There was this guy I knew these a couple of decades ago who fit the term chain-smoker many times over. He used to smoke two packs a day! Shocking, wouldn’t you say? And here is me trying to describing five or six words as if it was one of those common occurrences. In those days of smokers so avid lighting a new cigarette with the dying one there were other two-packs a day smokers and few if any thought of it as shocking. Of course such news of smoking ‘bravado’ such news did indeed raise a few eyebrows; but then I can assure you many would have disapproved of the term ‘shocking’ as, so they would argue, would be overplaying things.
Anyways this guy wasn’t the type of person who went into smoking while still a pre-teen village hooligan or something. No; he was already in his mid-twenties or so when he started smoking in the most common of ways where guys jumped fences into strange territories just to make their friends happy. His best friends with whom he spent most of his spare time were smokers who did away with half a pack or so cigarettes a day.
So whenever they were out and about town for ‘a few’ drinks they teased him, “At least is too much for you to have one cigarette in your hand just for the sake of it?” He did; and he went all the way to being a two-pack-a-day smoker. So when he had only a pack a day and you told him it was still too much he would say, “Come on, and don’t make a big deal out of it.” Finally sadly enough his addiction got him. But all those years he dismissed criticism of his smoking habits with, “Don’t make a big deal out of it.” Sad!
“Look I think you’re having too much beer these days; seven bottles at one go is too much. You should cut down on that habit.”
“Come on don’t make a big deal out of it. Seven is not such a scary number.”
“That was what you said when you used to drink two beers. You told us not to make a big deal out of it. And now your condition is getting word. You better stand up to reality and do what should be done; quit drinking.”
“That’s not going to happen. There are guys who drink seventeen or twenty bottles in a single night and seven is a very fair number.”
The lengths we go to downplay situations which otherwise are worrying send many down the steepest slopes of doom.
You have an appointment with a fellow and you’ve told him in so many words to be on time. When he finally arrives he’s forty minutes late.”
You can’t hide our frustration because he has just messed up your day’s calendar.
“You’re late!”
“Yes I’m. But it’s no big deal.”
“What do you mean it is no big deal? I have been waiting for you for so long and you tell it’s no big deal!”
“Everybody is late. People are late by an hour and half and two hours. I was late only for thirty, forty minutes. And you’re making an issue out of it!!”
Believe me; such people are all over the place. This guy comes and asks you, “Can you lend me two thousand birr! I need it for an emergency. I’ll return it in not more than five days.”
“The last time you borrowed from me you took several months to pay back and you put me then in difficult situations.”
“It was only three thousand birr, and you’re talking about it!” (Well, sir, three thousand birr isn’t an ‘only’ matter for many!) “I also paid you back in five months, and you’re still sore about that!”
“It’s easy for you to say so, isn’t it? I don’t think you’ve forgotten that you promised to pay back within two weeks.”
“Oh come on now; don’t make a big deal out of it!”
There was this guy we knew who had a child out of wedlock. In fact it took quit a lot of interference by third parties to make him accept the kid as his son. Well credit is due to the guy since once he took the father role he tried hard to be a good one. But then a good father for him isn’t everything we believe should be. He had his own ways too. One of these was making his son familiar with the taste of tej! He is the sort of guy who’d not hesitate to start a revolution if he had been prohibited from drinking tej.
So with the kid about nine or tem he took him to tej bet and made him take a single sip. The tej barely wets his tongue. But amount wasn’t the issue here. Taking your own nine year old to tej bet wasn’t any dad idea of entertainment or experience. We are talking about a kid not yet in his teen years. There was push to make dad stop that practice. He didn’t budge. After sometime the booth got the best of him and he passed away.
What happened later was the kid suddenly disappears. And after close to a decade or so someone who knows him runs into him in another part of the town. So what did he make of himself! Well, he is one son who seems determined to stick to his father’s legacy. He turned out to be one of the worst drunkards of the area. ‘Like father, like son;’ isn’t that what they say? But to conclude his father was aware this would happen would be a little off the rails. As mentioned he was someone to be a good father in his own ways. He used to argue was to make his child hate tej and not end up like him. Well this dad didn’t try to hide the fact that he was a hopeless addict himself. He too used to fend off criticism with, “Oh come on, you’re exaggerating things!” that was his way of saying, “Don’t make it a big deal out of it!”
The Ethiopian Herald April 9/2023