Bafana Khumalo
IT had to happen to me. Only I would have such perfectly lousy timing. I do tend to ramble on, don’t I? I do tend to get involved in things that do not affect the price of butter, don’t I?
You’re right, I do do that, but that is my calling. Some of us are fated to be quantum physicists, some actors and some, like yours truly, have in their stars the lot of complaining about every inanity that dares raise its head.
This time my gripe is Easter. Yes. Easter. No, I have not discovered that the bunny is a ploy by the white liberals to undermine the new democratic order. The reason I am pissed off with this season-to-be-depressed is because I could not do my shopping last week. Yes, I could not take a trolley and do the locomotion around the tinned food aisles.
My plight started on Thursday afternoon when I forgot that it was my turn to buy groceries for my little democratically run castle. Instead of thinking about what the love of my life would do to me if I were to arrive without a plastic bag in my hands, I went off to sit in some bar with good friends with inflated opinions of themselves and their abilities.
We spent all of the afternoon complaining about racist liberals (isn’t it refreshing to find new ogres?). We all were in concurrence that there is a particular smile that only a Caucasian of liberal persuasion can ever pull off. None of us could even describe it but we all the same concurred that we knew what we were talking about.
When I finally got home I was ready to say to the love of my life, “Honey, I’m home.” Before I could utter a word, I saw a strange glint in her eye. I didn’t really expect her to say: “I spent the entire day thinking about you.” She never says that. Neither did I expect her to say what she did say: “Where the bloody hell did you leave the groceries?”
I hadn’t left them anywhere as I hadn’t got them in the first place. So, quick as a flash I told her that I had been on assignment and would be getting the groceries first thing in the morning. She looked at me in a manner that suggested that she thought mine the lowest of all life forms. She, however, did not explain what she thought was wrong with me.
I was glad that I had got off relatively easily and was up and ready the following day. As soon as I arrived at the door of one of our very well-known supermarkets I understood my loved one’s look the previous night. None of the stores were open on this day.
Damn. Women can be cruel. I don’t know why she could not have reminded me that: “No, dear one, you will not find a single major supermarket open on this day.”
She let me walk all the way, knowing very well that the shops would not be open. She knows all these things, she being a woman and all. I, being a man, cannot be bothered by such things, you see.
I suppose I could have gone home and told her that it was silly not to have reminded me, but I knew that I was in the dog house.
So I just sat at a street corner wondering why such a nice, formerly marginalised religion like Christianity was making life difficult for me.
I imagined a world where no religion had the power to shut down the OK on any day.