My Stories: Personal Writing

"Rock, Rock 'til you drop" - An Account Of Candy's Birthday Party
by
Vasudev Seeram

The Date - Saturday, August 8, 1992.
The Time - 7:00 p.m.
The Place - Somewhere in Marabella.
The Reason - I got invited to a birthday party.
The Aim - To explore their computer.
The Apology - "I'm feeling sick and gotta sit down... in front of a computer."

I am looking for the Hobosco or some other cinema in my hunt for the appointed address. Ah, here it is; we turn in the road just before it and proceed down some lonely road. As the lights from the main road fade, so does all the grim noises around us. The silence gets louder, the tension builds and I'm thinking about my Spirit 386. About three seconds after turning off the main road, we see something that bring relief to all: a street light. And better yet, we see a house with 'Creative Draperies' written on it. So what do we do? We go up the road, turn, come back, turn down their road, and park up behind the cinema. I am instructed to go and ring the people's doorbell. Their bell sounds like a telephone from one of these old black and white 1950 movies. Before I release my finger, from the dark window above, about ten red angry pairs of eyes glare down at me. I gulp. 'Tis gonna be a long night...

After being led upstairs by the Head of the House (her mother, who came out to hold down their dog, Dy-X?), I meet her pop (Baba) to whom I say 'Namaste'; he mumbles 'na...', then mutters 'namaste'. I take out my shoes and go in and she introduces me to Kiran, who I already know. We talk for about five seconds, and then the birthday girl comes along. She takes us into the living room and introduces us to two of her school friends. Then we go down to her room, where I spy, alone in a corner, a nice IBM compatible computer. I hate to be rude to my hostess, but I tend to go partially insane over these machines. So I totally forget about the party, and catapult onto the computer. Turned out to be MUCH worse than I had expected. That computer was probably the among first set of computers to come on the market. With a speed of about two point something megahertz, a monochrome that shows black and brown instead of black and white, and two DS,DD 5.25" disk drives, I was ready to freak out; but I didn't. I regret not carrying my diskettes. All because of Mr. Jhaakie (Reg ze Mukdha) who said that I shouldn't because pa would get mad. Well, after a few minutes, I went into Varen's room, where they taught me a little about Super Nintendo - Boredom incarnate. Just games, games, games; and most can't even save. Super Mario 3 was Confusion incarnate; Final Fantasy was a hopeless attempt to duplicate Ultima. Thank Obi-One Kenobi that I've a PC/AT.

After a few minutes on the computer, they decided to start the party. Everyone gathered into the main living room. On the right was a cabinet. A large table with a whole set of food was just off centre to the right. In the middle of the room, against the wall, was the music system with two boxes. To the left was a set of sofas while around the perimeter of the room were chairs randomly placed. After the cake was lit, everyone gathered around the table to sing 'Happy Birthday'. Guess who had to cut the cake? I'll give ya a hint: try Jhaakie. Did you say Jhaakie? You were right.