Solome and sons

BAD IDEA

By Ernest Bazanye

I will not waste your time wishing you a happy new year. You know me well enough, being my baby daddy times two, to realise that I do not give a single segment of a section of a rats behind about the state of your life in this year or the last.

I am merely sending you this message for the only reason I ever bother to talk, write, communicate with you or even cursorily acknowledge your existence. That is, I want something from you.

The point is as follows; our sons. You insisted on putting them in Montego Bay SSS as boarding school students. I acquiesced either because I was as half-drunk as I commonly am, or because I liked the idea of them being locked up far away from the city for months at a time, or because you were paying their fees so it is not my problem, or you did not consult me.

Either way. This is going to change. While they were at my home for the holidays, Baz, I heard them speak. I don't like their accents. I want children with international school accents and so I am going to ask you to withdraw them from Montego Bay SSS and have them installed in a school where they are educated in important life skills, such as saying the words "eat" and "it" differently. I also want them to pronounce Rs.

Work on this Bazanye

Yours (formerly)

Solome.

Soon after that, my phone's WhatsApp began to beep. It was the group the boys had made.

Frasier: We intercepted (the details of how are immaterial, the details of why are obvious) an email from the esteemed mother to you, fatherdad, that has just been dispatched on the topic of a change in schools for Chandler and I.

Chandler: Sup Dad. By the way, ask your video guy if he has Ozarks.

Me: Chandler, you know as well as I do that I don't talk to video "guys" who use the word "sirry" to refer to a series, so I shall ask him nothing. Nothing ever. I could be bleeding in a ditch with a wild dog gnawing at my exposed semicolon attempting to extract the burger I was in the process of digesting before I came under attack from a pack consisting of it and its rabied partners, and video guy shall happen to be strolling by. Even then I shall not ask him anything. Not even for help.

Frasier: Chan, why are you still trying to get DVDs when mum has all the American streaming channels on her gigantic flat screen smart TV?

Me: Why are you typing that question when you two are obviously seated next to each other right now at this very moment?

Frasier: Faaza, back to the issue. We know that mum wants to make us change schools. To be clear, we did not violate her privacy by reading the email. It's just that every time she types "bazanye" into the to section it autocompletes to one of us. She doesn't like you very much so she rarely emails you.

Chandler: Doesn't like him very much? Is 2018 the year of the understatement? She would prefer wine made of cockroach blood to dad. She loathes him.

Me: Again, why are you typing this into the chat? You are in the same building.

Frasier: Dad, we would like to counter mother's email correspondence with a few points of our own. Such as a) We like Montego Bay SSS.

Chandler: You know we are like celebs at that school since you write about us in the papers.

Frasier: Also, there is a guy who fries the best sabulenya in the world at Montego and I would take a substandard education any day as long as it comes with access to that fish.

Chandler: Dad, next time you come for visiting Sunday, we will take you and you chamo that sab. Eh! Ting goes Scrrrrrr! Ya don know.

Frasier: As Chandler has demonstrated, we already have accents from school. So please leave us alone. Okay. Smiley face. Love you dad.

Chandler: Why do you always sign off like that?

Frasier: Because he is so emotinally stunted that he can never respond when someone says those words, so it's the best way to ensure a chat with him is over.