One-second

Laith's One-Second

“Laith please come and help me.”

“One second maa!”

(Five minutes later or at times it can be 30 whole minutes)

“Yeah, what I’ll help you with?”

“Oh, I already finished it waaaaay back. Your one second elapsed into an eternity.”

" Oh maaa!"

The two words that burst my mom’s nerves are – ‘one second’. Every time anyone talks to my brother or asks him to do anything, his instinctive reply is “One Second”.

This automated-by-default reply has become so unconscious, that even if he immediately responds and actually moves to execute the task asked of him, he will inevitably utter the “1-second!” beforehand.

Well, as per the boon (alas for our elders - the curse) of our generation, the pretext of his one second is invariably his phone. Either he is checking schoolwork, watching a movie, playing games (which as per him, cannot be paused) or he is chatting with his friends. Even if he is not on the phone, he will have other million excuses to let the “one second” out.

He says it so frequently, that it has now become contagious. Everything about him is contagious: his signature “hiccup” laugh, his ‘one second’, those one-of-a-kind weird faces he makes, and the list is endless.

Every time he says ‘one second’, I resist the urge of shouting out – ‘AGAIN!!’ Mum and I often like to tease him about it :) We call his name and before he answers, we unanimously echo "One Second" and burst out laughing.

This 1-second of his has turned into such an irritable sore to the ear, that sometimes I fear if mum hears anyone genuinely saying these two words, that person might just be treading on her dangerous mine-field.