The clip with the uncle or older brother giving the kid a drink and getting him to express allegiance to a gang caused dismay across the nation last week. I cast some blame for what happened there on unrealistic people who waste time and diffuse our energies in a way that makes it impossible for us to address our problems. It’s hard to get the job done when otherwise intelligent people are vociferously promoting wild agendas, excuse me.
There were two things terribly wrong with the story: one, the child was way too young to be near strong drink, and two, the lesson from the elder, that “we da Gaza [gang]” or some like craziness, that was rank depressing.
There are some guys who hurry, hurry take their boys to the brothel to introduce them to sex. That’s crazy. The boy will find it, and when he does, pray that he doesn’t make it all there is to his life. Stop introducing kids and youth to adult things.
I believe the drink the elder gave the kid to sip had some alcoholic thing that tasted nice; some alcoholic drinks are as soft as fruit juice on the taste buds, and when we see the kid drinking a liquid from what looked like a rum bottle, that was probably water.
Parents shouldn’t encourage children to drink rum. The elder deserves a severe reprimand for that. But let’s not even think about jail for that sip from a cup. Get real. The old Woodward’s Gripe Water had 3.6% alcohol. BlackTailNYC, in the story “Do Kids in Germany drink beer?”, said a 14-year-old minor in Germany can drink wine or beer if they are with a “custodial person”, and at the age of 16 they can drink wine and beer unaccompanied. AVEiNE, in the story “When children could drink wine at school in France”, says that up to 1956 children in school in that country were served up to half liter of wine each day, but after 1956 only children over 14 could get a glass. Aha, and then in 1981 the schools went dry, as in none ataal.
Ritually, I would breakfast with my paternal grampa when he came home after being away at sea for some time. Together we sang a line from a little sea shanty, “early in the morning a sailor likes his brandy o, brandy o, brandy o, a sailor likes his brandy o.” After we sang he’d take a little shot of brandy, and then he would pour a little All Bran and milk into two bowls, one for me and one for him.
Get real. So much of our lives revolve around drink. God stopped Adam from—eat aapl. Jesus made the best wine for the people at the wedding. I saw a National Geographic documentary in which all the animals, from elephant to hippopotamus to rabbit to haligayta, were drunk. I think the land is Madagascar where they have a fruit that ferments and becomes potent alcohol inside the gut. What a bacchanal! The lions ate the fruit too. Can’t have anybody sober around when everybody is drunk. Lion would have an easy feast!
That pic with the little fellow and his yohoho bottle of rum, haha, I saw myself with my younger brother, Ronald, and our cousin David, a rum bottle filled with a cocoa drink, our arms draped around each other’s shoulders, staggering about as if we were in the Tenth Parade, and chanting, “we three da bum bali, we beat up anybody!” No adult set us up to play drunk. Look, if you wanted to block little kids from seeing inebriation you’d have to shut down the movies too. Oh, Ron doesn’t drink, Dave takes a drink but he’s no alcoholic.
No, no, no, don’t encourage a kid to drink! What I thought was really disappointing was the gang lesson the elder was giving the kid. An adult has to be daft or chaansi to encourage a kid to see some virtue there. It’s tricky turf just to ask kids to support the team you play for or ride with. But maybe we can’t blame that irresponsible dude, because the responsible dudes are teaching little kids all kinds of things these days. Thanks to adults, there’s no age of innocence anymore.
These folk and their obsession that alcohol is a terrible thing for grown people, they need to refocus. Tell the truth about alcohol; a little of it is good for most people. One solid bit of advice for young adults is that they make sure they are in the company of true friends when they’re drinking, the kind of friend that will protect you soh yu doant imbibe too much, an du fool. Once I went out with some friends and when they got a little buzz they all wanted to pik fight. I didn’t go out with them again. Don’t drink with friends who get violent or overly stupid.
Protecting children must be our priority. We desperately need to work together. Marijuana is about to be freed up some more. We haven’t reached there, and stories abound about adults giving children weed to smoke, weed in fudge and that kind of thing. Stop scattering our forces with this misguided battle against adults drinking. All of our energies must be devoted to protecting the fragile minds of the young.
US’s superstar ambassador to Belize
Going tame, I’ll be among the interested spectators when the new US ambassador first sets foot in Belize. I’m not aware that she snuck in, in the dark of night. Maybe she is virtual because of Covid fears.
There are few if any clubs as exclusive as “best in the world”, and for years the woman the US chose to represent it as ambassador to Belize, Ms. Michelle Kwan, was in that category. Michelle was a super figure skater, and while I’ve never touched an ice rink, I was a fan. It’s no secret that we Belizeans cheer for American athletes like they were our own homegrown.
Understandably, the thousands and thousands of Belizeans who now live in the USA are absorbed with the great spectacle of American sports. Hn, the only thing they can’t play is real football. It’s just incredible that with all their investment in the sport, from bringing in the mighty Pele to display his talent live so that American kids could see true artistry up close, they haven’t produced a single player that fires the imagination. I really didn’t have to say such a bad thing about them. Well, it’s the truth.
It’s also the truth that their athletes have captured our imagination in so many other fields of athletic artistry, from boxing to baseball to basketball, to figure skating, which will never be a thing in Belize, because our ice melts faster than “a snowball in hell” when we take it out of the frij. We can’t keep ice, but we can appreciate figure skating because beautiful is beautiful.
My dad, my older sister and my younger brother included figure skating on their list of “sports” to watch on NBC, CBS, and ABC, but I wasn’t in until I read about Michelle in the sports magazines. Michelle was already twice world champion (in all she won five world titles) when she participated in the 1998 Winter Olympics, and missed gold in a heartbreaker. You know why Country & Western and the Blues are so popular. There is nothing like a heart getting crushed.
After feeling her pain in 1998 I was big in her corner in the 2002 Olympics. She was absolutely dominant after that 1998 disappointment, right up to the 2002 show, in which, bah, she fell short again, “only” came up with bronze. You could call those two bridesmaids, blips. For nearly a decade our new US ambassador was flat out the best.