by Robert LaFrance
After the recent snowstorm that dropped 30-40 cm on Victoria County, I whined and complained about having to work so hard at scooping out the snow, and how tough things were generally (all out of crunchy peanut butter), and how hard my job is (word processor doesn’t write the stories themselves, I have to use my fingers). Once I got out of that particular whine cellar, I went in the house to find my favourite easy chair, the one moulded to my every bump. Having settled down there with a jar of my favourite libation (water), I turned on a National Geographic TV program about a girl in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso is the former Upper Volta, and one of the poorer countries in northwest Africa. The documentary was about a 12-year-old girl whose entire life seemed to be work. Seemed to be? It was and is. All of her four brothers had gone away to school, because they were males, and her role in life was to carry huge jugs of water for her family. They needed water for the cattle, for washing, for cooking, in that order of importance.
I could not believe the size and weight (50 kilograms, I am not kidding) of these water jugs that she carried on her head several kilometres each way, all day, back and forth. The only respite was that on the way to the well the jugs were empty. Her diet consisted of rice and bread and water. She fell into her straw bed each day just after dark and was awakened in the morning at first light so she could get to work. Like that wonderful Nike commercial that says “Just do it!”, that’s what she did and had been doing this for years. Not a complaint did she utter. She accepted her role in life.
A few hours later, when I had to go out and scoop out the driveway again, I didn’t complain.
A few days later, when Flug’s nephew Billy Bob was in his whine cellar and complaining about having to do some chores around his Uncle Flug’s place, just so he could drive the Gremlin down to Bath and attend the weekly livestock auction. Little did Flug know that Billy Bob’s complaining would land him in jail before the sun went down.
Here’s how it (the situation, not the sun) ‘went down’ as they say on those TV cop shows. Billy Bob, still whining about his tough row to hoe when he was about to get into the Gremlin and come home, clicked the electronic door unlock button. (Yup, they had them then.) By a miracle of 2012 technology and just plain old bad luck, that beeper was on the same frequency as the electronics of a 2011 Cadillac CTS Sedan that was parked right alongside the Gremlin. The headlights flashed and Billy Bob could hear a click. (I was going to say he could hear ‘an audible click’ but that would be a trifle redundant, like referring to a ‘hot water heater’ or saying ‘I first started’.)
So there was Billy Bob who was faced with a choice: be honest and Gremlin-ish or climb into that CTS Sedan and scoot on down the road to his destiny, aka jail. He chose the Cadillac and jail.
Flug got the call at about 5:00 pm. An officer informed him that his nephew Billy-Rob (RCMP humour I guess) was ‘incarcerated’ in Woodstock slammer, as it were. (I guessed that was police-hockey humour.) Flug could bring along some bail money and get Billy Bob out of jail. However, Flug being Flug, and Billy Bob’s being the son of Flug’s least favourite sibling (Brunhilde), he said he’d be there the next day unless it snowed more. “What about your Gremlin?” asked the officer.
“I suppose I should go and get that,” Flug said. “At least it’s worth a few hundred dollars. As to Billy Bob, if Iwere about to sell even the rare chemicals in his body, wouldn’t bring in more than $9.43.”
The big guy relented of course, and asked me if I would go down with him and drive back the Gremlin. I referred him to the Wikipedia definition of the word ‘gremlin’. “A gremlin is an imaginary creature commonly depicted as mischievous and mechanically oriented…their natures are similar to those of English folklore imps, while their inclination to damage or dismantle machinery is more modern.”
“I’ll drive your SUV back,” I asserted, and all the way home I thought about that girl in Burkina Faso and how she faces life without complaint, while schmucks like Billy Bob cause all kinds of trouble because they’re idiots.
-end-
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