You've come a long way, Baby!

He’s the wittiest man I know. He’s also the man I love the most. Against all hopes and wishes, I didn’t inherit his sense of funny. Instead genetic mutation ensured bounteous endowment of a sense of horror. Devoid of jocular of the “nava rasas” and inflicting the tragic one aplenty on myself, I don’t believe Bharata Muni would have been very proud of me. Fortunately for me, my dad is. Proud of me, and unembarrassed, unapologetic about my supposed sensitivity (that dismays my mom beyond comprehension) as he teases me to cry in return of an “atthanni” and has been doing it since I was, probably, ten. For the uninitiated, atthani/50 paisa is 1.14 cents in today’s value. Rate of devaluation notwithstanding, the price tag on the entertainment my weeping provides has been pretty constant. And THAT is what happens if no one in your family has ever even skimmed through an economics book, or if you shed tears and snot at the mere drop of the hat.
Hapless kids and absurd family fetishes aside, I am not in accord with extra-sensitive (euphemism for a crabby crybaby) bullcrap about me. I just can’t control my tears when I want to kill someone. No, no imminent psychopathy on the cards.
Mom wanted to buy me a t-shirt saying “I scare my own family”, except, I refuse to validate it. After all, I get my individualistic, independent streak from her, only it’s magnified a million times. What streak, you say? Now, almost everyone I know has some sort of a unique aberration- a birth-mark, an injury scar, something that is just their own. I have nothing; not a blemish, no scars, no freckles, not even a frikking big enough mole. So the “tiny” anomaly that had to be there, by the law of averages, turned up in my head. Twisted apperception and a persistent alexithymia. More twisted than the dreadlocks I wanted at the age of 19 and more persistent than my ability to find furniture in the dark using my pinky toe. It could also explain why I could not learn a new language while everyone in my family knows at least three. Sigh!! Compulsive nail-biting offers only temporary respite! Ego, Eros, assholes for boyfriends, Barbie-less childhood, angels for boyfriends, greatest friends ever, affinity to color, bitches I met, phobia of grey skies? Blame whatever. I do.