From rags to chicken
Apr 29, 2013
It rained the other day. You may have been there when this happened, but if you were not, let me get you up to date on the details. Water fell from the sky onto people and temperatures dropped.
It rained the other day. You may have been there when this happened, but if you were not, let me get you up to date on the details. Water fell from the sky onto people and temperatures dropped.
I have a sweater that I keep in my desk drawer because foresight would be my middle name if my middle name was not already Bazanye.
(Yes, Bazanye is actually my middle name. My surname is something else. We are not going to get distracted here. Focus.)
(But since we are already distracted and are on the topic of names, let me reiterate that the first one is NOT Earnest.
Earnest is what people do stuff in and not a person. My name is the noun, Ernest, not the adjective. Now, let's proceed with the scheduled article.)
As we were saying: The sweater in my desk drawer is thin and small and easily folds into a tight space alongside a tattered hat that resides in the same drawer.
We have to digress again: I do not wear a baseball cap all the time. I did, like seven years ago, when baseball caps spent more time on my head than my dearest memories, but I do not wear a perpetual cap any more. People change. It is the cartoons illustrating their columns that do not.
Now, the sweater looks like a dishcloth and the cap may easily be mistaken for the leftovers of a shoe that had been through hard times. These were the contents of my drawer on the day of the downpour.
While it was raining: Then the need arose to get from within the precincts to without them, because there is no one in here who serves chips and chicken to the willing.
What I just said, Henry, means I needed to go outside and buy chips/chicken. I know I could have used simpler language, but I am pissed off at you writing my name as Earnest.
I asked myself: "If Henry can't appreciate a single, simple name, why should we expect him to appreciate a full sentence? It will make no difference how it is written. Deploy the full force of the vocabulary. Let the bombast fly."
Now, we return to the story: If you want your meat and are a true African, you must do as your ancestors did; you must go out and hunt for it.
You must also be equipped to handle the rigours of said hunt, in this case, the drizzle and the chill, so I dragged the thing that looks more like a cap's corpse than a cap out of the drawer and also removed the rotting, fraying, fading sweater.
I donned both and, smugly smiling within myself at the thought that this may be the only time you read the word "donned" used correctly this week, stepped out into the damp.
Now: I did look like something the cat had thought of dragging in before it thought to itself: "Meow. Even I have standards," and then left in the gutter.
At this point: Someone on the street probably thought to themselves, perhaps with hand on chin, nti, "Hmmm. Look at this shabby person. He has made no effort whatsoever to impress me with his apparel and I am offended."
If this person was you, I wrote this to say if you do not want to see shabby people on the streets, learn to deliver chips and chicken to their offices. And write their names correctly on the package when you do.
bazanye.com