Ephrem Endale Contributer
You’ve plans to make it ‘one of those days’. You tidy up and groom yourself per your means. Then a ‘good’ (‘expensive!’) breakfast just to get that VIP feeling. You needed it! The week has been quite a tough one with nothing seeming to go right for you. Look, I know this isn’t your kind of a million dollar question, but what is a really tough week for you? The raise you expected (who said you deserved it!) didn’t materialize? For the third time another beauty has left you out in the cold? Your favorite EPL team was clobbered heavily by a just promoted one? When, once again, the price of beer went, in your own terms, through the roof! Believe me, some of our reasons for a week to be dubbed ‘tough’ are not only laughable but silly too!
Anyways, after the ‘good breakfast’ you venture out. The amount of aftershave you splashed all over your face could have safely lasted you another fortnight. But who the hell cares, if your day is going to be ‘one of those days,’ you can’t worry about running out of aftershave! By this one was sent from a friend somewhere in Europe and not used every day. You can say its holiday material. By the way, what’s it with some of those guys that they like sending us aftershaves only! “Best! Put it on lightly and the whole week you’d have the aroma of the sweetest rose.”
They sound like salesmen of certain brands and not your once-upon-a-time buddies! Come on you can’t use those superlatives for a product the scent of which is felt only for seven and half minutes to the second! Maybe it has to do with the atmosphere down here. Maybe it needs the chill of those dark snowy winters to make impact on peoples’ nostrils! Let alone the fair sex, who are the targets mostly, even the scavenging ‘domestic animals’ aren’t impressed. You’re barely ventured outdoors when your smelling genes, for whatever reasons, go on strike. “No! No! Expecting us to pick up the scent of this cheap throughway thing is offensive and we demand some apology!”
And while we are at it, ‘one of those days’ wouldn’t be what you plan it to be unless you’re ‘smartly’ dressed too, which you’re that day. The suit, the tie, the folded and stiletto-top handkerchief sticking out of your breast pocket; yes; this is going to be ‘one of those days.’ Of course ‘good suits’ are subjective. I mean you can either go to the Bole high fashion areas or the outlying spots where there is a lot of ‘fashion’ too, in different ways. Just wake up early Sunday morning and a single bus ride would take you to one of those spots, you buy an ‘impressive looking suit’ for a shockingly ‘cheap’ price and is back home before the entire family is still a snoring! Am I being of any help here? Thanks, your appreciation accepted.
Don’t ask me where exactly those suits come from. Yes, yes, I know they are some kind of contraband stuff! You might even find some torn up pieces of paper in the pockets of the jacket. Something with someone’s name or something close to that scribbled on it. What is written was one of those things you can’t be able to read even you stay around for half a millennium. With all those ‘Z’s ‘K’s coming almost after any alphabet it’d be a tough call. (How can out you turn the piece of clothing over to some ‘lost and found’ section if you can’t tell who the hell it belongs to! Ha!)
On that one-of-those-days-to-be you are out and about taking red carpet sort of steps when you run into a person you know, but aren’t exactly happy to run into. He presses in such a way you can’t play him off and you sit for a cup of coffee with him. Poor you! Yes, it was going to be one of those days, but in ways you never expected! He starts talking about this man or that lady always heaping all the curse on them accusing them of all the crimes you can think of. No. this is not happening. A fortnight of aftershave for that!
Then he tells you he has developed a new kind of disease. Why? Because of his wife, that’s why. “I’m telling you one of these days she’d send me to some metal asylum!” well buddy you might not be in an asylum already; but that was where you should have been this minute now and not in a cafe sharing a table with me! Good for you; can we change the subject now? Of course, saying that would be offensive the guy doing the Macarena all over you and you worry you might offend him. Yes, whatever they tell you, we’re really good people. We are being ceaselessly being offended and we think speaking up would offend our offender!
He then jumps into politics hand, feet and all. These days you’ve developed this thinking that if you wanted to talk about politics you’d do it with yourself. I mean freelance and self-styled politicos have become so annoying, so ‘ignorant’ and, I’ve to use this term, so STUPID, the only way to save your day is keep your distance from them. It’s not which side they support or which they oppose. It is not about choices, it is about arrogance so spoiled by complete ignorance of politics there is only so much you can take silently.
So this guy spoiling your ‘one of those days’ accuses politicians, self-styled or otherwise, activists or whoever he thinks is on that side of the fence for all the problems, some of which you never knew existed! Then he continues narrating conspiracy theories some of which would have led Hollywood producers to jump on their planes pronto and rush to this part of the world. No one is willing to moss such a creative mind!
Then he shifts gears and you become the subject. The accolades (mind you, for absolutely nothing!) come raining down and you are glowing brighter than those floodlights at Wembly! You can’t help it! Few guys, if any, would lift you so high into the heavens for nothing! You can be the kind of guy who shies away from such ‘you’re the center of the universe’ praises; but believe me there’d come that time when you might say “Well; who said I deserve every word of it!” Of course no one except your friends who don’t want to create bad blood between is saying you deserve anything. “You know, I’ve always admired you.” Hip, hip hooray! After all the curse on his wife, on politicians and almost everyone else nice words come as some welcome relief. “That’s exactly what I needed!” But then the adjectives of praise become heavier and heavier and you might worry the guy was throwing you into real hot water. What I mean is there are those of us who think we’re the magic of creation and ‘intruders’ aren’t welcome!
You want to tell me how ‘one of those days’ winds up for you? Both of you are drunk and barely able to move your limbs. You don’t know how but the guy convinced you all the way into the hottest of bars of which we’ve more than our share. Yes it’d be ‘one of those days,’ and what a story you’d have to tell to anyone willing to listen!
The Ethiopian Herald February 6/2022