The One With The Drunk Boy

I think parents are better teachers than teachers themselves. They start from scratch with those lil rugrats, and I admire/honour/respect/laugh at parents sooo much. Their job is exceptionally noble; choosing to stick by & raise your child in a world of abortions, abandonment, toddler boarding school & space monsters. 

 

Thank you parents.

A  parent colleague who I think is super cool once told me a story I’ll never forget. I’ll use her voice now because using mine will make the text much longer and will just confuse me. So I’ll be speaking in the third person. It’s the third person, right? Is it the third person? Or 1st person? Or other person

Or creepy person?

 

I don’t know, I’ll confirm when I Google it.

Heads up... I may colour the story a little, but she gave me permission. And will I not run with that permission. My comments will be in this fun greater than/less than triangle thingies..<  >..

Her voice:

Once when my son was about 3 and a half years old, I left him home with the house help. As I always did.

Usually we blend fresh juice for him, mango, orange, pineapple, watermelon and other exotic African fruits grown in pure mineral water trickling from the Alps of Mt.Kenya down to the tributaries of the Indian Ocean<yea, she definitely said that>.

So on this day he was given his juice as usual and then left to his own devices, as the help went back to her other chores. 

Several hours <I dont think it was that long, but still> passed with no peep from the boy, and so the house help went investigating. She investigated and investigated around the house but to no avail.

But she was desperate and kept searching the house, then went out the house, into our compound, relentlessly looking for the boy. Those days we lived in a neighbourhood whose houses were far and in between<WHAT does that even mean?? either they're far from you, or in between you and another house, meaning they can't be both far from you and in between you and..okay,maybe it makes sense, I don't know>and so she had to walk for a while before reaching the main road or any other house. She was absolutely worried that the 3 year old boy had managed that amazing feat.

After almost an hour,she was pretty much close to giving up hope, and realized that the boy had actually wandered out the gate into a neighbouring compound/field/coyote pack and was now being raised by wild coyotes.

She decided to brave the scary outdoors and try look for him outside the compound, further towards the main road, before either calling me or calling me<we don’t quite call cops in these here sides of the globe>.

Right outside the gate, she found my son,

shirtless, seated on a rock, head bent & bobbing, slur-singing, with the empty juice bottle held loosely in his hand  <NO HYPERBOLING HERE-THAT BIT’S TRUE!!>.

Help: My God, My God, Eh Nyasae Mtoto wangu  (translation:Oh God my child) ..my boy

Him:*gurgle..gurgle..slur*

Help: Mwana wangu(my baby)..my God my God..

Him: the..*hic*..wheels..*hic*on the *hic*..*hic*

Help: Ngai maskini, mtoto wangu amelewa. (Gosh oh my poverty, the boy is frikking drunk & I’m so screwed!!)

Apparently, the concoction she made had..sat in..for a bit..and was now boozier than healthier, and the little child found it too much & was now drunk beyond his wits.

My poor baby had got drunk before even hitting puberty.

< I chuckled that whole day at work. And stared at her son with a whole new found respect-seeing as he was probably hangovered the entire time>

PARENTS ARE AWESOME!!!

<except when they stop being awesome and start being, “who were you with and why are you wearing that? Start earning your own money & don’t ask us for anything!!”..yeah then they’re just old boring people>