They Say....

‘They’ have said many things, everyone always quote them, but still no one still ever knows who ‘they’ are. In my search for ‘They’, the quest probably boils down to parents, grandparents, priests, mentors, bosses, relatives, politicians and psychologists, in other words everyone!
It’s really quite impossible to find them really… But They do have happened to SAY a lot of things…

‘They’ were the same bastards who circulated some Armageddon literature many years ago and it scared the living shit out of me as a kid. ‘They’ had adapted the Revelations Chapter literally and had given it a modern twist and left the leaflets in everyone’s letterbox in our neighbourhood. So it fell into my innocent naïve hands, in it was described an Armageddon so horrible so dreadful , it would make a Roland Emmerich movie seem like Singin In The Rain and now the part which angers me still after all these years , is that everyone else around me believed it and made me believe it too. Everyone was talking about it in those days, at all the dinner parties …’They said there is going to be…..’

Although I can’t remember much of it, the parts I do remember was something about the six hour earthquake along with 8 days of darkness, in which the sun would be blacked out completely, and then came my now favourite part – only the candles blessed at The Easter Vigil could remain alight absolutely nothing else will light as if controlled by some divine source. This resulted in my mother collecting candles by the boxful every year at Easter. “Forget The Eggs, get more candles”… so much so that I thought that if we ever had any chance of surviving the Armageddon, we would be millionaires by the time it was over, if started selling our stock during those dark times.

‘They’ have said “Death comes in threes…” or “Airplane Crashes happen in threes…”
So ‘Their’ point is God is up there , bored now that the world is complete and has nothing else to do except answer a few prayers here and there and has got himself addicted to playing– Trios version1000005.3 and is competing with the other gods through their Holy Spirit network, going… 1Frank….2Elizabeth….3Joe, yeahaa !

Air France Boeing 707… British Airways Boeing 714…John Denver’s Cessna… shit! … Retry…EasyJet… yes!

People tend to believe that Death comes in threes… so strongly that they almost make it happen. Especially after the second one…then there always is a lot of tension in the air…Who’s Next ?…who’s next ? Then once the third person is dead, everyone is glad it wasn’t them or it was someone for whom they didn’t care for much anyway and their life resumes back to normal.
But what if there’s a fourth soon after? Then they say ‘ Aaah .. he doesn’t fit in?... He probably belongs to someone else’s trio. Let them start counting now…


‘They’ say “Don’t Clip your Nails at Night because it will bring out the demons from the dark”.
Another one of dreadful sayings from my childhood, which however I was quite curious to get to the bottom off . So one fateful night when I was about seven, I waited till it was about 9pm, and slowly slid away to the bathroom while no one was watching …nail clippers in hand…I reached the bathroom, bolted the door, pushed the mop handle through the door handles… and prepared myself for the demon attack...with the toilet brush kept next to me and my grandmothers rosary around my neck. I then took out the nail clippers, wiped the sweat off my forehead, you got to know I was scared of what I might unleash in the world with the power of the nail clipper and the intensity of the full moon that night, I felt a bit like Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead, except I had a nail clipper as My Gateway to the other side. So, I slowly placed it to the forefinger of my left hand…my ears were cocked like a Doberman on guard duty… I had one eye looking at my forefinger…the other at the window…
and then I did it….c…l…i…c…k…! I looked around…sniffed the air a bit (you never know)…Nothing! So I then had the courage to try another finger… still no sign of the Gateway opening up…. I continued finger by finger till my entire left hand was done. Maybe I am not doing it right…maybe I need to try something a bit more drastic…!
…So then I decided to try a toe… preferably my big toe…that ought to cause some sort of uproar in the Spirit world. I mean the big…hard…thick…flaky toe nail, which would take me about four seconds to cut through is enough to piss off at least a small time gargoyle or something if not Satan himself…
So I placed the shiny silver nail clipper on the toe… C…r…a…c…t…C…r…a…c…k…....allowed it this time to fall to the floor…
When suddenly I heard a ‘BANG’… ‘BANG’… ‘BANG’… on the door, the door was vibrating with each ferocious thud, the mop handle slipping slowly through the door handles…my heart started beating faster than Clarice Starling’s in the end of Silence Of The Lambs …then a loud shrill voice called out my name as if it was coming from the depths of hell itself …
‘I…A…N…! … ARE YOU DONE YET I REALLY NEED TO PEE…!

They say ‘Never Cross over anyone else while they’re sleeping, otherwise they will stop growing, so once you cross, cross back quickly, before the ‘evil eye’ notices…’.
One afternoon during the school summer holidays while everyone was having their siesta, I decided to go and watch some TV instead of just lazing around in bed. So I woke up quietly, and slowly tip toed across the bed, I swung my leg across my younger sister and was about to bring it down on the other side, when I just happened to look at my mother who was resting nearby, only to find my mother wide awake, her eyes opened wide with horror to what I was about to do. There lay her youngest sibling who was now to remain at 3ft 2” for the rest of her life and because I had done what ‘they’ had said not to do. On seeing that look, the ‘they’ saying played again in my head…and I too realised the consequences of what I had done, I was going to have a midget sister all because of that fateful step. I quickly pulled my leg back whilst it was still in mid air back. Then I began wondering about the technicalities of the saying and wondering whether my sister was now exempted out of it or no.

Things like:
· Does a Mid Air Leg swing count as one complete two way crossing or just a one way swing?
· Do I have to cross completely and THEN cross back?
· If Yes, then how fast should the cross back be, immediate…in a minute or two…or after an hour (maybe I can get myself a sandwich and an ice cream)… considering my sister was still asleep.

I decided there was just one solution – Make it a Best of Three, and make it quick, so I would loose count and so would the evil eye. A bit like the exercise football players do… So I got into position, left leg in midair and went 1-2…3-4…5-6…Ha ha ! I laughed to myself – Take that evil eye!
Next thing I knew was my mother’s hand grabbing me by my ear… ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Have you no sense, no love for your sister, crossing over so many times? Do it one more time properly and get back to sleep…