The power unleashed...

School resumed soon after and I left from home on the first day in my new avatar, armed with syringes, a vial of 30-70 insulin, and some spirited cotton swabs, glucose and so on and so forth.

And I was late! As I stood in a single file with fellow late-risers, I felt different from the others. I remember THAT point as the first conscious realization of my diabetes. I knew I could not just do things on my own whims and fancies anymore. I was chained by certain factors that I must take care of, at all times. It won't take a break while I am school, and so neither can I.

These thoughts, of course won't do you any good and you don't need a degree in psychology to know this. So while I was wallowing in self-pity, a snobbish and alarmingly large prefect turned up before my eyes and gave a dramatic flick to her neck towards the playground. I assume this meant we had to start running, since the first person in the file started doing just that.

We followed his lead as I tried to make sense out of the protest signals that were being sent back and forth from my nerves to my dull brain. And somewhere in the middle of my huffing-puffing, I remembered what Mum had told me- do NOT run around in the sun if you haven't eaten anything before it.

So, in an incident that was much like Oliver Twist asking for more soup, I went to the prefect and said "I cannot run like this". She looked at me from head to toe, smirked and said "Of course you can't!" Which, of course offended all the lard I was carrying in my body. I don't remember the dialogue that ensued, but I was, after all a small, insolent fry before the class 12 prefect and she was naturally insulted by the fact that I dared speak up and leave the line without her permission.

She was very mature in handling me and shut me off as soon as I would start talking with a single statement- "Get back in line and start running". "I need to..." -CUT- "Get back in line and start running"..."I can't, I will"..."Get back in line and start running".. "But at least let me..."..."Get back in line and start running".

Then I started feeling dizzy or maybe I THOUGHT I was feeling dizzy but in any case, my mother was called and there was a crowd around me as I sat in the Principal's office eating delicious chocolate biscuits- everybody telling me to have talked to the prefect, how was she to know you are diabetic, she was just doing her job blah blah... screech screech...

And I felt everything was so unfair- how could I tell that waddling shelf of fat anything when she was threatening to crush me with all she had, and that was saying something.

My mother came and spoke with the principal. I was issued a letter from him, written in his own hand with his signatory green Pilot pen. It said that I shall not be given any physical punishments or asked to be part of any exercises if I said I should not.

That letter, to any 6th grade kid is as good as finding Harry Potter's wand. It made me feel powerful, invincible and fearless. My mother got the letter laminated and I would carry it in my pocket at all times. I would purposely waste time and be late for assembly and classes and laze around in the games period.

I would start crying every night and then not go to school the next day, so much so that I hardly attended school in the 6th and 7th grade. I abused this new power I had found, and felt that getting shots thrice a day in return wasn't a bad bargain if I could get away with things this easily.

But needles were only a part of the whole bargain- there was a lot more that I had ruined for myself by what I did in those 2 years. But I was too young and too silly to know any of this, then.