Not ready to serve all the ‘tea’? Keep it to yourself...
Gossip was never meant to be postponed.
What you need to know:
- My inability to handle suspense is the same reason I dislike series.
- As a result, there are so many good productions that have bypassed me.
I hate suspense. Suspense eats me up, it makes me unsettled, such that I am unable to concentrate, to fully focus on the matter at hand. Even sleep becomes almost impossible.
That is why I get utterly frustrated when someone begins a conversation this way: “Heh! I have something to tell you that will surprise you, but I’ll tell you the whole story later, ama weekend tukionana…”
Listen up, gossip was never meant to be postponed, a Kenyan saying goes, ‘Udaku hautaki uvivu’, so, if you start gossip, please drive it to completion without any delay.
You cannot start a story that has all the potential and markings of being juicy, only to cut it short and say you will finish it later.
That is unacceptable, cruel even.
I find myself imagining all sorts of scenarios, and let me tell you, my imagination can run wild, 180 kilometers per hour, therefore, it is only courteous to be considerate of other people’s threshold for suspense.
Annoying habit
Social media has really changed how we interact with one another, and if you’re like me, you’re probably in several WhatsApp groups that purely exist for socialisation, somewhat close-knit groupings of people who could be former schoolmates, workmates, or mutual friends.
Again, if your groupings are similar to mine, there is always that one person who has the annoying habit of posting an inciting statement such as, “Sema drama…?”, or, “You guys won’t believe what I heard…” or, “Did you hear what happened to so-and-so?”
Even worse, this person has the tendency of posting such statements at, say, 5am, and then goes offline until 5pm.
Until then, the rest of the people in the group are left wondering what the muchene, the drama, could be.
For 12 long hours, several theories are tossed about as people, itching to know what transpired, wait for the ill-mannered member to return online and qualify their FOMO-inducing statement.
If you are one of these people, I dare say that you need to be properly flogged, in public no less, to wean you off of this inhumane habit.
Stuck in traffic
My inability to handle suspense is the same reason I dislike series, those movies where you have to watch eight episodes or more to find out the conclusion, even worse, those ones that have several ‘Seasons’.
As a result, there are so many good productions that have bypassed me because of the impatience I have where suspense is concerned. I favour one-off movies, those that I can watch in one sitting.
In a nutshell, if you don’t plan to serve me the tea right this minute, then forever keep your peace - are we together?
The idea for today’s column came about on Sunday last week when I, curiously, found myself in traffic yet it was 10am.
I loudly wondered to myself, (I sometimes talk to myself when I’m perturbed) where “people” were going at this hour yet it was a Sunday. Weren’t they either supposed to be in church or at home asleep?
It is then that it occurred to me that the others stuck in that same unlikely jam were asking themselves the same thing – ‘where is everyone going? It’s a Sunday for heaven’s sake!’
Many times, I’ve also encountered perplexing traffic jams late at night, especially when going home from work, and have wondered what “all those people” are doing on the road that late, on a weekday, when they should be asleep…
