What Is "This"?

Have you ever heard about a superhero other than from Marvel or DC universe, our own Indian superhero 'Shaktimaan, or have you ever heard about a plumber who is transported to an alternate world and becomes entangled in a battle between the mushroom kingdom led by a beautiful Princess 'Peach.' Sounds like a Sci-fi movie with heavy VFX right? But believe it or not, it was the backstory of the famous 'Super Mario Video- game.'

Now let's jump to some ubiquity from the present bundle of narcissism-ness.

'A Walkman,' literally speaking, it was a brand of portable audio players having a "Gum-stick" rechargeable battery, but metaphorically, it was the OG (Original) source of happiness, calmness, and more confidence giver to its users, unlike today's isolation, rudeness, detachment, which ultimately leads to narcissism.

Now after forcefully gulping and swallowing so much hard-bitter truth into you, let's switch to something soft, cohesive, and which is especially designed for chewing without being swallowed just like today's friendships.

I'm sorry, no more metaphors or sarcasms. Let's directly switch from Gum-stick to Chewing-Gums, a fun activity for teeth cleaning and breath freshening capabilities and its bubble-blowing abilities or different flavors with mouth-watering taste or its ability of stickiness just like today's...........

My sincere apologies, no more sarcasm.

Now the foundation of concepts like Miniaturisation and High technology like the VCR, VCD players, VHS tapes and fun of changing the side A and side B of audio tape cassettes by rolling down a pencil in it, or have you ever heard about Beanie babies, etcetera?

Doesn't matter whether your answer is Yes or No.

Here, I do not want to sound like a 'Boomer"; Also do not want to bore you with some sort of lecture. So,

Let's hear a story first.

STORY TIME: Any Time

Story Title: What is 'This'?

Long, long ago, there was a woman, living a happy and peaceful life with her hundred children.

As there was no internet at that time, so in the lack of good vocabulary, she decided to name each one of her children after numbers in their increasing order as they were born, for example, the first child's name was 'One', then the next one was named 'Second', next was 'Third', and so on.

Together they were living a very stress-free life until...

Until one day, there was a big fire in their area, and all of them died except one child whose name was 'Ninety.'

Collecting her family's good and bad memories, out of grief, she left that area and shifted to a new place.

'Time is the biggest healer,' just like everybody, time gave her the power and support to live her life normally.

After some time, she went on to have her own family and eventually had kids of her own.

Her upbringing to her children was a correct mixture of love, care, and good Sanskaars.

All her children were very kind-hearted and peace-loving in nature.

Once, on the day of Raksha Bandhan festival, after tying Rakhi's on each other's wrists and to god,

while playing in the nearby playground, they found an injured dog who was crying in pain.

The children nursed the dog back to his health and decided to take the dog along with them to their home so that they can take care of the dog 24*7 and this way they get their own pet.

They thought that it was a gift from God to them on this auspicious occasion of Raksha Bandhan.

Because all the children were very afraid of Ninety, their mother, and were a hundred percent sure that she would never allow them to have a street dog in their home and the moment she would be seeing the dog, will immediately kick out the dog of their house.

Their love for the dog was very much as compared to their fear from their mother's anger.

As a result, the children decided not to tell their mother about the dog ever.

In fact, they never told anyone in the whole world about this incident and about the dog.

Days of children were passing quite adventurously playing this game of hide and seek, and they somehow succeeded in hiding this secret from everyone.

Those children were very smart, and to avoid any sort of suspicion, they named the dog 'This.' So that they can talk about the dog in front of anyone without arousing any hints about their new pet.

This was the only way to save 'This.'

One day when the children were in their school, 'This' ran away from its closet. The children never saw 'This' again in their whole lifetime.

Except those children, no one else knew about This.

In fact, no one in the whole world knew that a dog named 'This' ever existed.

End of Story

Now the first four lines of this 'logically absurd but magically correct story' come into picture. If your answer was YES for the question asked in the starting then you must have guessed the conclusion of this story and up till now you must have predicted the final lines of this tale.

And if your answer was NO, then also...

...No worries at all, you will understand the context of it and also understand the origin of 'a certain type of Memes' which are currently widely popular on the internet.

Win-win situation, right?

THE FINAL LINES OF THE STORY ARE:

'Only 90's kids will remember This'.