I was born FREE!

The way I see it, if you’ve got legs you gotta use then right? Now that I’ve figured out how those two things attached to me work, I’m everywhere.

It was hard going in the beginning, there was a lot of toppling, holding myself up by the playpen bars, sideways crash landing, and even some rolly polly’s along the way, no I wasn’t doing a new Baila move, but I must say I did see some of those very moves at my parent’s New Year’s bash this time, I really thought my parents friends could all walk, hey maybe they're just learning like me.

Anyways, I digress, yes major milestone accomplished, I can walk. HOORAY! Initially Mum was like “OOH” and “AHH, how precious”, and Dad took about a million pictures, but they got over that after the first ten minutes of me sprinting around the living room, stuffing a doll’s head into the DVD player, toppling Mum’s crystal vase and smashing it into smithereens and trying to stuff broken glass into my mouth.

Yeah now my parents are more interested in strapping me down so I don’t get anywhere, car seats and push chair and of course the dreaded play pen, I’m locked up and they’ve thrown away the key.

I mean I thought they’d be happy that their pride and joy can now get into Mummy’s make up drawer and smear her lovely red YSL lipstick all over the white rug and then using the black eyeliner pencil to write my signature on the work of art I created.

Van Goh I ain’t, but more like Monet during his blue period. Yeah she wasn’t very pleased about that, I think I saw an extra wrinkle suddenly appear, she calls it stress, but I think it’s called old age Mummy dearest, its going get us all sometime.

But I’m sure Dad will take great pride that his heir to the throne can now accompany him on all his jaunts.

Hey Dad I can walk now, let’s run this town tonight, call the homies, lets get the party started..let me just saunter into Dad’s office and look through his phone book so I could call some of his homies, let’s just rip out a couple of pages while I’m at it…oh wait those look like work files no worries I feel a Monet moment coming let me get this red pen and scribble over all these important looking figures…yeah WOW that felt great, very cathartic unleashing my creativity now and again.

Dad came home and screamed like a baby when he saw his offic, "Been working on that proposal for months", I heard Dad mutter..what!!??!! I think to myself didn’t you notice that I walked “Just Dad”, it was a miracle. Sheesh these people are so hard to please.

So here I am banished to my play pen, pacing up and down is all I can manage, space restrictions and all, HEY they can lock me up but they can never capture my mind it will always roam free and unshackled..first let me take a nap!

By Mayuri Jayasinghe