Of Lies, Rumours & Savage Gossip

Of lies, rumours and savage gossip

[note: xplicit language. The words crap and shit will be substituted for gossip]

Have you ever walked in a pasture and stepped on cow shit? Or maybe just jogging - and you trod on dog poo because in East Africa we don’t walk around with mini-spades shoveling our dog poo, so the likelihood of stepping into somethings shit isn’t so unusual.

THE thing is, once you step on it, you begin to carry that stink around with you wherever you go… and despite wiping it off the edge of a pavement or on grass or trying to wedge the offending goo off with a sharp stick pulled off some poor spindly bush for purposes of cleaning your Addidas or Nike sneakers, that shit will still smell like….. shit.. all the way home…

[I know because it’s happened to me].

[not once]

Stop laughing… I know it’s happened to you…

Can you imagine stepping onto dog shit with your best shoes on your way to a date?

Hahahahahahaaaaaa…… woiyee….

#DEAD,dead,dead!

….. hmmm…infact… hmmm - and here I will ask you to let us go down a rabbit hole…

My dad used to drag  my younger brother and I , when we were teens, at least once or twice a month to his parents farm, and we developed a habit of throwing gumboots into the car boot [trunk, for you Americans who massacred the Queens English], and change into them once we got to the Farm House. On this particular Saturday, while crossing from one pasture to the next, I accidentally stepped on a fresh sticky gooey pile of cow dung. It didn’t bother me, I was a kid after-all, and my intention was to get across the pasture, to the next one, across a fallow field and into the woods - and free range cow dung didn’t smell that bad. Later, I chucked the gum boots into the car boot, same as always, for the return trip home. Horrors! The smell wafted in to the car compartment and …. Yap, my dad was 1. LIVID, and 2. We had a chilly ride back home because the windows had to be rolled down….and 3. I had to wash my own gum boots once we got home, and not simply hand them over for ‘someone else’ to clean…. Ouch, it took a lot of bar soap. [This was before my mother introduced OMO with power foam to our house…]

Hahahahahahahaaaaaa!!

So, at an early age I learnt that I had to clean up shit even Shaggy comes and pleads ‘it wasn’t me’ who dumped. If I stepped on it, well, I had to clean it.

Back to stepping on shit.

Words by Joel Osteen. Poster name: iDeclare.jpg

 This past weekend on Sunday evening, I stepped on shit, only it wasn’t cow dung or dog poo or lion’s scat, it was a nasty story that had been spread about lovely me by [duh] someone close. I say DUH because often it’s those who are close to you who really hurt you.

You can afford to give strangers the Bitch Look, one of your better fingers, and a piece of your  ____   as you swagger off!! Lol… hey, what happened to that ‘kiss my ass’ hand gesture, it’s such definitive body movement….

hahahahahaa.

But if close folks and family crap on you though, oooohhhh…… it hurts bad.

And stinks like shit.

Faces scrunch up in shock and horror, and hours later you’re probably still reeling in shock, if you haven’t already found the offending member of public and given them a piece of their own ____ right back. But meanwhile;

… it follows you around, even if you weren’t the one who had a crap in public like a feral animal.

Ouch…

So there I was, looking down at the crap I’d stepped into, or rather, in this case, HEARD, and I was like ?£$%$£, because, really, even if you’re the most SAVED person on this Earth, even the POPE would swear if he walked barefoot into that kind of crap/stinkbomb.

Like wtf and all those epitaphs, listen, I’m just being real here..

I didn’t sleep well Sunday night.

At all.

Oh no.

I tried everything: meditation, reading the middle bits of Fifty Shades of Gray, chatting with fave friends on Whatsapp, nah, the shit pong stuck. In the end I swallowed a sleeping pill and zonked out – Monday was looming like a dark dreaded shadow of gloom right in front of me so I spoke to me quietly and came to the conclusion that I should rest and figure out how to deal with the shit and the stench the next day. So yes, Sunday I slept with a sour smell in my nose…

And woke up remarkably fresh.

Well, yah, I have that habit of bouncing back into life with a spring in my step and gladness in my heart.

The Secret?

Now, what do you do when your [insert name of close person here]  says some vicious things about you? If you’re like me and just sit, plonk down, poof, on the edge of the pavement, totally confused and knocked out of breath, looking like and feeling like the crap you stepped into, then listen up.

And if you don’t do the above, still listen up!

There’s a tiny little gem of an English idiom that goes ‘let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back’.

You see, a duck is a special breed of bird. It lives on land but gets it’s food and nourishment from rivers and streams and …. Duck ponds. Wet places.

Pun unintended.

So a Duck can’t afford to drown. . .

Hence, water rolls off it’s feathers…and down it’s back.. The upper layers of a ducks feathers are waterproof. The inner layer consists of a soft down that keeps it cozily warm.

See, I just gave you the anatomy of a duck. Not hard hey?

Tee hee hee….

Now, don’t say, ‘ah, si that’s kawa?!’. No. Birds don’t like getting wet.

[ – pun again, this time intended ] - apart from Seagulls, most birds [take red bull and] fly away long before a storm hits,.. seeking shelter, huddling in nests or trees until R Kelly’s Storm is Over, because feathers get WET and heavy and hard to ‘steer’ and well, birds could stall in mid flight and crash. And unlike the LOST series, a mid-air crash is a crash that results in deathly death. Series over.

If you still don’t believe that birds and water don’t mix…

Get a hose pipe and spray a chicken….

Have you ever seen a wet chicken?

Those birds look bad. KFC ‘chicken’ look better….

R O T F L M B B A O

I mean, there’s nothing uglier than a wet chicken……!!

R O T F L M B B A O!!!

(wiping tears off my face)..

 When we’re overcome by shitty snarly gossipy untruths about ourselves, inside we may feel like those wet chickens, cold, freezing, ugly, despairing, sodden, heavy and unable to lift our wings and fly.

They are so many stories of kids in the US who commit suicide because of being bullied in school – the ‘being bullied’ meaning that nasty horrid shitty stuff is said about them to their face. Poor birds, they die.

So, what DO you do apart from smacking that B* upside down their head with a chair…?

* (bastard or bitch… choose)

Be like a duck. Let that shit  roll off you like water off a duck’s back.

Don’t brood.

1.    Don’t let that shit entertain you, meaning, don’t put on your internal TV and watch that crap gossip over and over again. NO.

2.    Don’t turn on your internal radio and repeat to those crappy words over and over again to others. NO. I don’t care if you have 20 BF’s, BFF’s, BLOOD SISTAS/BROTHERS or WHATEVER. Do NOT waste your air time = your breath, by giving nasty crap FREE REPEAT TIME FROM YOU.

3.    Don’t meditate on that shit, making crap words your mantra, repeating them 5 times every 6 seconds.

(See, it makes a difference when I describe gossip as shit or crap. It’s offensive, and it stinks)

Be like a duck. Let that shit  roll off you like water off a duck’s back

Know this. We have to live in society – that’s your water. And mine. That’s our life. Whether in the city or in rural areas or even if we’re wanders, we have to live with people, we can’t be hermits. Oh how I wish and pine for that, but it’s not possible… And while we , that’s you and I, may listen to God, to wisdom and advice, and aspire to hold and tame our tongues, desisting from rude talk, talking ill of people, or spreading gossip – sadly [S M H here], there are those who will, and Do talk ill of others.

And there will always be the recipients who will gladly listen, swallow that shit and smear it all over you..

If a duck walks away from water, it will starve. It will be miserable. If we close out society, we become unsociable. I know, we can’t win….

 But letting let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back means that whatever shit is purposely put on our paths for us to step on shouldn’t stick. Even if it’s crap that is THROWN our way. Which means WE don’t have to clean it up. Note that!

Shake it off. Let it not enter you. Let it not seep into your life and make your inner cabin stink.  Don’t let anyone put their smelly gumboots in your car boot. [ Oh sorry, TRUCK for my American readers ]  Ever.

Acknowledge the water, but don’t let it get INTO you. Ever.

Be SP - Shit Proof.

I have a duck’s bum. It’s waterproof and Shit Proof! I glide on that shit and it never sticks on me, Ever.

NJ Munyinyi, BA Dgn, SP Honors.

Nyakio J. Munyinyi for the XpenSieve Report© 2014

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