aFTER a difference!

The pre school nursery in which Alan and I studied was a potpourri much like our little heads.

It just could not be rated singular. It was international if you could consider the one international teacher(international because her husband mined somewhere in the west), it was also national(furniture was stamped Indian wood), well it had regional assistants who abused us in regional slang and of course it was local in its expression of sentiments(we learnt to howl like the local pups with our chins held out towards the sky). Yet it was our special haven where we shared so much that it was just always 'us' and 'we'.

Until a visit to the planetarium...

 We, Alan and I tasted the first sense of being you and me on a visit to the planetarium from our nursery.

It was also our first brush with the social system that could even define who could pee/poop and where and when. 

I think it was the chill air inside the planetarium or rather maybe it was that the background sounds that accompanied the stars on the artificial sky just inspired two little cowards to leave the hall.

It was a callous world for the assistant at the planetarium failed to see the 'us' in Alan and Me and so she growled, "You pesky girl walk through that board and you whine of a boy walk through the one opposite"

So Alan and I walked down the corridor holding sweaty palms and left the 'we' in us just at the point where the path forked into the 'he' washroom and the 'she' washroom.

I guess it was easier reining in a biological mechanism than a fresh sense of grief in two pairs of baby eyed redness. For we almost returned to the starting point just as soon the 'we' footsteps beside gave way to 'his' distant footsteps and mine.

We didn't speak a word to each other until after two hours after our grief of a possibility of a separation took time to subside.

Alan sat beside me and mumbled, "Did you?"

I mumbled back, "no, and you?"

We smiled though our contentment was still coloured by the new found knowledge that he was 'you boy' and I was 'you girl'.