Please note that this story speaks of issues that may be sensitive to some, i.e. the pandemic and death.
Blasted bananas! I screamed in my head. A bunch of frozen, overripe fruit had landed on my foot, as a result of my opening the freezer door in search of Swordfish steaks that I thought were stored somewhere in the far back.
There were pounds of frozen bananas in that freezer; whenever they got too ripe and brown and soft to consume as fresh fruit, I would save them for making banana bread. There has been no banana bread made in a while.
So, cursing the innocent bunch of fruit, I dumped them in the sink and began removing the others. I was going to make bread out of their backside!*
And one would be for John as well. I plan to visit him the coming weekend to make sure that he was okay. John would never leave his farm if he doesn’t have to.
He had whatsapped** me earlier in the week, strange…the message came in at 3:13 am and all it say was hello, I’m here. I didn’t see it until later in the morning.
John and I do not have that kind of relationship so it was not a booty call. Maybe he was trying to get someone else and sent the message to me by accident. I did not even know that John had a smart phone. He always had his Ghetto Razr***. It was his trusty. He dialed and spoke. John was not interested in anything else.
I responded hello to his message, with a what’s up. There was no immediate response and as I got ready for the day, the mysterious message was soon forgotten.
Now remembering that I had not heard from him, I dialed his number. He answered after three rings.
“Hey John, how you? I see you were trying to reach me earlier in the week. I didn’t even you know you had a smart phone and data service.”
“Wha?” Smart what? Data who? What you takin’ ‘bout?”
“I got a message from your mobile number on Tuesday morning. It only said Hello, I’m here. The message came in 3-something am.”
“3-something in d morning, Tuesday? Girl dat cud not been me. I was in my bed, sick like a dog, roasting wid fever all dem times. I tink I catch d Rona when I last went into town. Man, I swear I was turnin into dat same burnin bush I had tell you about.”
“But…but,” I stammered, “who had your phone? Maybe your number was hacked and someone was trying to play games.”
John chuckled, “Maybe it was d man on d horse. He was sending you a message that he was goin wid me. But eh, eh, he does use cell phone now?”
I. Trudie Palmer
One Love
Notes:
*A common Caribbean swear word. It might have been associated with the licks you get as a child, when you would have done something that displeased your parent.
**a common messaging service used by smart phone users in our region. It is probably the easiest way to spread gossip,.. errr… to share important happenings in these parts.
***term used in the early 2000’s to describe most other mobile phones that were not the the popular Razr brand. If you could not afford a Razr, you buy a cheaper phone and refer to it as your ghetto razr or someone would say, “oh, I see you buy a ghetto razr.”
If you missed last week’s story, it is right here.