The Shock of Curiosity

They say "curiosity kills the cat," but no one warned me that it could nearly kill a little girl who just wanted to play Spiderman and have so much fun.

Growing up as the first child and the only girl amongst boys, I was expected to be the calm one. Like the composed, obedient girl who sat with her legs crossed and played with dolls. But I was anything else but calm. With two younger brothers and no other kids to play with, thanks to my dad who is a disciplinarian. He gave this strict ban on mingling with the children from the other compound. I had no choice but to become one of the boys.

Our games were not the gentle kind at all. We turned the living room into a battlefield. It was our own little arcade. At one time, we would be superheroes jumping from couch to couch and the next, we would be serious engineers trying to stop the ceiling fan with mop sticks and pillows. I took pride in being tougher than my brothers. I wasn’t just with them. I was actually one of them.

But what fascinated me the most wasn’t just our wild games. It was the things we were told not to touch. The closed drawers, the sharp kitchen knives and even the shiny things with buttons that spark when plugged in. Our house was filled with tiny mysteries, and every No we got from my parents only made me so curious, and my mind would scream "Why not?"

One sunny Saturday afternoon, while my brothers were outside pretending to be funky astronauts, I found my dad crouched beside the hallway socket, battling with a tangled mess of wires. He spread his toolkit out like treasure land which was full of shiny tools I had never been allowed to touch.

“Go and join your brothers,” he said while he focused on how to detangle the cables.

I didn’t move an inch. I loved staying close to him. Watching him work made me feel like I was learning something no one else knew about. Growing up as a kid, I saw my dad as all knowing and I idolized him so much. He sighed and let me sit beside him as he twisted the copper ends of a wire.

But then he stood up and muttered, "I forgot the tester," walking briskly out of the room.

That was it. The very moment I had waited for.

My heart was beating fast, I felt my pulse increasing. The wires shone under the light, practically begging to be touched. I knew I shouldn't touch it. I really knew. But I also craved to know what it felt like. Like, why was it so forbidden?

I reached for the wire, wrapped my fingers around the exposed end and the world went dark.

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was my mom’s face. Her red, frantic and puffy eyes, were a clue that she had been crying. I was lying on a hospital bed, my body felt limp but I was alive.

"You are very lucky oh," she whispered over and over. "You were lucky, my daughter..."

They told me later that she had found me lying still with my fingers wrapped around the live wire and my twitching body that had gone silent. She used a dry stick to push me away. She said that was something she remembered from a safety lesson long ago.

I didn't speak much for the next few days. I didn’t even cry at all. It was like my thoughts were cloudy. When we got home, I avoided the hallway. I couldn’t even bear to see sockets or wires. I couldn’t even hold the TV remote without trembling. The sight of electrical appliances scared the hell outta me.

My brothers didn’t tease me like I even expected. Instead, they sat quietly with me during our now mild games as we had been banned from playing the way we used to. I didn't want to feel like Spiderman anymore. At that moment, I felt more like a ghost who had looked into the cupboard of grown-up things.

But time moved so fast, and so did I.

Years later, I managed to change a light bulb on my own for the first time. My hands shook a little, but I eventually did it. Then, I started learning and asking questions instead of poking things recklessly. Curiosity didn’t die. It just happened to grow up with me.

Now, when I see something I don’t understand, I literally remember that spark that nearly stole my life and I smile. I do well to take a step back, and ask, “How does this work?” Before reaching for it.
Because curiosity might kill the cat, but the cat can also learn

All images are mine.
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