Better uses for teargas

Ernest Bazanye's bad idea

There are things you people do in public... no wait. Let us start again. Bad Idea readers are a distinguished group of people, easily identified by their perfect manners, clearly not among the people that sentence would otherwise refer to. Let me start again.

There are things THOSE OTHER people do in public that we classy, elegant and cultured folk look and sneer at. We wonder who to call when we see such behaviour: their mothers, the Police or Uganda Wildlife Authority? And why is Jennifer Musisi silent about this? Where is justice? We ask ourselves these questions while weeping inwardly because decorum, a thing civilized people like ourselves value highly, does not permit open sobbing and rending of garments except in carefully specified circumstances.

What things these are: When men pee by the roadside, it makes us wish we still had the catapults from our childhood handy and that we had very good aim. This kind of behavior makes me question our patriotism. If we really cared about our nation, there would be plenty of active vigilante groups that go around forcing roadside piddlers to put it back in.

Also littering: There are two ways to make a luxury car look cheap. One involves a lot of hammers, goats and violence. Those can reduce a nice Merc to a pile of smelly scrap metal quite spectacularly. The other one does not involve damaging the vehicle; just be driving it while eating something and then toss the wrapper out of the window. Everyone who was following you thinking: "What a cool person in a cool car," will change their tune to: "Mssswwtch. When is the Lord going to return and make these idiots go back to their hell?"

Talking during the movie: The community has done more than enough to accommodate such people by providing them with plenty of papyrus shacks from which they can watch movies as loudly as they want, and KCCA has not even demolished most of them. It is the Police who are shirking their responsibility by allowing these characters into our cinemas. They should teargas them when they see them approach a mall.

You have not mentioned swankling: I have not mentioned it yet, but I was about to. Swankling is chewing with your mouth open. People who swankle should starve instead. I have written to the World Food Programme about this.

What about nose picking?: Now, let us not get carried away here. Nose picking is a minor infraction compared to the other iniquities we have discussed. It is merely what you do when you have things in your nose.

But it is gross: This is true. Even discussing it here makes me feel like I am treading on another columnist's territory (yes, I mean Bukumunhe. If he can jack my red subheadings style, I shall also jack his toilet-talk style) but then we have to explain the difference between bad manners and pragmatic responses to biological needs. Let us put it this way. If a person picks her nose in a public place it does not mean she has no respect for the public. It just means she has no respect for that particular public. I do not see why I should endure discomfort in my nostril just so as not to offend people in the taxi park for example. Or people in certain university hostels.

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