End of the World......Never Happened

So 21^st December came and went and somehow the end of the Mayan calendar was as uneventful as Valentine’s Day in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Well, in order to understand it better, my charming sis-in-law-cum-my-chief-research-officer Kanya Bahwa conducted some research on this whole Mayan calendar thing and it turns out that the reason for the Mayan calendar to have only 5,125 years was not that they were predicting the end of the world after that…it was simply the fact that they did not know counting beyond 5,125. Talk about some “intellectually disabled” people!! Yes Sir, it is true that living in Canada, I cannot call morons as morons anymore. I was recently trained on Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and I was enlightened by the fact that in addition to physical disabilities, there are many other types of disabilities people may have that I need to be sensitive to…and one of them interestingly was “intellectual disability”. Hmmm…coming to think of it, if we are going to be so politically correct and superficial in our approach where we cannot call an idiot by his/her first name (Idiot), it probably would have been better if the world actually had ended last Friday.

Coming back to Kanya’s findings, I have to believe her because I know that she is a really good research scientist. I know what you are thinking (of course, if you are not Kanya) – Isn’t this the same lovely girl who I mentioned in the past as a notorious, I mean, famous fashion writer and my own fashion adviser?? That part is still true, but remember, she does have a degree in Biotechnology so that ought to make her (at least on paper) a “scientist”. And obviously, there are tons of brilliant scientists who have a very strong sense of fashion (can’t think of a single one right now but I am sure there are) so why can’t she be a fashion scientist. Hmmm….that fashion scientist stuff does not make much sense when I re-read what I just wrote above but since I am under the gun to complete and post this article before Christmas and it is already 1:25 AM on 25^th of December, let us simply move on…

Another argument to prove my hypothesis about Kanya is that it is only due to her “research” skills that she is now a renowned expert on early childhood development even though she herself is a few basic steps away from having her own kids, such as, meeting an interesting guy, dating him for a while, getting proposed, saying yes, getting engaged and then getting married in a big-fat-Mansarovar-Garden-Delhi-style-Punjabi-wedding, going to Abbottabad, Pakistan (heard that Osama Bin Laden’s compound has been turned into a lovers’ paradise…after all, he did have some 17 wives so I am sure the place is reeking of love) for their honeymoon, audaciously fielding for a few years some age-old questions by 231 Indian aunts/neighbors/maids/random ladies on the street, “When is your baby coming?”, “Why are you taking so long?”, “Is there a problem with one of you because I know a Hakim who can “fix” any issues?”, “Where did you buy that color of mascara from?”, “Do you know that if you do not have your first baby within one year of marriage per Indian standards, there will be a “hurdle” later on?” etc. etc. and THEN finally succumbing to this unbearable social pressure, and having her own kids. But, as I said, thanks to her research for some internship, she is now well-known around the world for her expertise on Pre-K education.

In any case, one way it is good that the world did not end on the 21^st because, for Pete’s sake, it was a Friday. It goes without saying that Friday is my favorite day of the week and I am sure, it is for most of the people around the world, except may be, in Saudi Arabia, where Friday sucks because the work week starts on a Saturday (no wonder during my numerous trips to the Middle East I could never find any T. G. I. Friday’s anywhere because if they build one, they will need to call it TGIWednesday’s in Saudi Arabia and then TGIThrusday’s in Qatar, Egypt etc. where the weekend is Friday/Saturday…and pretty soon it just becomes quite confusing so no wonder that the Carlson Companies never ventured into the Middle East). Coming back to Friday, last week was a long and tough week at work where some of the decisions I had to make will haunt me for some time (thank God I have seen ‘The Godfather’ 321 times….so I kept reminding myself, “it is business, not personal”). And after such a tough week, when you are looking forward to not only the weekend but 11 days of winter holidays…BHAM!!! the world ends right on Friday itself…that would have been a travesty of justice.

And talking about winter holidays, my 7-year-old son, Kush, is always charged up by Christmas, Santa, and a bunch of presents this big, fat dude brings every year.  This year, he has tried a new trick to get his present from Santa. He actually had something which someone gave him as a present but he did not like it so he has written a letter to Santa saying that Santa can take this present (which he put next to the letter) and in return get him what he wants. If that bribe was not enough, he also has left some beer and pizza for Santa…. no wait, that I think, was for me. Santa will get his usual cookies and milk. And thanks to my older son Nyle convincing Kush, Reindeers this year will get a treat of “Cheez It” rather than their usual boring carrots.

And I just remembered that this year, Kush also received a letter from Santa (courtesy his school), which, IMHO, was pretty dumb. The return address on the letter was listed as “Santa Claus, North Pole, HOH OHO, Canada”. When did the North Pole become a part of Canada? Do we need a UN referendum here? Then after a bunch of BS in the letter about elves being busy and all, the last paragraph read, “Don’t forget to get to bed early, and we will try not to wake you up when we land. Last year, we had to fly around the block 2 times because you were still awake when we got to your house!” Obviously, it took 2 seconds for Kush to call Santa’s bluff. He immediately blurted out after reading the letter, “Wait a minute! What does he mean by last year me being awake in the house? We were not even home because we were in a hotel in Chicago on Christmas Eve. What is Santa smoking these days?” No, he did not say the smoking part but I am sure he would have, had he known the beautiful concept of pot (as I wrote in my last blog, this is a PG-14 blog so parents are encouraged to provide some guidance to their offspring about the appropriateness of this blog for their reading pleasure).

Now, here you have a 7-year-old boy, who is at the crossroads of life where he has been somewhat questioning the existence of Santa for a couple of months anyway because one kid in his class apparently told him that he knew from his older sister that Santa did not exist but he was still pretending that he believed in Santa in order to receive his present on Christmas. And then some genius writes this letter pretending to be Santa where he/she makes these glaring mistakes to arouse suspicion from Kush all over again. And the real tragedy (second only to the world ending….if that had actually happened) is that I cannot call this person a moron….I guess he/she is “intellectually disabled”.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones (which obviously includes me)!!

And my final thought: It is ALWAYS better to cut your losses and move on rather than to chase almost dead relationships….life is too short.