WHERE DO YOU LIVE?

Feb 21, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The cardinal rule in journalism is that facts are sacred and that nothing is to be assumed to be fact unless checked. I once read about a sign in an editorial room which stated, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”

The second cardinal rule is that the obvious is never that simple. Just recently a friend asked, “Peeping Tom, where do you live?”

The question had an obvious answer. I found myself however asking myself, “Where do I live?”

“Where exactly does a man live?” Is it where you sleep at nights? I know of some men who sleep at a different house every other night.

1. So where exactly do they live? Most men spend the majority of working days outside of the home? So can we say that we live at home or do we live in the office?

Little Johnny and Susie, each five years old, decided to get married. So Little Johnny went to Susie’s dad to ask for her hand in marriage.

“Where will you live?” asked Susie’s dad, thinking this was cute.

“Well,” said Little Johnny, “I figured I could just move into Susie’s room. It’s plenty big for both of us.”

“And how will you live?”

“I get $5 a week allowance and Susie gets $5 a week allowance. That should be enough.”

Getting exasperated since Little Johnny seemed to know all the answers, Susie’s dad asked, “And what if little ones come along?”

“Well,” said Little Johnny, “we’ve been lucky so far.”

2. Once you have identified a place that you can call home, the next step is to know the address.

A fire department once received a call from an excited man. “Help me, my house is on fire!!”

The fireman says, “Where do you live?”

The man replies, “I am too excited, I can’t tell you the exact address.”

The fireman asks, “How do you expect us to get there?”

The man replies, “What do you mean ‘how’? The big red truck.”

Regardless of where you live, know your address. One night, two police officers saw this old woman staggering down the street, stopping her they could tell she had had far too much to drink, and instead of taking her to jail they decided to just drive her home.

As they drove through the streets they kept asking the woman where she lived, all she would say as she stroked one of the officer’s arms was “You’re Passionate” They drove awhile longer and asked again, again the same response as she stroked his arm “You’re Passionate”.

The officers were getting a little upset so they stopped the car and said to the woman, “Look we have driven around this City for two hours and you still haven’t told us where you live.

She replied I kept trying to tell you: “You’re Passin’ It!”

Some people usually walk with a small folder in which they write down personal details such as their blood-type, a contact person in case of an emergency, and their address.

This is helpful in some respects since should you have an accident there is information for your family to be contacted. On the other hand, should you lose that folder some stranger can have access to your personal details.

3. Once you are home and know your address, you must next know how to get there?

A policeman pulled an inebriated driver over after he had been driving the wrong way on a one-way street.

Cop: Do you know where you were going?

The driver said, “ No, but wherever it is, it must be bad because all the cars were leaving.”

Knowing where is home, knowing the address, knowing how to spell that address and knowing how to find one’s way home is however not all.

4. Where you live must be a special place, somewhere that you can enjoy even if it is on a deserted island.

A man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing but bananas and coconuts. So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice, longed for his old life, and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.

One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him.

In disbelief, he asked her: “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

“I rowed from the other side of the island,” she said. “I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,” he said, “I didn’t know anyone else had survived. How many of you are there? You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you.”

“It’s only me,” she said, “and the rowboat didn’t wash up; nothing did.”

He was confused, “Then how did you get the rowboat?”

“Oh, simple,” replied the woman. “I made it out of raw material that I found on the island.”

“But, but, that’s impossible,” stuttered the man. “You had no tools or hardware — how did you manage?”

“Oh, that was no problem,” the woman said. “On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual stratum of exposed alluvial rock. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that. Where do you live?”

Sheepishly, the man confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.

“Well, let’s row over to my place, then,” she said.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked onto shore, he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck.

As they walked into the house, she said casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like to have a drink?”

“No, no, thank you,” he said, still dazed. “I can’t take any more coconut juice.”

“It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replied. “I have a still. How about a pina colada?”

Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.

After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.

When she returned, the woman greeted him wearing nothing but vines – strategically positioned. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.

“Tell me,” she began suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a very long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months? You know….”

She stared into his eyes.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing: “You mean…,” he replied, “I can check my e-mail from here?”

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Johnny, journalism, Peeping Tom, police, Susie

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