THE SCHOOL DRIVER
A few weeks back I watched a reel on TikTok (and no, mimi si GenZ): a mother gets called that a strange man picks her daughter from school every day, and it was not her dad. The shock!! And I can relate, I can’t imagine being told that a stranger has been walking my kid home from school!! Sasa ongeza hapo “strange man” and “daughter”…and I would just die before I verified the story. Anyway, she asks for proof and they send a photo of the man, turns out it’s her, without her wig!! Heartbreak 💔💔...okay? Now apart from empathizing with her, I figure…that’s her story. Until last week, I got my own version.
So, my boys use school
transport i.e. school bus. On some occasions I have had the opportunity to
take them to board the school bus in the morning, and sometimes when they get
dropped at the gate after school in the afternoon, pick them up. On those occasions
I have met the driver, we chat for a few minutes as we wait for the neighbour’s
kid to be brought out of their gate and into the bus. For some reason they always
bring him out last, sometimes the driver has to hoot to threaten them to bring
out the boy. We're friends that guy, he asks how my boys are doing even though he has seen them get on the bus. Or so I thought.
Morning pickups happen at
around 7.00 to 7.15am and if I'm taking them to the bus, I’m probably not going to work, so I’ll be in a Dera,
hair still in my sleeping cap, eyes swollen and titties all flat (the soldiers
fell y’all…they just fell like they have no hope of rising ever again!). Why were they flat in the morning…because
who wears a bra to bed?
Last week Friday however, July
7th to be precise, I’m running late. Well, not really because I know
there’s Saba Saba Maandamano and there’ll be little to no traffic so…a girl’s
cutting it really close time-wise.
School bus gets here at 7.20, see,
they are running late too! Just as I was getting out of the house. So me, the
boys and their Auntie (my cousin that I live with) let’s call her M…she is a
private person, we all troop out of the house. M’s holding the boys’ bags and opening
the gate, I’m holding my laptop bag, my lunch bag, keys and the boys’ hands. I’m
a mother so somehow I can manage this fete…it is possible.
Anyway, M opens the gate and
comes back to get the boys. I’m standing at the gate just watching them get on
the bus and shouting “BYE!” because I know my eldest doesn’t
like it…apparently it’s ‘embawassing’ but I’m his mother so
why not?
The driver says something to M
as she’s walking back. I don’t catch it because I’m standing some way off and
the wind is not carrying to my side (elewa kizungu, me that’s how we say it in
my mother’s house). M is now walking back towards me and she can’t stop
laughing. I’m like what could be so funny, so I ask her because she was giving
me this look that was just begging me to ask. Yeah, shouldn’t have done that!
She tells me y’all… “The driver says he’s never met Mama Toto!”
In case, you haven’t figured it out yet, Mama Toto here is me!!
SAY WHAAAT!
What does this guy even mean? I
mean, I was chatting with this guy outside the same gate as recently as two
weeks back!! So who does he think he has he been talking to all this time?! Okay,
just one official dress and braids pulled into a bun and somehow, I look different?
Apparently so different that he couldn’t recognize me? I thought we were close
me and that guy? We had a whole system going and it worked. I call him when any
of the boys isn’t going to school for any reason and I can’t get a hold of
their teachers, I HAVE HIS NUMBER AND HE HAS MINE!!
Or maybe it was the bra (the girls were up and
standing) I was wearing a bra after all that morning!!
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