A Writing Exercise Featuring Two Different
Usage (Usages?) of the Word “Light”

Geh had got himself a bleeding nose out of having been punched in the face by Miruki, whose mobile phone he attempted stealing while in a public utility bus. Not that Miruki knew Geh personally; in fact, he didn’t. Aside from one childhood incident in which both of them breathed the same enclosed mall air conditioned air as they went christmas shopping with their parents eighteen years ago, Miruki and Geh had never been less than fifty meters close to each other. For one, they belonged to two entirely different income brackets; Miruki earned 0.18 a year, while Geh considered himself to be in his best luck if he even got 90 in one day. Miruki got his degree from the second most expensive educational institution in the country, while Geh hadn’t even set foot in any university except in the intention of having a few parked car tires to steal. Lastly, they were raised in two economically different neighborhoods.

Miruki wouldn’t have been in such mobile phone-stealing proximity from Geh, in fact, if he hadn’t received a special order from a friend’s political aspirant non-actor boss to “mingle with the poor for me, will ya, good pal?”

Like a true pal, Miruki one day embarked on a public utility bus-riding trip outside the Money District to mingle with the poor. His one mistake only was that in leaving it, he neglected also in shedding what traces could be found in him that would betray him to be someone earning more than 0.12 a year. Namely: his mobile phone.

It was of the Expensive Variety. It was a light T.E.W.B.G.S. phone that had all the multimedia capabilities of an entire mobile phone exhibit—plus more. Bearing the capitalist brand of T.E.W.B.G.S., it had an added extra feature that set it far apart from the competition: it could detect flood.

His excuse was that he needed to communicate with his friend’s boss while obediently carrying out an order. In his vow to do as he was told, he also gave the guarantee to keep his friend’s boss updated in his expedition among the modest earners.

This was a mistake on his part much like the mistake committed by Geh in attempting to steal the mobile phone from him. Geh did it at around the time the bus driver had shifted to gear, was gradually releasing the clutch pedal, and was slowly applying gas. They were in an intersection, and the lights had just turned green. Geh, knowing by instinct that it was the perfect timing to snatch the phone and leap off the accelerating bus, dipped his expert hand into Miruki’s bag. In less than half a second, he had in his hand a phone that could keep him and his children after him, up to the third generation, well fed and happy.

His mistake was in failing to put into consideration the bus driver’s human ability to be stupid. In this case, the bus driver, at the exact moment Geh was to jump off the window, let go of the clutch pedal all too abruptly, causing the engine to stop. The bus stopped as well, and so instead of getting him out through the window like he calculated, Geh only painfully hit his shoulder against the window frame. He dropped his prized trophy as a consequence of this, and more importantly, lost any ability to deflect any released punch intended to hit his face.

© Jay Santos 2003.