If you get any closer

It’s a clear day. It’s sunny and a bit windy. It isn’t so warm but very bright. I finished booking my flight tickets for a trip to my native city next month. So now, I am happy, and broke. Travel isn’t a low-cost affair ever!

I am on the Internet discovering palindromes- sentences (or words) which read the same forward as they do backward- surely, you would know about them; I knew about them too but I didn’t know they were called palindromes. Anyway, here’s one for you: Madam, I’m Adam. Read it backwards. It reads exactly the same. Fun? Good, here’s one more then: Was it a car or a cat I saw? And one more: Never odd or even. The last one: A Toyota’s a Toyota!

The last one reminds me that I have got to buy a Toyota some day. Meanwhile, the one car that I own badly needs a wash. It has accumulated so many layers of dirt that one could create on it a reverse graffiti (that’s a new English word I learned, and I finally used it, but more about that later).

One of my friends came back from a trip to Malaysia last week and presented me a sign, like the ones placed in the back window of an automobile with ‘Baby on Board’ message on it, except that this one has got nothing to do with a baby (and definitely sounds more
grown-up); this one reads, in somewhat smaller fonts: If you get any closer you will have to marry me! A brilliant one, I thought, and quite a bold one at that. I am not very brave but I suppose I am going to put it up anyway (that’s one reason I am getting my car washed so that an unclean car doesn’t put anyone off who is considering coming close and… you don’t think I am serious, do you?).

I am very watchful of and I enjoy reading such smart signs and bumper stickers on the rears of other vehicles. One read: I may be slow but I’m ahead of you. Another one read: Drink coffee and drive. Yet another one, on the rear of a small car, read: My other car is a BMW. I probably will share some more as I recollect- my memory isn’t the same it used to be.

It surely isn’t. I had nearly forgotten to wish a friend whose birthday was earlier this week. In the middle of the day when I very, very unexpectedly logged in to check my personal emails, a reminder from Facebook luckily caught my attention. I got together the others (who too had forgotten about it), made a call, very enthusiastically and authentically conveyed our birthday wishes, not in the least making it evident how relieved we were to have not completely missed it! I think we did a good job. But now that I have confessed it here, I hope my friend doesn’t read this post!

Now, let me get back to reverse graffiti. Reverse graffiti, as a word, has been around for only a few years or so, and is a way of creating temporary images on the walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from the surface, often by removing the dirt with the fingertip. For example, someone may write on a dirty vehicle “wash me” or “I hate my owner”. Beware! Another word I learned which too is of somewhat recent origin is retail therapy. Retail therapy is particularly the shopping one does while being in a depression (or while being in a not very good mood), with the sole purpose of feeling better. If you just received your increment and are disappointed with it, you could go for a retail therapy. That would be quite paradoxical though! My favourite among all the newer words I learned is muffin top. The spilling over of the bulge of flesh above low-waisted trousers or skirts is now called a muffin top. It has got a lot to do with the shape of a muffin, of course. If you have a muffin top and have not been able to go for your early morning run, try wearing long T-shirts to hide them!

That last paragraph virtually seemed like an English lesson. But good we did quickly get over it. By the way, if you are really looking for a bold message for your bumper sticker, I recollect one more: Mother-in-law in Trunk.