The Most Well-Travelled Hand Cream

I get an unusual gift for my birthday from a friend. Turns out, that is the first of many unusual events to come, all to culminate in a breathtaking epiphany about the meaning of life.

“Happy Birthday Ruff!”

The first thing I saw as soon as I walked into the restaurant was my friends greeting me. Then came a handcream, a gift from a friend. I was grateful, yes, but it was a pale pink hand-cream, not too expensive, simple,  nothings special about it. And frankly, I did not want a pale pink hand-cream for my birthday. If I was to get gifts, I expected everything but what I was given. Actually, I prayed fervently for books.  But I got a pale pink hand-cream, and I decided that a pale pink hand-cream was better than nothing so I smiled and thanked my friend. Little did I know that that hand-cream might become the most well-traveled hand-cream in history.

This is how my birthday celebration with my friends started, with a greeting and an unforeseen but nevertheless appreciated handream. It all went like an enjoyable piece of clockwork: friends, gifts, cake, blowing candles, and singing. If I did not know my friends, I’d think that was it. Which it wasn’t. After hosting a Final Countdown for a friend that had not yet arrived under suspicious circumstances and being let down on our expectations that he would somehow arrive at the last minute (he did arrive eventually, albeit suspicious circumstances that were named but should not be named), we headed out. I guess this is the part where I describe my surroundings. We were in Buffalo Wings, at Multiplaza. It was late- Friday, 10 something, give or take. There were only a few people around , so we might just as well have had the whole place to ourselves.

Now, my friends are the type to walk around aimlessly for a while, exploring and letting random loose. And so we did. First place we ended up in was a gaming center. I have no idea what it’s called. It has a wide variety of games, prizes in case you win, and annoying bright lights. We might have stayed there, but no one really felt like it and besides, it was closed. So the wind took us elsewhere.

It blew us towards a gelato shop, Those who still had money left over from Buffalo Wings bought gelato. The rest arranged a few chairs around a table or two and we talked. I mostly listened. We talked about first meetings, a nutella trauma story, and dancing queens. Most of us denominated ourselves as such. Dancing Queens being our code word for the 17 year olds. This reference comes from the song “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. It’s kind of an inside joke. Now, a nutella trauma story sounds pretty interesting, yes? It is kind of a funny story. Most of my friends, myself included, have a fiercely passionate love for nutella. Except this one friend. As a kid, she used to go to summer camps, as we all have done at some point of our little kid lives. Every day, she’d get for lunch what most of us would kill over-drumroll- nutella sandwiches. One such day, she became violently sick. You could attribute this to a negative association. A logical fallacy, even. For her, nutella equals violent sickness. The same goes for peanut butter, apparently.

Lastly, we headed towards the bar at Sanborns, No drinking was involved- we headed straight for the karaoke and would’ve sang “We’re all in this Together” from High School Musical except it wasn’t available. Now, two of my friends sing really well. The rest of us were more singing at the top of our lungs than anything else. We were terrible, simply awful. I know I was. This did not bode well with my vocal cords. They made it very clear to me that this was a bad idea.

“You know we can’t keep this up, don’t you?” they chastised, “If you keep this up, you’ll sound like a dying llama!”

“I am SO gonna regret this” my subconscious thought, shaking its invisible head in disapproval.

“‘La, la, la” sang my conscious.

It sounded like a dying llama already.

Weirdly enough, considering that I sounded worse than a dying llama at this point, -especially while singing “Snow (Hey Oh)”, a particularly breathtaking song, literally- I did not care. I was immersed in the moment, the now and only the now. Please take note, that throughout all of this, I did not once let go or lose the handcream. Call me day-dreamy, but I like to think that it enjoyed the moment too.

I stumbled home, literally, not counting the sitting-in-the-car part. I was giddy with happiness. I was alive, yet I had never felt such a thing as strongly than on my 17th birthday. And a random handcream was involved in that too.

Most handcreams never travel beyond their owner’s bathrooms, just as many people never travel physically or metaphorically: be it outside a country, or be it outside a comfort zone.

moment, we are eternal.