SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, FOR ADULTS

Many images have made the rounds on social media since the hectic storm that hit Durban and other parts of KwaZulu-Natal.

True to “mountain out of a molehill” form, “hurricane Sifiso” was hatched by permanent WhatsApp residents. These would be the same people who created a meme of Noah’s Ark with a “Durban Uber” logo emblazoned on it within hours of the tragedy. Too soon, I thought.

One of the most fascinating images to emerge was one of a pair of teenagers surfing on a random Durban street. I have decided that it was Problem Mkhize Road. (This is mostly because I have wanted to write the words “Problem Mkhize Road” since they brought in the new street names in Durban.)

When I saw those surfing images, I was catapulted back to late January 1984, during tropical storm Domoina, when I was a scrawny 12-year-old just a few weeks into high school. Domoina was so severe we were locked inside our dorms for a couple of days.

Now, if you think a small thing like a tropical storm will keep a bunch of 12and 13-year-old boys indoors, you underestimate the power of raging hormones. We snuck out, limbered up a fence into Brother Clement’s orchard, over another fence and into the swimming pool in bucketing rain. Not before we stocked up on peaches and apricots from the orchard. We then spent the afternoon canoeing on the flooded swimming pool, using wooden crates we’d picked up along the way.

And this, I believe, was what Jesus meant when he made a kid stand up in front of his followers and then said,“Verily I say unto thee, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Man, just how badly does being an adult suck? This is the stage in life when one is ostensibly at the peak of one’s physical, intellectual, emotional, sexual and economic prowess. This is, coincidentally, the same stage when folks are supposed to spend two hours every day stuck in traffic between Marlboro and Grayston, followed by eight hours of PowerPoint presentations with verbal flatulence on the side and another two hours between Grayston and Marlboro on the Great Trek home. Then it’s chicken salad from Woolies in front of the telly and the parliamentary channel’s soap opera.

And what prize awaits you for all your trouble? Seven minutes of a feeble attempt at coitus, followed by an eighthour long snorefest and inhaling your charming prince or princess’s gastrointestinal gases.

Here’s the thing, humanity’s very existence is under threat from climate change and the nuclear standoff between the Halloween pumpkin-faced fellow with salami lips in the White House and that overgrown toddler from North Korea. Not to mention the escalating price of whisky that is threatening the very essence of civilisation.

So it is understandable that adults are mostly anal-retentive, chronic heartburn-suffering sourpusses. They go for bitter-tasting beverages such as coffee, Guinness and vodka.

Meanwhile, back at the Children’s Ranch, the green, sweet nectar called cream soda flows with reckless abandon. In the immortal words of Dr Seuss: “Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”

So I have devised my own ways to tap into my inner child. Some months ago I purchased a Bounceking trampoline, ostensibly for the kids. But when I’m alone in the house, I bounce up and down on that thing faster than the rand.

I have also taken to raiding the kids’ Stumbo lollipop stash. That’s the one with chewing gum at the core, so that I can chew away afterwards and blow bubbles, while giggling at Jim Carrey’s toilet-humour-intensive movies.

Perhaps all of us need to tap into that inner child from time to time. Even if it’s five minutes. We owe it to ourselves. In the words of CS Lewis: “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness.”