Just Typical
By Mary Schneider
The other night, just as I was getting ready for bed, the house was suddenly plunged into darkness. I muttered a few choice words that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper, groped my way down to the kitchen, fumbled around inside a cupboard, found a torch and switched it on, only to discover that the batteries were dead.

I resumed my fumbling around and managed to locate a packet of candles but no accompanying box of matcheds.

"Just typical!" I muttered out loud. "How come things are never where you've left them when you go looking for them again?" I then groped my way in yhe general direction of the cooker, with the intention of lighting a candle from the gas burner, and stubbed my toe on one of the blocks that support the fridge. That's when I had the bright idea of illuminating the kitchen by opening the fridge door. But, of course, the fridge was nothing more than a black box when I opened it.

Not only had the lights gone out in the house, the light inside my head had obviously been extinguished, too.

Finally, with my candle lit, I hobbled upstairs to check on my children, thinking that they might be disturbed by the lack of power. However, they were more perturbed by my Lady Macbeth-like vision as I limped into their respective rooms, casting eerie shadows on the walls, than the actual power cut itself.

A few minutes later, I was on the telephone to Tenaga Nasional. A nice woman on the other end of the line, who spoke with the airy cheerfulness sitting in air-conditioned comfort, asked if my house was the only one on my street without electricity. When I informed her that the rest of the street was lit up like a Christmas tree, she asked me to check my fuse box, failing which she would send someone over first thing the next morning to check it for me.

When I finally located it, the trip switch inside my fuse box was wobbly as a six-year-old's front tooth. It was obvious I was in for a long, hot night.

I retreated onto my balcony, hoping to catch a breeze, but the air was so still that not a leaf stirred on the tree opposite my house. "Just typical!" I muttered again.

The night before, the heavens had opened, chucking the rain down in vertical sheets and making the air pleasantly cool, but now the stars twinkled down on me from a cloudless sky.

A veil of grouchiness descended upon me. And the more I thought about how hot I was, the hotter I became. I looked enviously at the lights glowing from my neighbours' windows and decided that a cold, candlelight shower might put me in a more relaxed frame of mind.

I've probably committed a truckload of sins in my precious lives and I'm now being forced to atone for them, because no sooner had I turned the shower on than the water came gushing out of a crack on the side oft the showerdead. "Just typical!" I grumbled yet again.

It was obvious that a spot of DIY by candlelight was required before I could cool off, so I went off in searcg if a tube of superglue.

A few minutes later, with the showerhead in one hand, I attempted to unscrew tha cap from the tube of superglue by gripping the cap between my teeth and twisting the tube with my free hand. Suddenly, I was aware of something spurting into my mouth. I'd accidentally coated the roof of my mouth with a layer of "bonds as strong as steel" adhesive, instantly relegating myself into the same league as those "dumber than dumb" people who do things like iron their clothes while they're still wearing them, or stick an electric heater into their bathtub to warm up the water - while they're still sitting in the tub.

"Just typical!" I said to myself as I quickly rinsed my mouth in an attempt to prevent my toungue from getting stuck to the roof of my mouth.

A few minuteds later, I was sitting out on my balcony again, trying to figure out the best was to remove the shell-like formation that encased the roof of my mouth. Many solutions popped into my head, all of which were quickly dismissed as being more dangerous than the problem itself.

After rinsing out my mouth with somehingl like 20 gallons of hot waterm thich had been boiledi n a pot on the gas stove, I tumbled into bed and fell asleep with the balcony door open, only to be awoken 10 minutes later by the sound of an irate mosquito screaming in my ear.

"Just typical!" I groaned, almost shattering my eardrum as I attempted to swipe the intruder away. If I survived the night, there was a good chance that I would come down with a malaria.

The next morning, then the boys from Tenaga Nasional showed up at my door, I was in a real Lady Macbeth frame of mind.

One of the electricians jiggled around insode my fuse box for a few seconds, and then announced that the fault was not Tenaga's. I would have to get an independent electrician to fix the problem.

I'm not proud of what I did next, but I was desperate: I actually pouted at the poor man and put on a woe-is-me act, something that a woman in her 40s ought not to do, especially when she has a mouthful of superglue and a head of hair resembling an abandoned bird's nest. But it did the trick, and a few minutes laterm the power was finally restored. Then, just as I was thanking him profusely for his help, the superglue shell in my mouth came unstuck, causing me to cough it out in a rather violent, unladylike manner. Gone was my image of feminine helplessness.

Just typical, is all I can say.

-END

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