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This is a true story.
Elastic bands.
Random. Useful. Versatile.
It's something that you don't pay much attention to, but would definitely find in every household.
In our home, we keep a bunch of them neatly hung on a little metallic hook in the kitchen, easily accessible for whenever we need them. It has been this way for ... probably as long as I can remember.
The hook is about 20 cm above the kitchen counter, in a position that is not exactly hidden, but not too eye-catching either.
Starting from when I was around thirteen, I would sometimes wake up in the morning and see a couple of elastic bands scattered beneath the hook.
I didn't give it much thought at first. I mean, there could be a huge array of reasons for the elastic bands to have dropped. Maybe the last person just swiped one too fast and accidentally dropped a few.
But then this happened way too often to be a random occurrence. I'd ask my family if they touched the elastic bands, and they said no. I didn't push the matter because I did not want to seem paranoid, but there was always this uneasy feeling at the back of my mind.
Then a few months later, I called my mother to tell her I was on the way home, and she was like, "I've got something to show you when you get back." I honestly had no idea what to expect.
As I entered our home, my mom hands me her phone, smiling. And this is the picture that was on it:
I don't think I have ever seen anything in my life that was so simultaneously creepy and hilarious. There's just something about the image that made me burst out laughing the moment I saw it. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of the situation, or the sheer absurdity of a gecko with an elastic band in its mouth.
Anyway, we let the gecko slide because geckos never really caused many problems at our home. And after this incident, we were all equipped with more enlightened minds whenever we encountered fallen elastic bands.
A couple of years passed and the seemingly random and spontaneous movement of the elastic bands continued, introducing very few disruptions to our lives, but occurring nonetheless. It became more or less like white noise.
One winter morning, I woke up and groggily went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. The sun had barely risen, and the kitchen was kind of dim, but I was too lazy to turn on the lights.
I stood there in the middle of the kitchen, eyes half open, slowly sipping the cup of warm water that I had poured for myself.
The rest of my family was still sleeping, so I was surrounded by serene silence, and my mind was blank.
As I slowly lifted my arm and tilted my head upwards to devour the final few drops of water, something caught my attention at the edge of my vision.
I literally stood frozen in my spot, unable to look away from what I had just seen, and rendered speechless out of pure shock.
There, over two meters above the ground, was an elastic band stuck to the wall.
Over 2 meters above the ground.
An elastic band.
Stuck.
To the wall.
(Sorry, I just felt the need to reiterate that because that was the statement that I kept looping in my mind that morning.)
Yeah, needless to say I had to summon the rest of my family from their slumber to witness this rare spectacle.
And that pretty much sums up my experience with geckos and elastic bands.
Now I often have to uncontrollably gasp when I see a random elastic band lying around. It might be a PTSD of some sort...
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