I read this weekend, in the letters section of the Belize Times and the Reporter, a story of woe, a story about the horrible suffering women and the LG-and what-all-else-in-the-alphabet community are put through by unconscionable, uncouth men and their lewd language. I just want to say to the letter writer, Ms. Marin, that they are not alone. If it’s true what they say about misery, that it likes company, well I’ve got a whole lot of friends to introduce to her. Lady, Miss, I want to tell you that gentlemen are taking a terrible licking too.

Yes, gentlemen punish too, and maybe we are even more pained because we are affiliates of these low brutes. That just goes to show that life is not only what we see at the surface. Trust me, when you form a war party, gentlemen will enlist, and we’ll be at the fore.

The lady was put through the disgusting show when she went out to lunch and had the unfortunate experience of having one of the philistines choose to sit at her table. She said the guy lewdly commented on every female that passed by, and the torrent was so low she at times could barely swallow her food.

We affiliates have a good feed on the different factions of our family. After reading what the lady said, the things that were said to unmake her day, I didn’t need any more information on the octopus. I’d lay plenty that the one who sat down beside her was from the mechanic section, the very worst of our breed.

There’s a reason I don’t truck around mechanics. My good friend Tony is okay, because he is a born again, but most everyone else is the dregs of depravity and low-down dirty innuendo. Everything at a mechanic’s shop is debauched. Ball bearings, pistons, cylinders, engine head, engine mounts, lubricating oil, spark plug, you name it and they’ll cover it in grime. The tie rod, the crank shaft, the cam shaft, the head lamps, the bumper, the dip stick, the stick shift, you name the part they will cover it in grime.

If a mechanic is working under the bonnet and he tells you to get in the cab, beware, get worried because he’s going to tell you to mash the pedal till ih buck. That’s fair enough if he stops there, but he won’t, he’ll have to say till ih buck, like…they are not good people.

That vulgar beast! So, he looked at the nice girl and told the world that hihn wud a ehm, suck every part a she. Graphic. Explicit. Absolutely thuggish.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the victim needs some therapy. I know the territory. I da man, but I’m not man enough to hang around those kinds of people. When I go to the mechanic shop I jos drop the truck and I get out a there fast.

At a mechanic shop not even the exhaust pipe is safe turf. No part escapes the coarse commentary. Say it ain’t so. He can’t mean every part. Wow, that taboo part too? Whoa, that reminds me of a message someone wanted me to pass on to the LG-and what-all-else-in-the-alphabet gang. The person said to tell the community that yu can’t have B, for bisexual, because that’s promiscuity and no sober country encourages that. You have to pick your poison.

Lady, trust me on this, your kind and the LG crowd are not the only ones carrying this pain. Gentlemen suffer too, and jos like unu we have had it to here, so we are more than game to link up when you decide to put an end to their disgusting word sludge of terror. You can take the legal angle, we’ll bring the muscle. We can’t get too rough, so we’ll come with aluminum pipe, not galvanized, and soft wood stick, not bullet tree, and we’ll beat those boghaz where they deserve it.

So, he had the crass to publicly declare that he would suck every part. You just know their mothers didn’t wash out their mouths with soap that was strong enough. Well, somebody has to make them laan what their ma and pa failed to teach them. I can tell you what it will be like when we’re done: they’ll be sucking their dinner through a straw. And better than that, the restaurants will be safe turf for a pleasant meal and a wholesome conversation, because words don’t come out right if your mouth doesn’t have teeth or your jaws are wired shut.

Somebody has to jog some sense into that jogger

The other morning I’m in the buseeto and I’m fortunate to meet a neighbor I haven’t seen for a while, so we’re chatting it up about this and that in the village, while the journey lasts. It’s all good, until we approach the first crossing ramp on Constitution Drive in Belmopan, the one near to Wade’s Smokeshack. Our driver stops just before the ramp for a moment, to let off a passenger, and just as we are about to move off again, a jogger who has just arrived at the ramp points at the ramp to indicate to the driver that he is about to cross, so he’d better hold that brake.

My friend is a woman, and I’m not a public cusser, so the words that came to my heart and mind were not expressed by my lips. I think that so and so has got to be crazy. Okay, I’ll give him that he was bone tired, so his mind was empty of all sense and the needle on his respect compass was pointing go when it should obviously have been saying, whoa, halt!

Maybe the folk who give lessons to drivers about the rules of a roundabout should devote some time to pedestrians crossing the street ramps. I am aware that there could be a stupid rule, but I know that common sense says that if you are an adult out jogging, and a bus happens by loaded with people who are trying to get to work on time, you should let the traffic go.

I’m not in Belize City that often, but what I see there is very sad. Young, healthy people take their time to cross the ramps, while traffic backs up, fuming. I’m for respecting pedestrians, but pedestrians should have a conscience. Properly, if we’re alone and we come to the crossing ramp and there’s a vehicle with a single driver coming, we have the option of waving them on or giving them the stop sign and hurrying over. If there’s a line of three or four vehicles coming to the ramp we should have a little patience and wave them all through.

A group of people at the crossing, which occurs often during the hours when students are going to school or going home, calls for more management. Pedestrians should always have priority at the crossing, so there’s no confusion in anyone’s mind, but it is practical for students to wait until they are a group of ten or more, so the traffic doesn’t have to stop for every individual on their sweet time.

I see single drivers squeeze their vehicles in the path of buses carrying 50, 60 people. This is a case of people seeing the bus but not realizing what’s inside. They should consider that if there was no bus, and those fifty people inside were in cars, all of them riding alone, Mr. Driver in a hurry would be in a line so long he might never get home in time for lunch, or get to work to punch in before the boss comes in.

I see motorcyclists tempt fate by passing vehicles on the passenger’s side. They aren’t satisfied that they’ve got all the advantages in traffic, no, they have to squeeze out every second they can out of the route. Of course they are accidents about to happen. A part of leadership is protecting people from themselves. Personnel from the Traffic Department should do some traveling around incognito, and they should pounce with the full force of the law on the first motorcyclist who makes a wrong side pass. Man should get the max detention and cycle should go to da pound.

As for our jogger who discourteously and aggressively put the halt sign on the buseeto that I and my friend were in, it might just have been a one-time gross exhibition. We’ll never know. He might even have been in a desperate rush for a bathroom break at his house. If that was the case, I apologize; in such an emergency he could have put the stop sign on a train.

I won’t take odds on that possibility, about the rush, but if it wasn’t that, then it’s all downhill. He might be the best person in the world, a real value to his community and the country, and maybe he has riches stored up in heaven too, but it’s all negative points at a crossing when a jogger decides that his seconds are so important he can delay a whole bus-load of people.