My Pseudo Intellectual Ramblings

I'm planning on beginning this by revealing a very embarrassing secret. Before anyone can snigger or start nodding their head to express solidarity over this generally hidden aspect of one's life, fear is an essential ingredient of someone's personality. It can give you the motivation to overcome certain barriers and hurdles, psychological or physical in nature and make you a better person, overall. However, all of this becomes irrelevant if you are afraid of pigeons. Taking a deep breath to justify my very rational fear of the feathered species, here's a short story about the incident which gave rise to my deep rooted hatred, but on closer inspection, genuine fear of the lumpy grey blob of a bird. I was never very comfortable around birds, the mere fact that they could fly up and swoop down according to their will would stir panic in me, because I couldn't do the same. How lucky must one be to find out that they were locked inside the house with their nemesi...

"Mom, could you check for monsters under my bed?" "Mommy, who is that on my bed?" Ah, nothing like a classic two liner horror story to begin with. As a child, I must say I was rather fortunate to focus my imagination on having a yellow octopus as a friend than to envision demonic entities lurking behind me when the curtains were drawn and lights turned off. Don't laugh, I know you had imaginary friends too, alright? However, in a bizarre turn of events, I started facing problems sleeping after a few years while my imagination soared to new heights (maybe the excitement was what didn't let me sleep) and thus, with utter disappointment, I realized that I had created a pet monster for myself too. I'm aware I called it a pet monster, but what else should I call the being who would keep staring at me, standing at the edge of my bed every night? The loyalty was unbelievable, and so was it's presence. I was never the best at making new friends, b...