Diary of an Honest Naturalista: Week 41

During this period of fuel scarcity, I have been magically transformed into one of those Japanese ladies with the power of a samurai.

This period was a generally stressful one for me, as I had to struggle to get on public transport, and after then, still pay exorbitant fares to get to my place of work. It was not funny for me at all.

On one of these days, I was carrying my big handbag, on my right shoulder, and completely targeting a bus that was approaching the bus stop. I told myself I had waited long enough at the bus stop, and there was no way I was allowing the oncoming bus pass without my getting on it. In my mind, I had calculated the sizes of the people to my left and right, and the ratio I would need to twist and turn, and squeeze in between them, for me to successfully get on the bus without a scratch.

Immediately the bus got to us, I jumped into action, and started playing out the math script I had written in my head. Before you could say jack, my right foot was already on the bus, and I was trying to make sure the left one followed suit, without my shoe popping off, or worse, having that part of my body landing in Igbobi hospital, or leaving my body entirely.

As I was struggling to enter, I felt a resistance to my progress. I thought I was dreaming. The more I tried, the harder the resistance. I wondered what was happening. Even though I did not want to, because I felt it would hinder my progress, I had no choice but to turn back to find out what was happening.

“Shock” could not describe the reaction to the discovery I made. A pick-pocket’s right hand was stuck in my bag! He had tried to remove the hand, but two people on my left and right, struggling to enter the bus at the same time with me, had sandwiched the guy’s hand into my bag. Even at that, it did not look like anyone noticed what was going, as everyone’s focus was on getting into the bus. It was a deadlock: The two people on my side couldn’t enter because of me, I couldn’t enter because of the thief, and the thief could leave because of the two people on my side! Since the guy couldn’t get his hand out of my bag, the only option for him was to pull the bag backward, with his hand in it, thereby pulling me too off the bus I already had one foot on. And this was where the resistance was coming from.

All these discoveries, I made in an instant of a second, when I turned my head at an angle of -90 degrees, but must have played in slow motion in my head.  I felt the guy’s face very close to the back of my head, and I was scared that he might even harm me to free himself. By the time I did a full 180 degrees, I heard the gut scream “ouch!”

I looked at his face, and saw a vertical cut across his left cheek. He was slightly bleeding. I wondered what was in me that must have cause him to bleed because I turned. “Was I a sword in disguise?” I touched my head, and felt my bobby pin sticking out of the left side. It was an old bobby pin, with the pained ball area at the end, scratched out, thereby having the end bare and a bit sharp. Mehn, I had a thief-repelling weapon of mass destruction in my head, and I felt defenseless?

I immediately removed the pin that did the damage, and another old one towards my forehead, and stabbed the part of his arm that was exposed. The guy yelped, and the hand I assumed couldn’t be removed due to it being sandwiched between bodies, instantly became unstuck, as he let his hand out of my bag, and staggered backwards.

Everything couldn’t have happened for more than five to ten seconds, but it felt like I was acting in a three-hour Japanese samurai movie, where I was the main actor. In my mind, the motion in the below picture is what took place.

Source

As I finally placed my left foot on the bus, I heard someone outside the bus chuckle. I looked out, and it was another person standing by. The person had noticed the whole encounter, and he couldn’t even alert me when I was unaware. People can be wicked to their fellow humans.

There it is; one advantage of being a naturalista. We always have weapons of defense against our enemies, right in our head.

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