It was when I was seven or eight during a lazy phase of my life. I was daily scolded by my mother for not folding my pajamas after taking them off in the morning.
“Sweetie, you didn’t fold your clothes again! Fold them and put them away properly, please.”
“I’ll do it later, I’m busy now.”
“No, you do it NOW!”
This was the dialogue between me and my mother repeated day after day without fail.
One such day, my mother’s elder sister came to visit us. It was always fun when she stayed with us because she spent a lot of time talking with me and listening to my stories from school.
During her stay, one evening after dinner, my aunt and I were sitting on the sofa watching TV together. My aunt said something funny about the things in the TV program, and I was laughing out loud. That’s when my mother came in and found my pajamas neatly folded under the piano.
“Sweetie, you folded your pajamas today!” said my mother in a surprised voice.
I was no less taken aback by her comment. When I looked in her direction, there were my pajamas neatly folded and resting on a chair. That’s weird, I thought. I didn’t remember doing that.
“Did you do it, Aunty?”
Pressed by my enquiring look, my aunt blushed.
“Well, I wanted my sweetheart to be complimented!”
My face turned red, too. In front of the two red faces, my mother couldn’t hide her disappointment as her short-lived sweet hope was crushed.
“Oh, it was you, Sister,” she said and quietly carried on with her task.
When my mother left, my aunt and I turned to each other in red faces and grinned.
Strangely enough, after that incident, I started folding my pajamas more diligently. There were still days when I forgot to do it, but I was certainly receiving less scoldings from my mother.