From The Archives...

(Another iPod find)

From time to time, people ask me questions that cause me pause. Granted these questions range from the daft “When are you getting married” (When you take Minding Yo Business free online course) to the justified like "What the hell are you doing here?!" when I once again get lost and land on private property (surprisingly frequent occurrence). Still, from time to time I receive an inquiry
so disturbing that I myself a forced to ponder....


Recently such an inquiry was posed, it didn't arrive hiding under the
banner of concern or the giggling shackles of jest, this was a genuinely curious inquiry. The questioner wanted to know Why I am the way I am. With the number of
times I have been asked this you would think I'd have a ready answer
for the pseudo-intellectual minds clearly struggling to dissect this conundrum of a matter. I am usually tempted to repeat some banal lines from Angelou’s
extraordinary ‘Pheomenal Woman’ poem but the mockery I fear I will see in the eyes of my questioner when I get to this line “...its in the span of my hips..” bids me pause. #WiderHipsWanted.

(Btw, I am typing this on my iPod on the train and a deaf lady is sign language-ing her husband across the carriage. I just realised that if you are hearing impaired,
gossiping in public might be a tad difficult. I’m sad for them, it kind of sucks...as that's one of the special things about marriage, a constant gossip partner. I can’t wait! Lol.).

iDigress.

“So, why am I the way I am?” I thought to myself after the inquiries became insistent. I believe the closest thing to an answer I can give is; my childhood. Seriously, what were my chances of coming out a regular human being when at the age of eight (8), I was lead backing vocalist of the ‘choir’, consisting of one disturbingly silly 6 year old, mischievous 4 and a tyrannical two? We proudly croaked along to our uncle-turned -rapper’s (eventually turned cultist) terribly mediocre ramblings of daily happenings at our house, uncleverly disguised as rhymes. No, 50 Cent is NOT my uncle.

I FOR IMPORTANT

(1ST POST OF 2011...WAHHHHHEEEYYYYY!!! Thank you dear Lord for another year, your grace abounds!!!)

Just returned from a rescue mission at the frontiers of My Kitchen. The Targets? An unruly mix of flour, yeast, sugar and water attempting a tactical operation to frustrate the authority of my brave comrade. My comrade and little sister fought valiantly to coerce the unruly quartet into submission via hot vegetable oil. Those wily ingredients evaded capture, refusing to bind themselves together to form the soft whole we like to call Puff Puff. On immediate contact with the heated oil, they scattered in all directions in a wasted attempt at a victorious uprising against my by-now annoyed little sister. Alas she conceded defeat in the end and left the kitchen with a promise to return to fight another day. Defeated but undeterred, she marched to my room to call me, The Food Fighter, to finish the job.

I entered the kitchen swagger on a hundred trillion thousand, or whatever Queen Kanye says, proud of being the chosen agent to spearhead the Cease & Desist mission. I proceeded to attack The Mixing Bowl, the slick ingredients’ encampment of choice. As I mixed, my sister watched me with eyes brimming with her confidence in my ability to get her Puff Puff to her in one delectable piece, come 15minutes. As I mixed determinedly, my thoughts wondered as they are wont to do and somehow I found myself pondering on life. Wait, wait hear me out before quirking an eye brow and serving me a chilled glass of ‘Girl Please’. Yes, I do indeed engage in intellectually stimulating conversations with myself, mid mundane tasks. Like the time I wondered how cows felt about potential stereotyping resulting from the outbreak of the Mad Cow disease whilst I was….actually let’s focus.

* ahem*, so as I stared at my sister staring at me in confidence, I thought back to how many times growing up I had stared at my mum in the same way as I watched her salvage some epic fail I was attempting to conjure in her kitchen. And I thought, sister thinks I’m a good cook, but I think mummy’s a great cook and I’m sure there’s someone mum thinks is even better than her!

It’s a funny thing about this world, that there will always be someone that appears to be clearly greater than you in some way. There will be taller, prettier, curvier, smarter, nicer, sexier, more interesting, cultured, sensible women than you. Fact. Now what you choose to do with that fact is instructive. Some women are aware of the Fact and let it determine the course of their lives forever so at every point in those lives their owners are beset with insecurities because of the consistent measuring and comparing…and always coming up short. Sadness and bitterness follow swiftly and drives people who may have loved the woman away and the insecurity returns because she has no friends, and the cycle continues. This cycle can only maintain itself because people who consistently compare have simply failed to realize that no one is more necessary than you to your life.

No one can be more important, useful, necessary to my life than I can. No one is more amazing at fulfilling my destiny than I am. No one is more certain to carry out my course on this earth than I will. So while the world consistently tries to tell us as individuals that we are not that important/great/necessary to the grand scheme of things, I humbly suggest that this is what Armeninans and men over 67 in Kazhakstan refer to as BULL SH*T. Ok I’m lying about the Eastern Europeans, but you get my point. The idea that YOU are just not that important is a lie, prevarication, rumour, a part of the Tales by Moonlight African Fairytales series. You are relevant to the movement of YOUR earth. Not only to your family and friends but to your destiny…think about it, if you do not fulfill your destiny, WHO WILL?