♫ One good thing about music
When it hits you feel no pain
So hit me with music
Hit me with music now
I got to say trench town rock ♫
You gotta love Mr. Marley’s ode to Kingston 12. I’m having that kind of mellow weekend, how is everyone doing? I did something I haven’t done in some years. I went out for a downtown walk to gaze at the natives and see if there are any H’ween costumes that would make me giggle like an 82 year old nun in a strip joint. Unfortunately, if you’ve seen one pot-bellied, middle-aged man in a spandex wedding gown, you’ve seen them all. My sister and I did get an offer from a little man in a dominatrix outfit. Thanks to his, ahem, challenged stature, he was at eye level with our chests. And he smelled as though he’d been under a bottle of gin since lunch.
The little man staggered and then said ‘Whoa!’. I looked around and wondered what he was exclaiming about. ‘Are those real?’, he asked in the way only a little man could. I knew what he was asking but we both chose to ignore him. ‘Can I touch them?’, he asked, pointing a child-sized hand in our direction. Sigh. How come I never get an offer like that from a tall black man in H’ween? Why is it always the garden gnome with wispy, balding hair who is clearly blind as a runner girl can never boast a can-I-touch-it kind of bosom?
In other news, I had lunch with a friend and a married couple I haven’t seen since university. This lovely nomad couple were several years ahead of me (in law and journalism when I was a freshman), and they married while graduate students. Quite casually, I asked if they had any children and they said no. I left it at that but the discussion came back to the topic and they easily shared that they’ve made a decision not to have children. They were childfree. Interesting! I couldn’t even fathom how their respective families would deal with this most egregious of decisions in our culture.
I’ve learnt since then that this easy going couple are dedicated to their respective families. The wife came from a family of 15 or 16 children (her father married 3 times) and she is financially responsible for all 5 children of the last step mother. She is putting the children through private schools in Nairobi so they have a shot at a decent education. The husband’s been shuttling his ailing mother from country to country to find an appropriate kidney donor for the past few years. I think even if they were not both mentally and financially self-sacrificing, I believe it takes some courage and honour to not bring forth a child into this world.
I’ve always imagined myself as a parent of at least one child someday. I have so much parental guilt and mental screw-up to pass on, I would surely become ill if it stays with me and doesn’t get passed on to an innocent child. Of course, if the universe were to twist my arm and make me make a choice between my own DNA replicant and something else, I would (with a heavy heart, no doubt), accept this Bugatti:
