It's a childhood thing

Today I apologised to my washing machine.

I think I am going nuts. I'd put my clothes for a wash. About an hour later, I went to pick them up from the machine to dry them. Without looking at the timer, I opened the top cover, and suddenly realised that the washload was still spinning.

"Oops! Sorry!" I put the cover back.

And it was then that I realised that I had just apologised to my washing machine.

I think this kind of interacting with non-living things dates way back to my childhood in India, where every non-living thing had an identity, a respect, an image.

When I was a toddler, and my finger got crushed by the door hinge, I ran to Mom bawling so loudly that even the neighbours could hear me. Mom tried to calm me down but I just got louder and louder. She put my finger in a bowl of ice, and I bawled even more. To make me stop and preserve her dignity in the locality, she said, "Achha? Us door ne meri beti ki ungli crush kar di? Abhi dekhti hoon!" And she "slapped" the door.

"Theek hai abhi?" She asked.

"Haan." I grinned. Suddenly the pain in my finger was gone. The wrong-doer had got what he deserved. Justice had been administered.

As far as I was concerned, the house was teeming with other non-living things that were the enemy too, out to get me, the innocent kid who had caused them no harm. But they were adequately punished. Nothing was spared. Tables and chairs that got in the way of the princess, moving blades of fans which the royal one decided to stick her finger into, sharp pencils that hurt her hands, knives that cut the princess' fingers as she deemed herself qualified to make a sandwich at that age, hammers that fell on the little one's thumb as she thought she could hang a picture by herself, drawer edges that knocked into her, slippery bathroom floors that gave way under her tiny feet. They all got whacked, while I looked on with silent pride at the might of my mother.

And then something not so happening happened.

I grew up.

Things in my house stopped getting whackings from my Mom. In time, I started to see the humour in the situation. And of course, wisdom kicked in. The house was not teeming with things that were out to get me. Non-living things were exactly that - non-living and nothing more.

I guess some things from our childhood just stay with us forever. Even though we don't know they do.

All it takes is an offended washing machine to make you realise that years later.