“PLEASE SHARE the joke.”
When I was at Cawmere School, that saying was a familiar instruction by teachers to students who were caught laughing and disrupting the class.
Teachers would stop teaching, call the student by name, and, as was often the case, say, “Lewis, please share the joke with the rest of the class.”
And most students like me would laugh it off and simply say, “nothing, ma’am/sir”.
Some teachers would give you a stern look and carry on with the class, while others would stare at you and slowly say, “we are waiting, please share the joke”.
Now usually this joke being passed around the class was either some wufless joke or a joke bout the teacher. Either way, only an idiot would dare repeat the joke in the presence of the tutor.
So usually, failing to get the student to repeat the joke, the teacher would sentence that student to an evening of detention.
But within the past few months I have found myself shouting, “please share the joke!” and here is why.
Nowadays, I does look in the newspaper and see some young people, on their way to court, with police leading them, charged for murder, and most of them does be smiling or laughing. And I does be asking myself, what could they be laughing at?
Because, there is no way I could be on a murder charge, innocent or guilty, and I got a big smile on my face. So I could only assume that there is a joke somewhere which I missing.
So I wonder if them does be laughing at the fact that them just kill somebody and them gine up Dodds and have three square meals a day, and that there is no possibility of them getting hang, cause we done hanging people bout here now, and just now them gine be out.
I wonder if them does be laughing at how easy it is for young people to get a gun in Barbados and how hard it is for them to get a job. Since nobody ain’t sharing the joke, I wonder if them does be laughing at how many women got men in court for child support for children that ain’t belong to the men.
I serious, this thing got me perplexed. How you gine tell me that a man or woman was brutally killed, the country crying out for justice, the police arrest you for the murder, newspapers and TV cameras all in the courtyard, and you walking up the court steps with a big smile on your face?
And if it was only one person who did this I would say, well something got to be wrong with his or her head, but it is a whole set of them who gine court laughing and waving to people in the court yard, so I know them got to be a joke somewhere which them ain’t sharing.
So I wonder if them does be laughing at how many people aint get back them income tax refund for 2013 or 2014 but get land tax bills this week.
Maybe them laughing at the people who saying that prisoners should be made to come out and clean up the Sargassum seaweed that got the beaches bout here in a state and got tourists cancelling them vacations to Barbados.
Or maybe them laughing at the Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General who only recently said that crime in Barbados down.
I really don’t know what them laughing at, but I would like all of them to please share the joke with the rest of the class . . . we are waiting. See ya.
e-mail: madderic@hotmail.com, twitter@hotmail.com
