Jagged Little Pill

When I was much much younger, I used to snoop around in my parents bedroom when they weren't looking. I would go through my dad's pen drawer, testing out each of his ball point pens and poking around with the various clips and fasteners and such. There was a fountain pen and I remember once making quite a mess with that. I would notice how he had his manila file folders all neatly organized, and how the tabs would line up offset just enough to see the writing on the next folder.

In one of the desk drawers, I remember fumbling upon my mom's birth control pills. At the time, I had no idea what they were for, but I liked how the round plastic container radially stored the little pills inside, and how a few of them were of different color than the others. Out of curiousity, I popped one of the pills out and then unknowingly spun the dial to the next "day". Since I couldn't turn the dial backwards to attempt to replace the pill, I just shoved the whole container back into the drawer from which I found it, and discreetly tossed the pill into the garbage can in the bedroom.

Later that night, when my mom went to go take her pill for the day, she noticed the missing pill and the mis-turned dial. As you would expect, she went absolutely ballistic and the evening became an inquisition. She targeted my oldest sister first and foremost, badgering her to admit to the tampering. She whipped out the most unfriendly piece of discipline tool that every Chinese mother had: the dreaded bamboo feather duster. She went after my oldest sister while my second sister and my brother, each already in their pajamas, feverishly looked around the bedroom for the missing pill, convinced that my mom had simply dropped it or misplaced it, neither of them knowing exactly what was the purpose of these mysterious little pills.

I remember the guilt I felt and the cries from my oldest sister as she was mercilessly whipped by my bamboo-feather-duster-wielding mom. I snuck into the bedroom, joining my brother and second sister in the hunt for the missing pill. But only I knew where it was, and so I tossed about in the garbage can through the used kleenex and miraculously came out with the find.

The beatings ended, but for some reason I don't remember anything after that. Everything up to that point, I seem to remember quite vividly. But after the whole debacle, I don't recall if my siblings blamed me for the entire incident or not. I don't know if they knew that it was me all along that had tampered with the little round plastic container. That the whole evening of terror was caused by a bit too much curiousity.

My mom still has that same bamboo feather duster. It is quite worn out. The handle, that is. These days though, it's used solely for it's intended purpose: to dust furniture. (In the disciplinary role, the feather end is "the handle" and the regular handle is the whipping end. So when I say the handle is worn out, it means that it was used quite often in the disciplinary role, to the point where the bamboo has started to fray and split.) The stories that the bamboo feather duster could tell...