The Burnt Offering

Sometimes when I consider the rate at which humans forget things and when I realise that I have never met someone who doesn't forget from time to time, I come to the conclusion that the brain was designed to forget.

I am not alone in this school of thought, as a good number of my friends agree with me. Look at these instances;

1. You go into your room to get one thing or the other, as you entered the room, you forgot your primary reason of entering. Sometimes it is so bad that you have to leave the room before you can remember why you went in at first.
2. You are going to the market but if you don't write a list, you will end up forgetting important things that you needed to buy
3. You are in school but you need to write down notes if not, you will remember too little that you can not pass an exam without going through the works again.
   And many more examples.

Knowing this, I don't beat myself too much when I forget but I also prepare my brain to not forget by having memory codes for virtually everything.

One Time I Forgot Something Very Important

It was a beautiful day in 2010 and my mum was expecting visitors from the office after work, she had prepared this stew which tasted so nice and cooked rice to go with it just before stepping out.

Image is mine

As a matter of fact, she went late that day because she wanted to make sure everything was ready.
"Graat, once it's 2.pm, go and warm the stew so that it won't be cold when my colleagues come. Warm it for like 5 minutes" my mum said.
"Yes ma, let me set my alarm for 2.pm so I don't forget" I replied.

She was happy that I was proactive and ready to discharge the duty very well so she left.

Once it was 2.pm, the alarm rang but I was watching a movie with my younger sister so I snoozed the alarm and continued watching.
After about 10 minutes, it rang again, I quickly paused the movie and went and placed the stew on fire and came back to the sitting room to continue my movie.

Image is mine

This was the position I was in when my mum came in around 3.pm with her colleagues. It was her entrance that reminded me that I had placed something on fire. Neither me nor my sis had noticed the smoke that filled the living room.

I quickly ran out but the stew was already burnt, burnt beyond management. Oh My! I didn't know how to face my mum. I remembered how she woke up around 5 am to prepare both rice and stew and how I just wasted her effort.

I also imagined what she would offer her guests now that I had wasted all her efforts. I was already in tears when she entered the kitchen but mothers love made her drag me out of the smoking kitchen first.
Then she gave me money to rush down to the supermarket nearby and buy meat pie and soft drinks for her guests.

Image is mine

After the meeting, my mum disconnected the TV from the DVD and the decoder. She banned us from watching movies for one month and then the amount she spent buying meatpie and drinks was deducted from my pocket money for school.

Despite this, I learnt my lesson to avoid engaging in multiple activities wholeheartedly especially if something of interest was involved and something that could spoil was also involved. It has been a guiding principle and since then up till now, I have not burnt food so bad again. I rarely burn food these days except for some instances and even then, it would be very slight and negligible.

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