26 March 1999, 899 words
Sitting in his lime-green Mercedes-Benz with the windows rolled down in order to give the viewing public a pleasure that must have been rare in their drab lives, the Education Minister heard a voice shout, "Yuh mother can't."
Surprised, the Minister stuck his head through the window, causing a passing pedestrian to fall to his knees with a cry of, "Praise Jesus, I can walk!" A few yards away there stood some young schoolboys. The Minister knew they were young because there wasn't any hair growing out of their ears. He knew they were schoolboys because his Permanent Secretary had told him that schoolboys wore shirts with emblems on the pockets. (On the other hand, the Minister had embarrassed himself just that morning by asking a FedEx man why he was out of school and smoking a cigarette.) This Permanent Secretary was the fourth in as many months, for the Minister had conceived a great hatred for the word "permanent" when he got married ten years before. He would have transferred a Permanent Secretary every week, but paperwork made his eyes water.
"Yuh damn ass!" another one of them shouted.
The Minister rapidly rolled up his window-glass, then just as rapidly rolled it down in order to free his head. "Drive on, James," he told the chauffeur, whose name was actually Shastri but the Minister was not a man to quibble over details. They drove into the school, causing considerable damage to the Benz's right fender. When the principal came out, the Minister told him that the Ministry had planned to break down that part of the front wall, anyway. As a politician, the Minister had learned to think on his feet, for this eased pressure on the brain. He told the principal that two students had cursed him and the principal, puzzled, said the Minister needn't worry because he had read in the newspapers that Benny Hinn had prayed for him and the Minister explained that he meant the boys had used obscene language. The principal was aghast, a word which sounds more disgusting than it actually is.
"What did they say?" he asked.
"One told me my mother can't."
"Your mother can't what?"
"I don't know. But it was clearly insulting. I want that boy suspended."
"For how long?"
"About thirty feet off the ground should do."
The principal cleared his throat. "When we suspend students, Minister, we usually just send them home for a few days."
"Really?" said the Minister, making a mental note to transfer the Permanent Secretary, who had not told him this.
"Yes," said the principal.
"No wonder rampant indiscipline is so rampant in the nation's schools!" said the Minister. (He had used "rampant" in a speech the day before and was very pleased at his pronunciation of it.)
"What did the other boy say?" asked the principal.
"He called me a damn ass."
The principal looked worried. "I'm not sure we can suspend him for that."
"Why not?"
"Well, you can't be damned. Benny prayed for you."
"What about calling me an ass?"
The principal looked more worried. "You want me to call you an ass, Minister?"
"What about the boy calling me an ass!"
"That's not obscene. It's in the Bible. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on one."
The Minister got back into his Benz. "I told the Prime Minister we shouldn't teach religion in schools!"
Back home, he poured himself a stiff drink, which he preferred to the more flexible kind. Sheila was not at home. He was grateful for this. Every time he came home early, she wanted to engage in discussions. Sheila liked to talk. Just last night, they had discussed The Implications for a Higher-Order Reality in Wittgenstein's Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus. The Minister had liked this quality about her before they were married but, afterwards, conversation with her quickly palled. Sheila liked to hold serious discussions at least twice a week; the Minister would have been happy with once a month. He drank his drink in three gulps.
How could that boy have called him a damn ass? he wondered. How had he known? The Opposition probably had spies in the Ministry. After all, hadn't the Service Commissions hired all their own kind in the past? He was pleased that the AG was amending the Constitution to allow the Government to hang Commissioners.
The Minister sat down on the sofa with a deep sigh. When he had become a Minister, he had expected respect. He hadn't known people would expect him to pronounce words correctly. He should have stayed a dentist. He liked the sense of power that came from looking down into a patient's open mouth, although he was honest enough to admit that his sense of power might have come from making them look up into his nostrils. He wondered if he should resign. But no. The Minister straightened his back. He had not gone to all the trouble of learning to pronounce "paradigm" for nothing. True, his directive that all words should be pronounced the way they were spelt had been blocked, but tomorrow he would issue a directive that all school uniforms must in future include suspenders. Maybe he couldn't actually suspend the students, but the Steve Urkel look would surely embarrass them into docility. That will teach the little hellhounds! he thought and, after all, wasn't that his job?
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh