The Story Of A Lemon Race

“Did someone just POOP?”.

I dreaded/dodged this question for an awfully long time during my childhood. Well let me just admit it – I had weak bowels! I suffered disasters when none expected them and hence, the QUESTION. Those, who’ve borne witness to those grotesque scenes will admit that my primary school days weren’t very kind to me, and to them.

The issue as of today stands CORRECTED and hence, no qualms exist!!!

However relieving this embarrassing announcement is, announcing “IT” isn’t the primary aim of this post. But then, it also isn’t the aim of this blog, to find old classmates. In a rather surprising turn of events, Hina, my classmate from one of my primary schools, dropped me a warm message a few days ago and I couldn’t help but let you people in on it. I haven’t felt so thrilled in ages. You can find her comment in the link below –

Unforgettable Past – ITARSI – The Escapade

She not only remembers the characters in the post but she also was kind enough to let me know, how great our school really was during those days of limited resources and how exactly she stumbled upon my blog. She was searching for the name of our school and that’s how she came across Views Splash. Not only does the search thing on Google work, it actually provides my blog in search results too – amazing, isn’t it!

What I do want to share with you today though, is how I cheated for the first time (that I can remember of). It was nearing evening when our school decided to hold games for all the classes the next day and a messenger announced it in every class in those email-less days. I can’t recall clearly but think I participated in a couple of events, one of which was the “Lemon Race”. After being told to bring a spoon for the race, I was explained how the race is run. The contestants hold their spoons in their mouth using the handle and place the lemon on the curve and run without dropping the lemon. Whoever crosses the finish line first, wins!

I went home and told my mother about it. We sat for dinner when I saw my brother suckle at his favorite spoon and an idea struck the dead neurons in my brain. The spoon you see was quite broad at the handle and had a rather deep oval.

“This will definitely suffice my need” and so I thought.

After the dinner, I picked the spoon, placed a lemon on it, pursed the handle of the spoon between my lips and ran. The lemon fell after a few steps. I ran again and the lemon fell.

“This isn’t working”.

I tried again to check my fault and it turned out, the oval was doing its job correctly at the front but the lemon jumped ship from the back i.e. the handle end. So I worked with the spoon a bit and lifted the oval of the spoon to roughly 165 degrees with the handle which further deepened the spoon and gave the lemon a resting arm. I ran again and this time the lemon didn’t fall off. Now I happily awaited the next day to check out my competition and see how everyone else was faring with their spoons and whether there were any tricks used like I had.

The next evening arrived and the event-o-clock struck. As I went around casually checking everyones spoons, I found they hadn’t tinkered the slightest with the spoon. I started feeling guilty the moment I hit the finishing line in the first place. I saw everyone and only one other boy had managed to finish with rest trying to figure out where their lemons scurried to.

I won a plate, with a rather uncomfortable conscience, and yet I was still proud, not for winning the competition though. I was proud for I tried something different with my brain, something I wasn’t really used to. Regarding the guilt, I guess I was so small then that, it was better I left the guilt at the finishing line.

The reason for this post is 2-fold –

1. Weekly Writing Challenge – Memoir Madness. I now proudly say that –

“When life gave me lemons, I won a lemon race”.

2. The link between my confession in the first part of the post and the second is the friend who found me. A lot of school memories came flooding back and I shared two of those with you, the ones that really turned some of my early ways. It shows how embarrassment and guilt are some of the ingredients I’ve dealt with in my recipe called Life.