The Butterfly effect

As most of you know, I love reading. I'm a quintessential nerd - I'll read books and then find forums to either share opinions or read about others opinions on the book. The last couple of weeks have been really busy at work, so I wanted to read something low key and chill. I bought this romance novel by one of my favorite authors. This book is a third in a series of four books and is about four friends working together, with each book giving one of the friends a happily ever after. The first two were fun reads, so I went ahead and ordered the third one online. I started reading it Wednesday night, and halfway through, I wanted to scream and slap people in anger. To say that the book was disappointing would be a major understatement. The whole story felt so contrived, superficial, and unemotional that at the end of it, I was crying in frustration. "Why is this important for me to know?" you ask? Well, it's like the Butterfly effect - a seemingly innocent flap of a butterfly's wings in one side of the world can lead to a Tsunami on the other side. This is exactly what happened with me, and is the reason why I did what I did on Saturday night.

Since this was a long weekend, my brother was visiting me. Where did we go when he was here is another story for another time, but long story short, we went shopping on Saturday, and met up with a friend for dinner Saturday evening. I went back to the Ethiopian place to share the joy that it had brought me the last time I was there. Unlike the last time, Saturday night was buffet night, so the waitress explained us what the different vegetables were, and we proceeded to eat. And this is where the earlier story places such an important role. You see, even though my trauma over my favorite author writing a piece of shit of a book seemingly ended Wednesday night, deep in my subconscious, I believe the pain was still very much alive. I'd go for hours without thinking about the horror of the book, but every now and then, the pain would come alive, and I'd need comforting.

Well, exactly such a thing happened over dinner. We were talking about random things and all of a sudden, I remembered the tragedy that was the book I read, so I needed comforting. And honestly, what is more comforting than good food? So I finished my first serving at the buffet, and politely waited for my brother and my friend to finish theirs so we could get the next serving. To my surprise, neither of them seemed in any hurry to get some more food, so I went ahead and came back with a plateful of veggies and Injera. This happened yet again. It was only after 30 minutes of eating that I realized that I out.ate.my.brother. This NEVER happens. I mean never. It's legally and metaphysically impossible for such a thing to happen. To make matters worse, not only did I out-eat my brother, I out-ate both him AND my friend!

The reality of what I had done finally sank in, but by that time I had eaten so much that I physically couldn't get up. Eventually, I did make it to the tram, and berated my brother the entire time for not eating more than I did. He must have seen how this was impacting me psychologically, because he made us get Ice-cream at Movenpick on our way back. Needless to say, I out-ate him on the ice-cream too. And all this happened because of the terrible book I read. I'm sure of it. If I had not been so distraught over the book, I would have recognized the fact that my plate was the only one that was full a good 20 minutes after we started eating, and I would have stopped. Or at least been more discrete about the eating. Instead, I out-ate two grown men and had both of them staring at me in shock and horror. I'm pretty sure the rest of the restaurant was doing the same. I don't think I can show my face there again - at least not for a little while. I really hope Hugh pays me a visit in my dreams to comfort me tonight. I need it now more than ever.