BOYS AND DOLLS

EDWIN KIPTANUI CHIRCHIR edchirchir@yahoo.com edchirchir85@gmail.com

You may think this is important, that it will change your life and make you the next multi-millionaire, that it will improve your relationship with your spouse, that it will help you bring up an ideal boy child but no! It will do none of these things. I actually want to waste your time with some meaningless banter about my boys. You see, whenever I am alone and silent (of course I cannot be alone and loud), I like to think while scratching my head, which is threatening to lose hair anytime from now or scratching my scanty beard. One such thought is about 'Boys and Dolls.' 

You see (sorry for using these words again) I do not know who gave my boys the above dolls. I am told that they received them from some shy and giggling High School girls, who were out to extend their hands of friendship to the boys and to buy their loyalty. Too bad for them because should they ask me I would tell them that the only way to buy the boys' loyalty is by assuring them of an endless supply of yoghurt with an emphasis on vanilla flavour or getting them some proud looking toy cars. 

So, having received the dolls and the High School girls having gotten their short lived loyalty and half hearted, cautiously delivered hugs minus kisses, the boys seemed to have no idea what to do with them and instead of calling them dolls, they contemptuously referred to them as 'zile vitu' (those things). The ideal situation should have been the dolls being pampered, breast fed using imaginary breasts and covered  with warm clothing but none of these happened. Instead, the boys gave the dolls a rough treatment by turning them into permanent and  involuntary passengers in some make shift vehicles, improvised from some plastic soda bottles.

When not being ignored with reckless abandon, the dolls would endure long hours of being driven around the house and outside under the scorching sun  with no sympathy, empathy or compassion whatsoever. I mean, I thought they would at least treat them like human beings, even though they are not human, hence hence granting them a chance to learn how to have some semblance of tender feelings towards fellow human beings, but I do not know, may be I am just being irrational by rushing them into developing qualities the are not yet ready for. You see (oops! there you go again), someone told me we should treat children as children and not small adults. (please, clap for your self if you are still reading this article at this point and if you manage to finish it, get yourself a drink at your expense).

When the dolls are not traveling to nowhere in particular, they also endure   long periods of being squeezed on their bellies because the manufactures in their wisdom, decided to put somethings on their flat and bare behinds which produce funny sounds. These sounds would have otherwise been entertaining was it not for the fact that the boys almost always choose to squeeze their bellies when I am watching serious things like the endless but important squabbles common in Kenyan news.

  On the contrary, when the boys' beautiful girlfriends (yes, they do have girlfriends in case you are wondering) are around, the dolls are pampered by being washed and covered well, sometimes being breastfed using unproductive breasts and being weaned. The manner in which the girls treat the dolls is the extreme opposite of how the boys treat them. The girls are too tender on the dolls and even reprimand the boys when they mishandle them. It makes me wonder what would happen if child care was entirely left to men, that is if all ladies left for Venus, leaving their babies behind.


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