The Choice

Only a few days into college and this girl was making waves. She was everything a guy wanted, and everything one hated. Beautiful, smart, haughty, arrogant you name it, it would describe her. A fresher making so much news in college was unheard of.

Me on the other hand, was famous for all the wrong reasons. I had the wonderful gift of ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time and that would get me trouble. I was a joker to friends who knew what actually happened and a devil to those who didn’t know the true story.

One day, as i ran around the corner I crashed into something or someone I would say. It was a girl, could have been a fresher. I was running at a nice speed and the force of my hit knocked her down. She started crying, and I didn’t want to get into any more trouble as I had already been threatened with “Suspension” for any further trouble in the month. I ran from that place and soon forgot all about it.

The next day i was hanging out with my friends when she came storming there. Behind her was the girl whom I had crashed into earlier tugging at her sleeve. She walked right to me. I was trying to get my brain to work. She was good looking, had an air of confidence about her. She comes straight to me and tells me, Mister you should be ashamed of yourself, my friends look up and almost are ready to roll out laughing. When she turns around and tells them “you too”. We sat silently as she gave a big lecture about how pathetic we were, and that we had to understand that we were just some bimbos who were trying to be cool. She wanted me to apologize to the girl. I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at her and I loved everything about her then. A big smile broke out from my face. The anger made her ears red. It was the cherry on the Cake.

She yelled for some more time and decided that it was pointless to continue with all of us stunned to silence. Nobody in our college had ever given us a speech like that and walked off, not even our HOD who was famous for his temper tantrums; even that man was guarded in his speech with us. But here was a girl who was calling the Final year fellows names and walking out like a heroine. After that yelling our reputation took a big hit, we were forced to stay indoors and work on projects as our term was approaching an end.

That helped us a lot, may sound strange but that saw to the fact that we did good projects and we were placed in good companies at the end of the term. We never saw her in the college ever, but kept hearing about her heroics. I joined a firm and did well enough to be transferred Onsite within two years of me joining it. I started to be a bit more careful in whatever thing I did, I didn’t want to see a beet root red ear ever again.

With time, my family started pushing for a wedding, they had seen an alliance. The Girl’s side was happy with my profile and all I had to do was come see the girl, and bingo I would have a wife soon. Even my parents were very happy about the alliance. I decided to check it out as a vacation to India was long overdue.

So I went to meet her family, they were nice people . I liked them. And so I was asked to go upstairs to meet my future wife. There after six years I saw her again. I had never been so tensed; panic hit me in full force. The same face, the ears not so red and face still beautiful. As I struggle to find words, she gives a big smile and says “Hi, been a long time”. I was expecting “What you?” She said “long time” so she knew it was me. I manage to ask “But why”. She understood what I meant. She told me that she had really liked me since the first time, but was angry with me because I was wiling away my time doing useless things. As she was talking, I started to realize how much I missed her, and always had liked her. She told me that when this alliance came to her, she didn’t even think a minute and had accepted the proposal

I told her that I needed some time to decide on, I saw worry on that face then. But I couldn’t make a choice then and there, I hardly knew her and I was still scared of the good yelling I got that day.

It has been 40 years since that day. I am sitting with my grand son. I hear my wife calling him. I can tell from her voice that she is not happy with something. It was late and she had to put him in bed. He doesn’t want to sleep. He asks me as who that girl was and what happened to her? My wife looks at me with a scorn, that tells me it is late and he has to be in bed. I picked my grandson up and showed him my wife’s ears. They were red. A big smile spreads across his face and he asks “Grandma?” As I miss a step, her hand steadies me. I smile as I realized that I made the correct choice that day.