The Octopus

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Since I began my expansive and daily essay writing, I have built up a reputation amongst both my peers and my relatives, boasting a large passion for writing. It was tonight, though, that I realised to what extent my passion has reached with some of my relatives - according to them, I am an octopus. 

All evening, whilst tutoring one of my cousins, her brother and my sister were in the kitchen area behind a closed door, exploding with laughter, crying out in hysteria and gasping for air. I did not know why this was so. Ignoring them, as much as I tried, I continued to tutor, thinking they had come across something of substantial hilarity, enough to make them almost blow the roof off with heaving. Then I told my third cousin that what I overheard him saying was absurd, and the laughter, after having subsided, exploded theatrically again. It was at that moment that I realised that the laughter was directed solely at me. 

I decided to investigate. My curiosity knew no bounds at that stage.

"What, you've photoshopped my face onto a banana again?" 

No. 

"You found another video of a gorilla that looks like me on a bike?"

No. 

"What then?"

They promised that the laughter was not directed at me, and that they were laughing at the fact the word for a male's genitalia was written deviously by myself in a not so suspicious place on my sister's assessment task sheet. I did not believe them, and rightfully so, for that certain word appears daily in these people's lives - this is something not new to them, and certainly not this funny. This was something that really made them laugh. 

It was all forgotten, and we embarked on a journey consisting of three hours of shopping, after which we ended up at our grandmother's home, sitting in the lounge room, when the same peculiar eruptive laughter began again, after one of them mentioned the word 'octopus'. They quickly hushed after I inquired about why the word was that funny, and I decided that that was the code word behind their laughter, right after I mistakingly correcting them by offering them the plural for octopus, 'octopi' rather than 'octopuses'. I am that octopus, and for reasons I had not yet known. 

After minutes of snorting and gasping for air, they finally revealed to me the source of their severe hysteria. Apparently they can picture me as an octopus - two hands holding books that I am reading at the same time, another two correcting my students' essays, another two writing my own essays and my final two hands twirling a little girl around by her pigtails, a clever reference to the movie Matilda wherein I represent Miss Trunchbull, and I have been representing this vile character for months now that my wonderful sister had brought it up. My father even is contemplating buying me her outfit as a joke. I do not think that he means it in a joking manner, though. I mean, I admit I am evil to some children, like yesterday when I slammed the bins inside as I emptied them of their full bags in order to instil fear in the children outside in the shop as they hurriedly and loudly gathered around the ice cream freezer. Surely, they finished the task of obtaining a desired ice cream and walked off quietly with googly eyes, but not before making sure all of the freezer doors were closed nice and tight, which they never are due to my kindness to children. I have earned that name, I suppose.

I have also earned 'octopus'. This came to me as mildly offensive, but then I received it as complimentary. I am a multi-tasking problem solving octopus and I have the reputation of being around literature constantly. I have worked hard to create a memorable reputation which does not revolve around my humour alone, and which incorporates my intellectualism and my need to write and express myself through words. Thank you, kind family members.