My host mom kicked a guinea pig
last night. One of the little ones escaped from the kitchen floor last night
and was trying to venture out into the real world. It surely just wanted a
little peek into what lay beyond the dirt floor. I’m sure the first site of the
big droopy dog eyes would have scared it right back into the kitchen, but my
host mom got to it first. She was coming back into the kitchen when I looked up
from eating my soup to see a small fur ball fly through the air. She was
scolding it for wanting more freedom than what we already give it and my mouth
dropped, as I didn’t really ever believe that I would see someone kick a guinea
pig in my lifetime. Our other dinner guests were also a little mortified at my
host mom’s reaction, or maybe they just didn’t want to see us lose our future
dinner so they jumped into guinea pig rescue action. This meant that they put a
small bucket on top of the guinea pig and started banging on the bucket. My
host mom felt no remorse but proclaimed that surely the guinea pig was dead.
The dinner guests were otherwise convinced and passionately argued that banging
on the bucket with a wooden spoon would bring the guinea pig back to life. They
paused their ruckus every few minutes to tilt the bucket and peak inside, and
then proclaim that the bucket banging life revival technique was working and
would go back to their impromptu band. Well they did in fact bring the
traumatized guinea pig back to life.
That small fur ball got its feet back under it, and perhaps now has more
reason to run for freedom but is surely scared out of any of those thoughts.
We moved
the guinea pigs out of the kitchen the next day. Built them a nice cage right
in front of our woodpile out back. We woke up this morning and found one of the
big ones dead. I think it might have been too old to accept such a big change
in its life. My host mom thinks we can still eat it for dinner, my host dad
proclaims it died of an exploded stomach, I think I will stick to potatoes and
rice for dinner tonight.
Sometimes I
feel like a guinea pig; running around everywhere, putting my nose in
everything, asking questions that perhaps seem apparent, just waiting for the
boot to come lift me off the ground and put me in my place. But it never comes.
Last year I planned a visit to the nearest University with the senior class of
our high school. When I say planned I had gone to the University and set a
date, but beyond that I just assumed it would work out. Two days before we are
supposed to go it became more apparent that I should have done a little more
than just waited for pieces to fall into place. I found myself running around
town looking into the eyes of the town mayor, school director, and teachers,
asking them to put aside normal conduct and allow us to use the municipality
van for transportation, asking them to put in more hours the following week so
that the students could make up what they would miss in classes, asking them to
overlook the fact that on the last trip the van broke down but this time
hopefully it wouldn’t. I was scurrying around looking for a way to get what I
wanted but also waiting for someone to just slap me in the face and tell me no.
But it never came. I manipulated teachers into believing that every other
teacher had said yes and they were the last one to agree to make up their class
time in the following week. The students were fighting for me; drumming out the
beats of a cheerleading routine over my head to keep me to keep pushing. I felt
guilty to be putting so many people out due to my lack of planning, but nobody
had the nerve to just tell me no. They said it would be difficult, they said
they didn’t want to, they shook their heads at me, but I held onto the eye
contact. Somehow on Friday morning I found myself sprinting across the plaza
one final time to drop off the last permission slip, and we were rolling down
the hill. The tire was flat on the van, one teacher out of protest had held a
permission slip hostage in a notebook and wouldn’t turn it into the director,
but despite all this we were on the road.
While I never did the kick to send me flying to a halt, I suppose a true
execution of a plan should come with a bit more planning.
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