By nature, I am a very lazy person and was not that good at studies. My favourite subject in school used to be English and the worst and most hated subject used to be Mathematics. I was very weak in Mathematics, hence the hatred. And adding to that all the teachers since my childhood who taught me mathematics were very violent in nature and this only made me hate mathematics even more. Apart from all this, one of the other things that I hated the most about school days was homework.

Haha…. I always used to find a way out to avoid homework as much as possible. This is about how my school days went. Coming to what happened to me, being weak in mathematics I always used to be away from any sort of calculations. Even at home my mom or anyone in my family never gave me any work which involves maths because they know that they will have to do all the work again if they give it to me. My uncle runs a kirana store in the village and one day I was asked to look after it for some time while he was gone. It was just a simple task, take the money from the customer, give him the required goods and return the excess money to the customer. Is it not simple??!

Well not for me though. So this is what happened. My uncle left keeping me as the caretaker and cashier of the store. I was doing very well by myself till the evening as there were hardly one or two customers and that too they needed only 1 or 2 items and not more than that. Usually, it is the evening time that we see huge rush as the sun goes down, the temperature is low, most of the customers flock into the shops to buy the supplies for the next day or the month. That is a dreadful time for me. So a customer came, handed me a 500 rupee note and took groceries worth Rs. 50. So, I took the note, took out the calculator and calculated how much money I should return to the customer. it said 450. I was like YES!!  I am correct! I put my hand into the cash drawer took out one 50 rupees note and few hundred rupee notes, counted them twice and gave the change to the customer. Just when the customer was about to leave, the worker in our shop, a very old guy but shrewd for his age, immediately asked the customer to give him the change so he could check if I gave the right amount to the customer. I was angry at him and said I did give the correct amount and if you do not trust me that much then go and see for yourself. The worker did not say a word and started calculating the change I returned to the customer. He asked me how much I have given him, I said 450. He showed me the notes and asked me to count again. I counted 1,2,3,4…….5 hundred rupee notes and one 50 rupee note!!!

I gave the customer the 50 rupees worth groceries and also was giving him a 50 rupees extra apart from the money he had given me. The only difference was he gave me one 500 note while I gave him five 100 notes and a 50 note along with the groceries!!!

This was the most embarrassing day of my life. That’s how weak. Though this happened 12 years back it feels as if it has happened just yesterday. My whole family had a hearty laugh and I had an earful to be more responsible and if I am like this I can never survive in this world. I do not think I have changed much with my math and calculation, but I did survive though. I am glad for what happened and grateful to that old worker of mine for saving my ass that day!

Hope you liked this. Comment below if any such incidents happened in your life, which you think are silly!