GAL FRIDAY: Of lizards, El Chapo and escapees
IMAGINE STIRRING it up in the kitchen and as you reach for the recipe, you come face-to-face with a reptile. A humongous lizard – an iguana.
What would you do?
Well, just writing this makes my blood crawl; but think about that iguana crawling all over your nicely tiled kitchen floor.
If you looked at CBC News this week, you’d remember that this actually happened. Yes, reader: a lizard got loose and was slinking around someone’s kitchen sink. I asked a few people – men and women – what their reactions would be.
One told me he would impale it with an ice-pick. Another said she would run out the house, bawling for murder. A Trini (not the one interviewed on the news programme) said she would catch it and cook it, since “ ’guana” meat real sweet.
Well, I could tell you this: if that big thing was in my kitchen, I moving out of the house one time. I couldn’t live in the same place ever again, because I frighten for lizards, frogs or anything so. But apparently, the iguana is someone’s pet!
When I think of a pet, I think of a furry, fluffy dog or even a talking parrot, but not a cold, scaly lizard! I mean, even a turtle, but not a lizard!
My dogs have escaped before and gone over to the neighbour’s house. She would give me a call and sweetly say, “Veoma, the dogs over here.” But imagine if I had a lizard and it escaped into her kitchen?!?
I somehow don’t think the response would have been of the same timbre.
But talking about escapees . . . El Chapo got caught-o.
A friend of mine who is a conspiracy theorist says it’s a terrorist plot. He believes that with all the focus on El Chapo, there is a diversion of attention and that “something bound to happen soon.” Sounds real accurate, right?
But my mind didn’t immediately go to the drug trade and the clandestine calls for interviews and so on when I heard of the capture. My mind went back to my high-school Spanish. “El Chapo” – do you know what that means?
Short Man Syndrome
Literally, “shortie” or “short-man”. There is another theory that short men try to compensate for something. (Now, let me make it clear: some of my best friends are short; in fact, one of them owns a company called ‘Short Pants Media’.) The theory states that there is something called SMS – Short Man Syndrome.
Anyway, I digress. I was meaning to tell you about an essay I wrote for my Spanish teacher that sent him loco.
Señor Carrington asked us to write a sentence in Spanish, by translating the sentence: “One day, my mother packed my bag with rice and chicken.”
Here’s what I wrote: Un dia, mi madre packo mi bago with riceo and chickeno.
Needless to say, it was my first time ever, spent in detention. Somehow, like that big lizard and the little man, I managed to escape. Until next week, adios, amigos!
Veoma Ali is an author, broadcaster, advertising exec and, most important, a karaoke lover.