed a fish tank outside our class room door where all that we would gather shall be put to store. Dozens of these lids to be collected by thousands of children the school over, will help unlucky children in poorer countries gain access to water, food, better health, education, books, toys and much more. It felt like renewed energy, a new meaning, was it a game, was it a school class assignment or was it something much bigger that our innocent minds were unable to ponder at that particular moment in time? The search for lids had begun, I was there in that sandy field, looking around my feet, and every now and then I would bend down and try to shovel the gravel with my arm that had a sore elbow, shift to the other arm, look for those little lids.

By the end of the day, we had found quite some in dozens and as we walked back to the busses in the parking lot waiting to take us back home, we saw many more glass tanks placed outside every class in the school filled with the same. There was an indefinable feeling, innocence in retrospective, that because of all our little fun, so many other children will be happy in the poorer countries, but who were these so many, we did not know, why did they need recycling to help them and all those things the teacher told us about, why were they poor or what was poor, we didn’t know. I knew my Mom gave me a can of soda and a sandwich every morning, I would sometimes sit on a chair in the kitchen beside her and watch her make my lunch and put that tin of soda in the lunch box, but never believed that when empty, it was not just trash, it too was a hope for someone, somewhere.

We went on collecting for many days and one day we put all our accomplishment into a huge trash can bag to participate in a large school gathering within the Lunch Dorm where all the bags were placed near the stage. Principal Bobs congratulated all the class teachers and the children that they had helped in making a big difference for children who were not as lucky as we were and that we had taken a step to share some of our luck with them. Still puzzled by what he meant, we clapped in appreciation of something he had said and we hadn’t understood. The annual school carnival was announced, seniors advised to take care of us and include all the little juniors in the preparations, with the gathering adjourned, we were on our bus back to home where we would tell our mommies what a great exciting day we had helping children in poorer countries who weren’t as lucky as us although we hardly knew what that meant.

End of Chapter-I

Copyleft 2006, Reminiscences from Innocence in Retrospective by Fouad Riaz Bajwa. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5