The rickets of the mouth

Mzana Mthimukhulu
HAVE you ever made an innocent remark that galloped away and made its own statement?
One afternoon my colleagues and I were about to start a meeting in an office situated in the inner parts of the main building when Sihle, the secretary walked in.“I did not realise it was raining outside,” I said looking at her.

“No, it is not,” she said sitting down and flicking back her hair like a model. “Why do you think so?”

I frowned. “Why then is your hair wet?”

She ignored me and the chair ordered that we start the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, a colleague called Charles stayed behind with me. “Do you have to remark about everything under the sun?” Charles demanded. “The poor girl is coming straight from the hairdresser spotting a stunning pulled back, wet look hairstyle and before we compliment her, you rush in and ask about the rain.” Charles threw up his hands, shook his head and walked away with his hands in a surrender position.

“Just the rickets of the mouth,” I mumbled.

Fortunately in life one gets opportunities to make amends. A week later, I was at a business cocktail party when Charles approached me. He pointed out to an elegant, confident lady in a cream evening dress. “Do you know her,” he asked. I shook my head.

“That is Sihle’s mother.” I immediately approached the lady and introduced myself.

After small talk, I put on a serious expression. “I want to congratulate you for a job well done.”

She gazed at me with an expression that combined happiness and curiosity. “Bringing up a child,” I said “is the biggest challenge of our time but in Sihle you have done a superb job. What a well brought up girl you have there!”

Her confidence evaporated faster than the morning dew. She looked down on the floor and sipped her empty glass.

I chuckled. “Don’t be embarrassed. Sihle is one of the best-behaved young people I have worked with. Every morning she greets me with a curtsy. Give her a task and you never have to follow her up. She completes the task long before the deadline and it is always well done. Today’s children have no manners. They budge into you office without knocking and start yapping away. Not your Sihle. She . . .” On and on, I sang her praises.

Sihle’s mother was the old-fashioned type that felt uncomfortable basking in their achievements. She garbled something about a whole village bringing up a child but I would have none of it. I reminded her that as the mother she was the main player and had every right to take the lion’s share of the credit. She just smiled and shook her head. Modesty drove Sihle’s mother away from me.

“I saw your mother last night,” I told Sihle the following morning.

“What were you doing in Hwange?” Sihle asked.

“She was in the city and we met at a cocktail party. Now I know where you got your good looks from.”

“Oh that one,” Sihle grimaced, snarled and waved a contemptuous hand of dismissal. “That is my stepmother. Cruel woman. Do you know she refused to have me live with them even though my father wanted me to? I was brought up by my biological mother.”

“I am sure it was some misunderstanding,” I said. Your mother . . .

“Sir, this is a workplace, not a social club. Can we get on with today’s work?”

When it comes to the art of uttering the wrong things, I am in good company. Prize- winning writer Peter Godwin relates an incident in which he boarded a mini-cab in London. Once he heard that the driver was a Ugandan national, Peter warmed up to him. He boasted to the Ugandan how he once knew President Yoweri Museveni, how as a foreign correspondent he had accompanied the young guerrillas of the National Resistance Army as they took Kampala and fought their way north, driving out General Okello’s forces.

The driver listened patiently and when he finally pulled up said, “Myself, I am from the north. I am an Acholi, same as General Okello. We are the ones you drove out.

That is why I am far away from home, driving a mini-cab in this freezing country.”

Suddenly Peter was as quiet as a thug in church. He over-tipped the driver and fled out as though the mini-cab was on fire.

Nelson Mandela retells how as a young man he once bought some type of meat for the first time. He handed it over to his landlady’s daughter and asked her to cook it. The girl looked at the meat and giggled. “This is pre-cooked,” she said. “It is ready to be eaten.”

“Of course I know,” Nelson burst out, “I just want you to warm it.”

The girl laughed out loud. “You asked me to cook it, not warm it.”

Well dear reader, which is the most memorable incident in which you too displayed your rickets of the mouth?

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