Happy as a bouncing ball


She was calling me, gaily and bouncing, she was calling me by name and I couldn’t believe that she could so quickly transform to such an evanescent quality as of a small, blue bouncing ball.

Just one moment ago, probably shorter than it takes me to turn in the bed and kiss her on her cheeks, we were lying side by side in the bed, she with the very feminine structure of a thirty year old woman and me with what could be normal for a grown up man of my age.

Everything was very simple as happens any single moment in any single place of the world for any single couple. Bored by a long uneventful sunday, after rummaging through all the TV channels with their weekly briefings on the state of the world which in this case happened to be mostly a collection of war news here and there, an irresistible listlessness and boredom impinged on us and took us unintentionally towards the bed.

We have this probably common habit of couples to lie down on the bed and start a kind of pseudo-philosophical conversation about the most absurd phenomena in the world just to avoid talking about more relevant or more intimate issues. Especially on Sunday afternoons we often happen to turn down friends’ invitations to join them for drinks or other social sunday afternoon activities and we end up lying there in peace trying to be as distracted as possible from the outside world.

Thus so far everything was as normal as it should be for a languid mood as such and even when she started talking about being extremely tired of everything and willing to change something radically in her life; I didn’t take it as serious or perhaps strange or unexpected. She has her special moods and habits and I have my special ways of dealing with them.

She is more than an ordinary young woman, a cashier in a modest local internal design company. Talking about her being an employee of an internal design company might bring to ones mind that she has one of those artistic type personalities, what people usually define as being creative and talented. But she is by no means involved in any creative process of any kind even if such areas could exist in a company as such.

She keeps records of the payments of customers who most of the time are those extremely bored people willing to change something in their close surrounding as the decoration of their house to compensate for bigger changes which could take place in one’s life and because they are not able to come up with an original idea of their own, they refer to such companies and pay them eagerly to offer them with the most achievable transformations.

I’m not sure whether her constant mental preoccupation with the idea of change is related to her profession or probably has much deeper roots in her personality, but after four year of living together, I’m quite confident that there is nothing more deeply-rooted in her thoughts as this dream of one day of enlightenment and emancipation when she is no longer her former self and has turned to a completely different being.






Probably what makes me a bit sarcastic about this special issue, because nevertheless for most of the other aspects of her personality I’m truly fond of her ways, is the fact that I feel in danger as to be excluded from her world if such a change indeed happens. Though being a realistic grown up guy, a bank clerk by the way, I’ve been pretty sure that these feminine fantasies should never be taken serious and I felt my position as safe as when I hold her in my arms and I’m assured that she belongs in mind and body to me.


But on this special occasion which I hardly remember its exact timing and circumstances now, she asked me if I was willing to join her for an immediate change in our lives. Before my being aware of the real sense of this proposition, she started to put the harshest possible criticisms of my personality and mentality before me, accusing me of being a superficial moron not endowed with any special talent or capability, as rigid in mentality and behavior as a dead cold stone, only being able to render a superfluous cynicism to everything I find beyond my capability or my understanding.


I truly agree with her point about being unnecessarily cynical but so far I was quite sure that it is one of my charming aspects for everybody and especially for her. As people are usually pleased by comments which are empty in themselves but refer to an alternative viewpoint about how the things should be interpreted. Let’s say that I don’t believe in democracy, first of all they know that I’m not of any harm to the foundations of democracy so this is just a harmless cynical comment. Nevertheless such foundations are beyond the reach of any single citizen, they are lying safe out there to give us an infinite sense of safety and I could by no means endanger them by expressing my ideas about them. Secondly although nobody in the world dares these days to agree with me, they are at least charmed by the naivety of a fool who still doesn’t believe in the most taken for granted virtue of democracy and such simplemindedness is far from being disgusting. It is only amusing to see these kinds of people around.

I was waiting for her to refer to this well known folly of mine but to my great surprise she cited a completely different example, which is my belief in futility of humanitarian services. It was quite unkind of her to refer to this issue, as I don’t even dare to confess to myself that I have such a horrible idea. But she treacherously had recognized this tendency in me and was pointing to it in one of the most sensitive moments of our life together. I was really puzzled, wondering whether I should defend myself or should retract and put on an indifferent face to her blunt accusations. Anyway if someone asks what my alternative instead of such activities is, I don’t have any answer, I don’t know.

But I become skeptic when I watch the news and I see the resolutions about wars move hand in hand with planning humanitarian aids, I doubt whether they are part of a unified picture. Even if this is not the case, such aids are always lagging behind the high speed of catastrophes, so maybe it is better to be realistic and not start doing them in the first place. I do seem like a moron, I know and you can imagine how painful it is when you hear it from your most beloved person. But at the time she was bombarding me with all the examples of my wicked life, I assumed that it is going to be over soon and everything should be fine in no time.



Fool me; I even started calculating when her last menstruation was as this torrential sentimentality could be most probably related to a premenstrual syndrome. Anyway before I could make up my mind what the best next move should be, maybe soothing her down by some tasteful fondling, she shrieked sharply her final decision in my face as to transform to a happy bouncing ball, moving freely around and being released from all the follies including those of mine. She was nice though to ask me if I also wanted to try this transformation and set up a new, happy life for myself.

It is imaginable that such a question is not so easy to answer; I mean someone comes to you and asks whether you want to turn to a small rolling ball the next moment, even without mentioning specifically what kind of ball you could become. I don’t mean that I have any preference for tennis ball versus squash ball for example, I regard all these games and many others with bigger or smaller balls, as football or pin pong to be equally ridiculous. I think that such sports are of no good for human beings as it makes them hungrier and they start ravenously consuming food resources.


Anyway this was an all-or-non question which immediately parted my life in two unequal halves; one lying besides my gorgeous girlfriend and the other being left with a bouncing blue ball which doesn’t even belong to any known kind of man-invented game.


Now I’m walking up and down the streets with my Ophelia ball ahead of me, trying to convince passersby that I’m not talking to a ball but to my girlfriend and as I’ve safely passed two police agents and one medical emergency center, I could at least feel safe not to be caught and confined as a fool maniac.


I’ve made this decision though to follow my mistress to wherever she feels like launching and maybe there I could ask her if there is still any chance for me to transform to a ball but one which doesn’t bounce and remains fully stationary and abandoned. One which stays still in a place where there is no wars, no humanitarian aids and no recreational sports.