The Vaseline saga

Parenthood is an art to be inherited, a science to be perfected or experience to be gained, I don’t know. Though I am quite a distance away from parenthood, the prospect scares me. And let me tell you, if I were to be my own child, I would accept defeat now itself.

But parents being parents never accept defeat. You may yell at them, abuse or ignore them even, but they never give up. An incident that my friend narrated to me comes to my mind at this juncture. It's about Vaseline (petroleum jelly), dry skin and parents' resolve to fight it. As kids we all have had our battles against Vaseline. Invariable in winter we would have dry skin; this never bothered us but would make parents go wild with terror. They would pester us to apply Vaseline, which we would never do, then they would have sessions where they would want to apply it themselves, which no self respecting kid would allow.
I remember my dad would also apply the cream and say, "See how your skin is drinking up the jelly, even if I finish this bottle, your skin will be dry!" A joke at first an irritation later.

So as it happens my friend fought a hard fought battle with his mother on this issue. And he won. He was really satisfied; he displayed his dry skin like a medal. Infact, it is said that it was so dry that a mosquito got stuck trying to suck blood from him (I couldn’t verify this). So did he really win? A determined mother is a force unstoppable.

That night he has a dream. In the dream, he finds himself lost in a jungle, running around, leaves brushing against his arms. For some reason the leaves are pretty slimy and sticky. Well, due credits to him, I have heard such leaves exist in the Amazon. Ok, my friend after a long struggle manages to free himself from the leaves and runs into an open field. But, solace was not to be found for this field is filled with slimy snakes; he is sure that he can cross them without gaining much attention, but you know if dreams start out bad stay bad. Slowly one snake started crawling up his pants, now this was too much to handle. No one can sleep through this, and he got up startled. Yes you guessed right, he finds his mother in front of him, with a bottle of Vaseline!