Me Vs. Editor

Some time ago, Baz wrote a brilliant blog on editor-writer wars. And while I found it hillarious, that was about as far as my consideration of it went. I never thought I would find myself in a situation where his words would actually come true.

My editor is a very personable fellow. Well, most of the time amyway. She lets me get away with the most atrocious deadline violations ever, she never hesitates to show her appreciation when something I write is actually good, and she is really cute, as in REALLY cute, but that is besides the point.

But today, a mere two days after valentine, the thought of her very cute face doesn't fill my heart with much cheer. In fact, the tingling that used to come to my lower lip every time this image would come to my mind has inexplicably been transferred to my fists.

The reason for this is, of course, what editors do. They EDIT, and by doing that, transform whatever magic you may have thought you've woven into something else.

Last thursday,this is what I wrote:

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Panadol Omusala. He really does exist, but I assume you already understand that for purposes of privacy, names had to be changed.

Anyway, When Panadol was born, Ksh. 513/- was all the money his dad had between him and his next paycheck. But so happy was the old man at finally having sired a son that after clearing with Pumwani Maternity, he threw all fiscal prudence into the wind, bought five crates of beer and a goat, and celebrated all night with his friends at his house in Dagoretti.

I know Five hundred shillings can't get you half a crate of the cheapest beer around, let alone bid for even the most seriously unhealthy goat. This of course introduces credible grounds for doubt as to the veracity of my analogy.

But since you're aware that lying doesn't feature very prominently in the very short list of vices I am prone to, then you've probably deduced that Panadol's birth must have co-incided with a very rosy period for the Kenyan economy. And working with the prices I've just quoted, then you should have arrived at the very obvious conclusion that Panadol was born during independent Kenya's first administration.

I am not at liberty to quote Panadol's exact age, but of course by now you know he is well past his twenties, and he has lived through a lot of changes; not least of which being a cost of living which has discovered an affinity for the stratosphere. He has also acquired an education, a well-paying job and twin grandchildren for his mother.

But one thing which has not changed throughout that time is Panadol's address. He still lives-along with his two kids [but NOT with their mother]- in the same Dagoretti house that hosted a beer-and- goat party the night he was born. And no matter how constantly his friends and the women he dates pester him to move out and settle in his own house, Panadol won't have any of it.

With the possible exception of none, I'm very sure all women out there would find Panadol's behaviour revolting. A man in his thirties, and with kids to boot, still living with his mother? Like the mother of Panadol's kids, they will probably put it down to a stubborn refusal on his part to just grow up. They will wonder why the hell his dad celebrated his birth. This isn't a man, they will claim. Just a baby masquerading in a man's body!

I am however of a very different opinion. Much as I wouldn't mind seeing him finding a nice house and moving out of his mother's place with his kids, I happen to find absolutely nothing wrong with his continued residience in his mother's abode. Too many people in my opinion pressure themselves into leaving the roost too early, resulting in the proliferation of slums to carter for the needs of these unready adults, children growing up in unhealthy environments and, eventually, hopelessness.

I totally agree with Panadol because for starters, his mother doesn't mind seeing him around. And since she is the legal owner of the premises following her husband's unfortunate demise ten years ago, then I don't think anyone else has a say on the matter except maybe Panadol himself. And judging by his continued residence there, I think he agrees with his mother.

Secondly, he is a very responsible parent to his two children, all thanks to the steadying influence of his mother who I'm sure in another life would have been a best-selling guide book on good parenting. His children are well-behaved, good-natured, honest, kind and neat, traits which are directly attributable to the warm, affectionate figure in their life that is their grandmother.

Of course a misguided section of the public would opine that the children should have grown up with their mother, but the children's mother is the very one who left Panadol because he wouldn't desert the comfortable recesses of his mother's three bedroomed house in Dagoretti for a two-room shack in Kawangware, which was what my friend could afford at the time she gave birth to his kids.

I will never condemn anyone who lives with their parents despite a relatively advanced age. That is unless, of course, you are a lazy mooching oaf that causes your parents nothing but grief and contribute zero towards household expenses, in which case you really do need to move out and louse your life away elsewhere.

But if like Panadol you take care of your own bills, you respect your parents, you handle your responsibilities and, above all, your parents have no quarrels with you staying with them, then by all means, live with them forever if you want to!

Today, this is what came out.

Dangerous friendships

School opening days are certified hazards to any parent's fiscal health, thirst for liquids alcoholic always reach their zenith whenever one is experiencing serious fiscal problems, and these two relatively unrelated phenomena somehow managed to forge a working relationship in my life last week.

And boy, did they work or what! By thursday, I was tight in the clutches of near-violent withdrawal symptoms due to the balance of the blood-alcohol ratio in my system showing extreme bias on the side of blood. By friday, I was day-dreaming about brown bottles every waking moment of the day, and when I actually day-dreamed about the same brown bottles on saturday night, I realised the time for desperate measures was just about overdue. So I picked up my mobile and made probably the worst mistake of my life.

For about one month now, WafulaKimani has been suspended from my life for being a genuine bona-fide safety risk, but I was desperate and besides, I must admit an inability to stay away from the potential for a Prison break-season-4 like drama being around him always promises. So I called him to announce his reinstatement as my friend and to beg for delivery from alcohol deficiency.

As I should have expected, WafulaKimani as calmly as a joint-presidenial press conference in Iraq tset about disrupting whatever semblance of tranquility I may have enforced in my life for the past month with a single-mindedness of purpose that was positively terrifying. "Beer, my friend?!" His voice howled down my earpiece. "I'm practically drowning in the stuff! By all means, come by and knock yourself out!"

Thus reprieved, I hurried over to his place and sure enough, the fridge did indeed hold all the beer that he hadn't stuffed under the bed. "I have a ranking officcer friend in the army." He whispered conspirationally at my look of amazement .

We drank until around 11pm when suddenly, my friend requested that I accompany him to see a girl somewhere. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an innocent enough request, but in this case three things made it something else alltogether.

1. It is never a good idea to accompany WafulaKimani anywhere at night.

2.The idea gets even worse if he makes the request while drunk.

3. If the request to accompany him starts with the words "There is this girl..." Then you are in alot of trouble.

But WafulaKimani is my friend and he had just done me a good deed, so I smothered my reservations and we called a taxi which took us and dropped us off infront of a house in Jericho. Then with the self-assurance of someone familliar with the place, my friend led me up the steps and rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a lovely young lady who upon seeing WafulaKimani, gave what I think was a cross between a smile and a grimace."Oh, Darling." She muttered. "You shouldn't have come. My brother is home..." She was cut short by the appearance of a very angry-looking young man who shoved her aside and accosted us. "How may I help you?" He rudely demanded.

"By slithering back to whatever hole it is you emerged from and letting me and the lady finish our conversation. "WafulaKimani replied, very politely.

Despite the darkness and the alcohol in my brain, I swear I saw the guy's face go through the entire color spectrum.

"Who do you think you are?" He spluttered. "Do you know who I am? How dare you talk to me like that?"

"I know who I am, I don't give a crap who you are and I'm telling you that if you don't let me finish my conversation with the lady, I will kick you so hard between the legs that your reproductive organs will exit through your skull. You got that?" WafulaKimani's tone never changed.

The expression on the guy's face was like none I have ever seen before. Shooting us a murderous glare, he turned and stormed back into the house and we smiled in triumph. WafulaKimani then turned to finish his conversation with his lady friend but to our utter puzzlement, she simly said "Run." and vanished into the house.

We were still puzzled when a very long barrel appeared through the window a few seconds later, but an omnious click suggested that it was a gun and slightly eased our puzzlement. A loud report confirmed that it was indeed a gun, and an eruption of soil near our feet totally erased any doubts as to whether the gun was loaded. Another click advised us on the wisdom of seeking urgent and immediate appointments elsewhere, and we quickly heeded it.

At the moment,WafulaKimani's ban from my life has been re-instated

Post Christmas Blues

Bar an attack of horribly bad humor from the Big Guy, I think it is safe to assume that nothing catastrophic is going to happen between now and next Thursday when the new year finally comes along.


But I'm having a few problems of my own and if things keep happening this way, I probably won't be seeing the new year.

How, you ask? well, this is how. I arrived home pretty late last night... All right! I arrived home very late last night. Happy?

Anyway, because of the slur in my speech and the fact that I don't subscribe to the Christian faith, I kinda figured the "I went for midnight mass" routine wouldn't work with my girlfriend, so I decided to go the "Stop nagging, Woman!" way.

Fine, except I hadn't counted on three things:

1. My girlfriend was pissed off. As in really, really pissed off.

2.For some reason, she took up Karate classes when I was in Kampala.

3.She's got an impressive 5ft8in kick, which by unfortunate co-incidence, is the exact distance my face is from the ground when I'm standing.

Well, you can see where this is leading. I was very practically reminded of these three facts, and by the time I picked myself up from the sofa which had mercifully broken my fall, she had disappeared into our bedroom and locked herself in.

Obviously, I had to find an alternative place to sleep, and the carpet was quite fine by me. So after setting my radio to automatically turn itself on at 7am, I fell asleep under the coffee table.

When I woke up this morning and looked at my watch, I was petrified. You see, there was this article that my editor wanted in her inbox by noon today.

My editor bears a frightening resemblanbe to Brig. Hussein Ali at a crime scene when she is in a bad mood. Believe me, you don't want to get on her wrong side, for example through unmet deadlines, or worse, unsubmitted articles. That can honestly be considered a health hazard.

So my worst fears, were confirmed when I looked at my watch and saw it was a few hours past noon. I sat up in shock...

And my head connected with the underside of the coffee table.

In that instant, I saw more stars than most astronauts ever got to see in their entire careers.

Why is mommy's tummy so big?

A couple of dozen years ago, a young boy walked up to his mother and asked her, "Mommy, why is your tummy so big?"

Such questions tend to be very awkward for the parent concerned, since they mostly come from children whom until a few seconds before you assumed were several gazillion years away from beginning to understand the dynamics behind gestation and the accompanying physical attributes which afflict women involved in the process of gestation. Other questions in this genre include gems such as "Where did we come from?" Or, "Mommy, why do you like eating stones and yet you beat me when I do?"

Now, if you are a parent with even the slightest inkling of an idea on what ideal parenting is, then at some point in time you must have been involved in such an excruciating scenario. It is nature's way of reminding us that whatever we think, that very active mass of matter inside your child's head won't remain stagnated in childhood forever, and of informing us that raising our kids just got a hell lot trickier.

When such questions begin coming our way from the little brats, they can take on the atmosphere of an inquisition and won't go away until a satisfactory answer or a hefty enough bribe is obtained to defer their attention. As it was, this aforementioned boy was more inquisitive than most children, and so it took a highly creative tale about the stones clearing worms in Mommy's stomach to clear his curiosity and a very huge five shilling coin to curtail another torrent of questions along the same vein.

But what goes around really does come around. Boys tend to be freer with their mothers while girls can twist their fathers round their little finger. How are these two phenomena related? Well, last week, this boy, now a fully grown man with one daughter and another one on the way, was seated in the house doing nothing in general and nothing in particular, when his daughter walked up to him and asked, "Daddy, why is Mommy's tummy so big?"

Usually, this man refers the child to her mother when she starts asking questions of this kind, but this time the daughter was very insistent. He couldn't bribe her because he was flat broke, and attempting the explanation he once heard from his mother about worms was futile since the wife in question never puts anything that even vaguely resembles a stone anywhere near her mouth.

To cut a long story short, each and every one of us, as we grow tend to go through the following stages:
1.Dad knows everything
2.Dad knows almost everything
3.Dad knows many things
4.Dad knows one or two things
5.Dad knows nothing
6.Maybe Dad does know one or two things
7.Actually Dad knows many things
8.Dad knows everything.

Well, by the time my daughter was through with me, I moved from No.1 to No.5 without going through 2 to 4. I can only pray I get to 8 really soon.

Church hazard

Indongole came from church last sunday with two black eyes. "Man, what happened to you? I asked.

He said, "I was seated behind this very fat, ugly woman in church,




"When we stood for prayer, Her dress had stuck itself in the crack of her ass. It was an ugly sight, and so I bent foward and pulled it out, but all I got for my noble effort was she socked me on my right eye."

Trying really hard not to laugh, I asked, "And what happened to your left eye?"

"Oh." Indongole replied. "I figured she hadn't liked what I'd done, so I pushed the dress back in."

Morning coffee

Arcadius Castrolcallistus Nathaniel Indongole is otherwise known as Archie the dream, Man Castro, King Callisto or simply Indongole, [but the priviledge of calling him that last name is reserved only for three categories of people, the very brave, the very stupid and his birth parents]


But enough with nomenclature. Indongole [I belong to a category that is a cross between extremely brave and incredibly stupid,soI qualify to call him that] is having breakfast when I come downstairs after the superhuman effort it took to coax my head from the pillow. Man,the coffee sure does smell good!

I grab the thermos flask, but it is empty. Not a very perfect way to start the day.

"Man! You only made coffee for yourself!" I grumble.

He looks at me, a quizzical expression on his face. "So?"

"You know, if it were me who woke up before you, I would make sure you have a ready cup of coffee when you come downstairs." I say

"But I am downstairs, and I have a ready cup of coffee." He replies. "Where is the problem?"

Not a very perfect conversation to start the day with.

"Why didn't you just make coffee for both of us? I ask in exesperation.

He looks at me strangely and for a moment, I am tempted to confirm whether seaweed has sprouted on my head. It hasn't, and so I stare right back at him. "Do you have your birth certificate? He suddenly asks. "Please give it to me."

I have absolutely no idea where this is leading, but I do have my birth certificate and he did ask for it, so I find it and give it to him. He scans his eyes over it, finds something and points at it. "I assume this is a true record of your birth?" He asks and I agree. "Then please read this."
It is the part with my mother's name, and I read it out for him.

"Now." He continues. "Does the name you have just read resemble the name 'Arcadius Castrolcallistus Nathaniel Indongole' in any way?

I reply that if my my mother had such a name, I most definitely would have considered a stint in an Iraqi prison before I introduced her by name to anyone, and then I ask him where all this is leading to.

"Do not assign me your mother's duties!" Indongole barks. "And that includes making coffee!"

Now why did he have to use such long route to get tothe point?