Clean up your own mess

IREMEMBER way back in the day when you settled your scores on the playground regardless if you were a boy or girl. Sometimes, if memory serves correctly, I think the girls were the worst.

But, it didn’t really matter whether you were a girl and had a beef with one of the boys. If you saw your chance you really laid into him. Okay, now I’m talking if you were a tomboy. If I remember, the “prissy missies” would call one of us – the tomboys – and inform us who they were having a “problem” with.

We just needed names . . . and when the opportunity arose we would stick it to them good and proper. It didn’t matter how you explained to your parents where all the “war scars” came from.

Now I wouldn’t have called myself a bully, but I knew how to stick up for myself and those close to me; and at that time your fists and legs did the talking. Fight first, ask questions later.

The talking only started if you were caught out and had to report to the principal’s office. Now that wasn’t a nice experience. You were severely reprimanded. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The whole time he (it was always a he in primary school) was ripping you to shreds, you were thinking, “Why wasn’t I given his name?”

You must really be thinking I was this wild, out of control delinquent. I am not and was never like that. That was the way I knew how and one way to get some attention.

Even from that age I believed, and still do to this day, that actions speak louder than words. I can just imagine every time someone bothered me, going up to them and saying: “Hey John. I have a problem with the way your tie is today. Can we talk about it?” Are you serious? I would have been at a total disadvantage and he would have wanted to know what degree of crazy I was. Now government wants us to talk first. A call was made last week that if you are unhappy with any issues regarding service delivery or anything government-related, send a petition. Really? And have it buried underneath all the bureaucratic red tape? In the meantime you have to live in deplorable condition. No access to basic services.

You walk home in the pitch dark after putting in a hard days work to make up for the fiscal deficit (read taxes here) but you’re not guaranteed you will see your family in five minutes because the high-mast lights aren’t working. That is if you don’t break your leg because there aren’t proper roads.

Then when you do get home – well the semblance of a home because that is all you can afford – you have to either hope that your family has warmed some water, that they had to probably walk kilometres to get, so you can have a quick bath. In the meantime you and your kids are freezing your butts off because the wind is coming in through the gaps where the metal sheeting doesn’t quite close up. Now they say let’s talk. Meetings are quickly set up if you burn a couple of tyres, and your grievances are heard. I’m not saying go burn down schools or burn out cars – that should not be tolerated. And if you do decide to torch or vandalise a school, a tough stance should be adhered to and you are responsible for cleaning up your own mess.