GREY MUTTER lance fredericks My ‘omsommie chommies’
THE RULE was simple … at first. The boys who wore ‘omsommies’ were rough, and rude and unrefined. They were the type of lads that good, well-raised youngsters didn’t associate with. They swore, farted, broke wind loudly and probably never washed their hands after using the bathroom (though this was never proven).
Girls who wore omsommies were rough and rude … and yes, probably all the things that the boy omsommie-wearers were, except that they had high-pitched voices.
Refined, well-raised children
(like yours truly) would give the omsommie gangs a wide berth on the walkways at school.
And if a game of soccer or rugby was being planned, I would first carefully scan the wrists of the boys who were going to play, looking for that piece of rubber that would clearly tell me that there would be bloodshed during the game.
If there was an omsommie on the rugby field, I’d be watching the girls play hopscotch. Although when some of the hopscotch players wore omsommies there was a chance that blood would be shed on the hopscotch diagram – that was the curse of the omsommie.
For those scratching their heads, wondering what on earth an omsommie is, it’s simply a black rubber band that people wore around their wrist or ankles.
If you still don’t know what I am trying to describe, then take your cellphone’s charging cable (if it’s black), now coil it once around your wrist, and hey-presto you’re “wearing” an omsommie. I suspect that they were originally O-rings from valves or seals used in industry, that had been discarded … until they became the fashion statement of the unrefined. Today they’re called “jelly bracelets”.
Primary school, immaturity and being green all worked together so well to help me embrace my prejudice and judgemental opinions of those vile omsommie wearers.
My world crumbles
But my perfect world came crumbling down one day when I noticed that a few of my friends – the boys I hung out with during every interval at school and sometimes over weekends – were also wearing the offensive black rubber bands!
What was I to do? The right thing, the decent thing, seeing as they were beyond hope, was to euthanise them, and the second choice was to unfriend them …
Unfortunately Facebook was only going to be launched some 40 years into the future, which meant that unfriending was a bit more complicated at that time. So against my better judgement, I tolerated them.
Minutes turned to hours, and soon days and weeks flew by and I still had not noticed a decline in their wit, morals and sense of humour. It almost seemed that wearing the omsommies had not changed their character … so I wrote to the family vet: “Deer vet. You can poot the ingekting needol away. My freinds are not sufering any more.”
By the time I turned 18, we had paid off the vet’s bill for being on stand-by for two years.
The point is, the evidence my friends presented – that wearing the black rubber bands did not make them bad people – changed my entire mental framework. I had to admit that – despite my cherished belief that an omsommie on the ankle or wrist was proof of an inferior moral character – things worn on the outside of one’s body do not determine the condition of the heart, the spirit, the character.
If you never wore an omsommie, or if you refrain from wearing gold chains or other jewellery, if you don’t like tattoos and don’t have any ink marks on your skin … bear in mind that none of these “glowing accolades” says anything about who you are on the inside.
After all, I once read that such judging is giving too much value on the surface and missing the value beneath … and we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we?