Loose lips; hurt hearts

You are so dark that the Kiwi guys used you to smuggle black shoe polish into the country.

What’s the worst thing someone has ever said to you? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to someone?

I come from a family of savages. We roast each other furiously and frequently. Our parents aren’t exempt either. My dad sits through constant reenactments of his greatest hits (literally and figuratively), listens to his accent played back to him with hyperbole, and gets heat for his adherence to local traditions, er, imbibing a pot of malwa every evening. My mum gets trolled for the rote phrases she recited before parceling out punishment and her compulsive hoarding. We call it hoarding until we need to find our birth certificates. Then, we call it prudence.

Growing up in such a household gives you tough skin, a loose mouth, and a brain that assumes everyone uses the same skincare routine. (for the toughness)

If you know me, you know I can hardly resist a joke when I see an opening. For some, this trait is endearing; for others, I am a social pariah. In the past, outside my family home, I used my humor and wits for many reasons: to fight awkwardness, mask insecurities, win arguments, demonstrate intellectual superiority (another insecurity, perhaps?), demoralize opponents in basketball, and win over the hearts of girls. (That last one never panned out, but I am trying to be honest.)

My devil-may-care use of damaging words stopped in 2008:

In my Senior 4 (2006), Museveni was still the president of Uganda, and adolescence and nose pimples peaked. The nose pimples showed up to be counted right before the girls I was supposed to wow with my wit were due to arrive the next day. (The timing of rain at 5 PM after a busy workday.) One evening, while trapped in my classroom by the military schedule of a catholic boarding school, my concentration was waning. Frenetic lake flies dotted the classroom air and punctuated it with the familiar smell of fish they discharged. Cramming the Ngoni migration failed for the umpteenth time and I resorted to prayers for serendipitous “causes and effects” questions on the History exam the next day. For my non-Ugandan readers, History exams in our education system were brutal (at least for me).

I can’t remember how the kerfuffle started, but the warring insults boomeranging around the classroom cut through the quiet of the night. The classroom became an arena with two factions in separate corners and the crowd in the center. One enemy lobbed an insult missile but before the opponent replied, the crowd snatched the insult from the air and responded with belly laughter or repudiation. The crowd decided the winner in decibels. The side whose insult(s) elicited the loudest laughs won the day.

A member of one of the warring sides dragged me into the cartoon scuffle cloud. Perhaps, I volunteered. I can’t remember. However, you could always count on young Shem not to miss a melee.

I joined the chorus at the crescendo and chose a peripheral character on the opposing side: John. John’s meekness made him an easy target for the brand of insult I intended to dole out. I was a bully. I hurled the insult with perfect timing and it landed. The crowd erupted, adjudging my side the winner. Stifling my cognitive dissonance, I mustered a half-smile. Amid the after-glow, unbeknownst to me, John launched a quiet protest against me. For 2 years.

2 years later, we were almost 18. The sideburns and chin hair we prayed for, er, sired with Silver Nitrate, finally arrived (barely). We no longer gifted girls our neckties at functions. Instead, we shared lingering hugs and mutually-consented hip gyrations that rented rhythm from the pendulums in the Physics lab. Such titillating progress.

The Shem of this time was a slightly better human being.

One afternoon, in between classes and fighting the existential dread of A-Level academic pressure, I sauntered into my friend, Ernest’s cubicle for reprieve. Over time, my tete-a-tete with Ernest increased in decibels and interest, and the rest of the guys in the cubicle straddled the wings of the conversation on the path to academic derailment.

We were talking about tough life experiences and John, who was usually silent in the corner, folded forward in his seat with an eyebrow crease and Chemistry lab pipetting focus. During a conversational lull, John addressed me directly. Publicly: “You really hurt me in S.4, Shem.” The worst part about John’s confrontation wasn’t its suddenness or my ignominy. The worst part was I had no idea what John was talking about. And he could tell. John described the details of that evening 2 years ago from his perspective. I was speechless. I was ashamed. When I recalled our 2-year friendship embargo, I realized John hadn’t spoken to me since that day, and I was oblivious. How could John carry this for 2 years? How much did it hurt him?

I said I was sorry and John forgave me. We remounted the wings to derailment but with a nagging nimbus cloud overcast.

That experience with John changed me. I chose my words more wisely. I practiced empathy more. I reserved my banter for people with whom I built a critical level of rapport. I read the room more.

The Old Book says the tongue holds power over life and death and I believe it. This is why I supplement my toil with constant verbal manifestations of wealth and contentment. I believe to achieve anything you must first visualize it, speak it, write it down, and then do it.

Beware of what you say to yourself. Beware of what you say to others. Words can move mountains, destroy dreams and build buildings. Be kind.

Have a good week