Friday, 22 August 2008

Needless Gifts

Ayano and Nana are two little girls who have a passion for giving me presents. The problem is these presents are of no value to me whatsoever. As with most presents, it's the thought that counts. But I doubt whether any thought went into their minds when they give me their gifts. Their idea of a present seems to consist of grabbing the nearest object closest to them, then shoving it into my hands.
When they enter the Terakoya staff room just before their afternoon lesson, they will wave energetically at me and dart to various corners of the room, scouting for potential gifts. More often then not, they will run over to me with their hands loaded with detritus and other useless objects, unload it onto my desk, then scuttle off to another room. Past presents have included, a blunt pencil, a teddy bear with its head missing, and shredded paper they plucked from the bin. Every lesson they leave a mound of crap on my desk which I am left to clear. At first, I thought this was a quaint little character trait and would pretend that their gifts were of use to me. With the blunt pencil I curled up my top lip and balanced it on top pretending I had a dapper moustache. With the teddy bear, I pretended it was food and pretended to bite the head off with a satisfying mmmmm sound. And the shredded paper...well, I just threw it back in the bin. But after six months, I realised this could go on no longer. I think this thought occurred when they left my banana peels I had thrown away, on my desk.
"Ayano and Nana, no more presents!" I pleaded with them.
They looked sad.
"I'm sorry, but these are not presents," I said.
They told me they would give me a different kind of present next week. I had a bad feeling they were going to scrape off the bird shit from the window and give it to me.
The following week came and, true to their word, Ayano and Nana walked into the staff room and handed me an envelope.
"What's this, money? Now that's what I call a present," I mused out loud.
I opened it and discovered a few pieces of paper inside with scribbles and shapes.
"What a .....lovely...thought. What is it?" I stuttered, still trying to figure out the cryptic doodles.
"It's a game," they said in unison.
"Yeah? Looks more like someone's vomited on the paper," I said, knowing they couldn’t understand.
"Find Nana and Ayano!" they said.
On closer inspection, I realised that amongst the jungle of scribbles were little smiley faces resembling themselves. But any sense of fun with this game was forbidden because Ayano and Nana took it upon themselves to circle the faces in red, making the game defunct. But I humoured them and stroked my chin as I pretended to search intently for the smiley faces. After my faux-pain staking hunt, I thanked them for a more original present.
Buoyed by my new found positivity for their gifts, they yelled, "Next week more presents!" and left the room with a skip in their step.
I couldn't help noticing that Ayano and Nana were studying the bird shit on the window as they said this.

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