News reaches you in a roundabout way that your better half was jumping in and out to the wrong beds in town. Mind you yours is a wife who was made from all the right genes and for years no one had anything out of the ordinary to say about her; except, maybe she’s too good for this world of ours.
By some twist of fate few who confront such ‘information’ seldom ask… “And what is your evidence?” I’ll be your volunteer to unravel that riddle; “Why, everybody is talking about her?” by the way that is an uncomfortably common line, about everybody ‘talking about it.” But does that make this or any story for that matter, I mean everybody ‘talking about it’ make it a fact? Search me.
Believe me hearing that everybody was talking about it is enough to make you run to the nearest friends or acquaintances for advice. I she had been a single girlfriend concubine it was easy to say, “Dump her, that’s what you should do.”
Of course no one has courage enough to tell you in the face “You’re the one cheating on that innocent wife of yours! And now you’re worried about some concubine!” The ‘investigative genes’ in you never jump to action at such times.
“Look,” says on self-made councilor, “I never liked that woman of yours. It’s time you send her backing. And don’t think of giving her a dime!” What is it with us menfolk that make us so viscous!
Another lady friend of yours was an angel in another life. She’d probably tell you to greet the rumors with smiles. What in the world does she mean by that! Is she the matchmaker of it all? No, she isn’t; she is just trying to tell you to take it a step at a time and not try to play the Othello stuff. But I can tell you most of the advice you’ll get will be to kick her all the way to the nearest hungry lion.
You think your boss is throwing everything at you to knock you out, or you think so. The guy just doesn’t like you. He doesn’t even smile in your presence!
“What is his problem?”
“I don’t know! I just don’t know! From the first day he came to our offices appointed he is after me.”
Now most of us wouldn’t say, “What exactly are the things he is doing to you?” No, that would be being very ‘unfriendly!’ The immediate response, “That son-of-a-whatever! Who does he think he’s dealing with? Throw the keys in his face and leave that place!” Somehow many of us seem to play those macho, Rambo-cards in all the wrong places.
No one tells you where to go once you throw the keys in the guy’s face! No one will be there to serve as a backup why your wife reads you the riot act!
Very few, if any, would tell you not to rush into decision. “Don’t give him the joy of destroying your life!”
A low-level official comes as your next neighbor. A full fortnight doesn’t pass when the wolves come hunting; or, so you think! There are all sorts of strange noises coming from the other side and you think they are talking about, who else, you! “Aha; now they have come near my own home! what do this people want from me?”
“What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean what’s the matter?”
“You don’ seem all right! Have you seen your face the mirror this morning? It looks like circus monkeys have been playing baseball with it.”
“I’m in deep trouble.”
“What! What happened? Is your family all right?”
“Yes they are. it’s this neighbor who is my new next-door neighbor…” and you go on relating the story of how he was spying on you, how every night he talks with hushed voices with people you don’t know, and yes, how his cat jumps all over your tin roof from dusk to dawn.
“You’ve to change your residence.”
“Why should I?”
“So you can be safe. This guy might throw you deep in the casket and no one would care!”
“But it’s my house! Are you telling me to run from my own private property?”
“Oh…that didn’t come to me.”
Not once did he ask him he came to the conclusion he was being spied upon, how he is sure the hushed talks were about him and most of all, if the cat on the roof is half human! It must be. A cat jumps on one’s roof the whole night for no reason!
Don’t you think the most intelligent thing to do is to first get the facts before hammer falls… “Guilty as charged!”
The Ethiopia Herald December 20/2020