One man’s life as a garbage collector is about to change very drastically in the magical world of The Big Little Storybook, a weekly dose of stories by fabulous LoyarBurokker JuneWow!
A few years ago, I worked as a garbage man. It was a great job; I got used to the stench after a while, and enjoyed hanging on to the back of the truck while it moved from street to street. In between streets, I would pretend I was the star of a mobile opera and sing “O Mio Babbino Caro” loudly. Sometimes, old ladies in Zimmer frames would come out of their houses and follow the truck to hear me sing – I always tipped my hat at them at the end of every performance. It was only polite to do so, and cost nothing.
But like all good things, that came to an end.
One fateful day, when I got to the part where I was “being consumed in torment”, I lost my grip, fell off and rolled under the truck. Only the old ladies noticed, but were too slow to react. By the time the driver realised something had happened, the back tyre had flattened half of my body.
The doctors were amazed that I could still be alive. It turned out that my head hit the tarmac at a very peculiar location. I was knocked unconscious and therefore did not feel any pain. As the brain has to register a certain level of pain before it can decide that the person is dead, I was alive when I came to because I had felt no pain whatsoever.
The Ministry of Health reported that the odds of that happening in Malaysia were one in twenty six million, which according to the latest census at the time, meant that I was the first person who had ever experienced such a thing in the history of country.
Anyway, I woke up half man, half road kill, alive, and unsure of what to do. They told me I would require reconstructive surgery, and I agreed. But as luck would have it, they only had female body parts in stock. I mulled over it for a day, and decided that since I liked change and needed to get back to work as soon as possible, it might not be such a bad idea trying to live life as a woman. It would be hilarious, and I figured if I didn’t like it, I could always have it reversed later on. Surely that was why it was called re-constructive surgery, so that one could do it over and over again.
I was wrong.
I found out afterwards that because the circumstances under which I had come to require the surgery were so peculiar, there was no way they could do it again without being sure that they would not be risking my life at the same time.
And that was how I came to be a woman.
Copyright 2011 June Low All Rights Reserved
June needs no introduction because she doesn’t want one. She finds this “about the author” section tiresome and would rather share her recent discovery of unicorn money than talk about her 6 degrees, 8 PhDs, and 3.5 illegitimate children. Send an email to [email protected] if you’re wacky.
Read this first: LB Terms of Use
9 Responses to Chapter 1: In The Beginning…