Yesterday after dinner, suddenly this tagline of one of the most famous detergent brand in Indonesia couple years ago popped up in my head. No stains, no learning.

My junior high school friends used to toy with this tagline and relate it with free sex. It sounded like this:
Mom: hey, where have you been?
Daughter: from my friend’s house.
Mom: then what is it on your skirt? is it blood?
Daughter: yes.. because no ‘stains’, no learning.

I know it sounds wrong and stupid. But by the way, I kinda agree with the tagline, sometimes if we didn’t do something fool, then we wouldn’t learn from it.

In 2008, me and my friends in university decided to go to a beach in Garut, West Java. You know, my mother is a typical woman who can change anything into the source of disaster. When I asked her permit to go to a mall, for example, she would say, “Oh, mall?? be careful honey, there can be a bomb!” or if I wanted to go to a mountain, “don’t do hiking okay? I’m scared there will be avalanche!” and when I told her that I would go to that beach, she told me not to swim because I could be drowning, “just stay away from the beach..”
But how could I?? hahahaha..
One of my best friend, Ade, also has the same typical mom with me, “don’t go near to the beach, please.. it’s dangerous.”

But we were so happy there and forgot about those advises. We played a lot in the beach and also played banana boat which had the crazy drivers who always tried to make the banana boat fell into the sea. (Sorry, Mom..)
The very first time it fell, I accidentally kicked Ade’s rib when we were trying to reach the surface. And then after that I accidentally (again!) knocked Ade’s head with my butt. Really, I didn’t mean it, De. Then, Ade was sick from the last day we were there until the next 1 month.
So, no stains, no learning. We finally both knew that we shouldn’t ignored the advises of our parents.. Probably they already felt something. Maybe for my Mom, what she wanted to say was, “don’t go to the beach, you will harm your friend.” And what Ade’s mom really wanna said, “please, don’t go there, your friend will do something bad to you.”

Back to a year ago when I was driving with my friends in Bekasi. At that time I just learnt how to drive and I was really happy every time my friends asked me to drive for them. By the way, the road was really crowded, with cars, motorcycles, public transports, and people who wanted to cross the street without looking for the vehicles (!!!).
I was trying to move to another side of the street at that time because it was empty, but suddenly one public transport hit our car from the back and insisted to outride even the space was small.  We were so shocked and I turned back to the other side. The driver from the public transport screamed and ordered us to stop the car. My heart was beating so fast. Then I went to the driver while praying basmallah and put the best smile of mine.

Driver: Hey, lady! You hit my car! why are you so stupid??!!
Me: So sorry, how’s the scratch?
Driver: Can’t you see it?? It’s terrible!!!!
Me: (still smiling and calmly talking with him) But, pardon me, Sir, as I know, you’re the one who hit my car. Don’t you remember, I was the first one who took that side of the road then your car tried to race mine.
Driver: (thinking) but.. still you have to pay for this!!!
Me: I won’t, because I didn’t do something wrong to you. And could you please talk calmly? Because this is Ramadan. I think it will be too bad if you couldn’t continue your fasting if you had this anger.
Driver: (just staring at me without saying anything)
Me: By the way, my car also had some scratches because of you..
Driver: Um… okay, then I think it’s finish. You shouldn’t pay anything.
Then he went away. Ha!
What I could learn from that experience is if you’re facing an angry person, don’t respond him with anger too, but with smile. He will confuse and start talking in the lower voice. Hahahaha.

Anywaaay, I had a lot of ‘stains’ that changed me. But I think sometimes it’s better to have no stains before we can learn something right, because we can also learn from other people experiences.

Ciao!